The Grand Turk Read online

  After Mehmet’s first visit to Haghia Sophia he also inspected the remains of the Great Palace of Byzantium on the Marmara slope of the First Hill. Mehmet was deeply saddened by the noble ruins, and those who were with him heard him recite a melancholy distich by the Persian poet Saadi: ‘The spider is the curtain-holder in the Palace of the Caesars/The owl hoots its night-call on the Towers of Afrasiab.’

  Mehmet tried to find out what had happened to Constantine, but the emperor’s body was never found, and there were conflicting reports about the circumstances of his death. There are two variant Greek traditions about the place of Constantine’s burial, but both of these date from long after the Conquest and may be apocryphal. One is that he was laid to rest in a Greek church in the district of Vefa, on the slope of the Third Hill leading down to the Golden Horn. This church is still in the hands of the Greeks, and there are those who continue to believe that Constantine is buried there in an unmarked grave. The other tradition is that he is buried in the former church of St Theodosia, now known as Gül Camii, the Mosque of the Rose, near the shore of the Golden Horn below the Fifth Hill. The name of the mosque stems from a tradition dating back to the Conquest. The feast of St Theodosia falls on 29 May, the day that the city fell to the Turks, and the church was decorated with bouquets of roses. When the Turkish soldiers burst into the church the sight of these bouquets led them to call it the Mosque of the Rose when it was subsequently converted to a house of Islamic worship. There is an ancient tomb in the pier to the right of the nave, and it is there that some believe Constantine to be buried.

  Immediately after seeing Haghia Sophia and the Great Palace Mehmet returned to his headquarters outside the Gate of St Romanus. There he divided up the booty and captives taken in the conquest of the city, first taking his own share, which included Grand Duke Notaras and his family. According to Kritoboulos, ‘Among these was Notaras himself, a man among the most able and notable in knowledge, wealth, virtue and political power. The Sultan honoured him with a personal interview, spoke soothing words to him, and filled him with hope, and not only him but the rest who were with him.’

  Mehmet showed no such mercy to his Latin captives, executing those for whom sufficient ransom was not paid. According to Barbaro, who himself escaped, ‘Twenty-nine nobles of Venice who were taken prisoner by the Turks returned to Venice within the space of a year, after having paid ransoms of two thousand, or one thousand, or eight hundred ducats.’ Among those executed was the Venetian bailo Girolamo Minotto, who was beheaded along with one of his sons and seven of his compatriots. The Catalan consul, Péré Julia, was executed along with half a dozen of his companions. Archbishop Leonard of Chios was captured but not recognised, and was soon ransomed by a Genoese merchant from Galata. Cardinal Isidore of Kiev abandoned his robes and gave them to a beggar in exchange for his rags. The beggar was captured and executed, his head displayed as the cardinal’s, while Isidore was ransomed for a pittance by a Genoese merchant from Galata. The Turkish pretender, Prince Orhan, tried to escape by disguising himself as a Greek monk, but he was betrayed by another prisoner and beheaded.

  According to Kritoboulos, Mehmet originally ‘contemplated making Notaras the commandant of the city, and putting him in charge of its repopulation’. But some of his vezirs warned him not to trust the grand duke or any of the other Greek notables whose lives he had spared. Five days after the conquest, as a test of the grand duke’s loyalty, Mehmet demanded that Notaras give up his twelve-year-old son Isaac to serve in the imperial household. Notaras refused, whereupon Mehmet had him and his son beheaded, and the following day nine other prominent Greeks were also executed.

  George Sphrantzes survived the fall of the city, and after being held prisoner for eighteen months he and his wife were ransomed and made their way to Mistra, but their young son and daughter were taken into Mehmet’s household. Sphrantzes writes that his son John was executed by Mehmet in December 1453, ‘on the grounds that the child had conspired to murder him’, and that in September 1455 ‘my beautiful daughter Thamar died of an infectious disease in the sultan’s seraglio’.

  Some of the younger males of the Byzantine aristocracy survived the siege and were taken by Mehmet into his household. Kritoboulos writes that Mehmet ‘appointed some of the youths of high family, whom he had chosen according to their merits, to be in his bodyguard and to be constantly near him, and others to other service as his pages’. These captives included two sons of Thomas Palaeologus, brother of the late emperor Constantine XI, who came to be known as Hass Murat Pasha and Mesih Pasha. Hass Murat was a particular favourite of Mehmet, probably his lover, and eventually was appointed beylerbey of Rumelia. Mesih also rose to high rank in Mehmet’s service, and during the reign of the Conqueror’s son and successor Beyazit II he thrice served as grand vezir. Other Christian converts who rose to high rank in Mehmet’s service include four who served him as grand vezir: Zaganos Pasha, Mahmut Pasha, Rum (Greek) Mehmet Pasha and Gedik Ahmet Pasha.

  Kritoboulos of Imbros, Mehmet’s Greek biographer, became acquainted with the sultan soon after the Conquest. He played an important part in the peaceful surrender of his native island to Mehmet, who appointed him governor of Imbros, in the Aegean just north of the Dardanelles. Kritoboulos also arranged for the surrender of the nearby islands of Thasos and Lemnos.

  George Scholarios, the leader of the anti-unionist party, was in his cell at the Pantocrator monastery on the Fourth Hill when the city fell. He was taken prisoner along with the other monks and was bought by a Turkish notable in Edirne, who treated him with due courtesy when he realised that his slave was a renowned churchman. Mehmet learned of the capture of Scholarios and had him escorted back to Istanbul, where he was treated with great honour.

  The Genoese in Galata had opened their gates to the Turkish forces on the same day that Constantinople fell, and since they had surrendered without a struggle the town was not sacked. Mehmet granted a firman, or imperial decree, to the Genoese podesta, Angelo Lomellino, giving the Magnificent Community of Pera the rights to regulate their own internal affairs and to keep their homes and businesses, allowing them to retain their churches but not to build new ones, and exempting them from the devşirme, the levy of youths for the sultan’s service, so long as they obeyed the sultan’s laws and paid the haraç, or poll tax imposed on all non-Muslims. The firman also noted ‘that no doghandji or kul, Sultan’s men, will come and stay as guests in their houses; that the inhabitants of the fortress as well as the merchants be free of all kinds of forced labor’, Mehmet forced the Genoese to tear down some of their fortifications, as well as the Byzantine castle on the Golden Horn to which one end of the chain had been attached. The main bastion of the Genoese fortifications, the huge Tower of Galata on the hill above the town, remained standing, but Mehmet garrisoned it with janissaries and made it the headquarters of the subaşı and kadı, the Ottoman officials who had responsibility for the security of Galata and the administration of the sultan’s laws.

  Lomellino wrote to his brother on 23 June 1453 describing the fall of Constantinople, and in conclusion warning of the imperial ambitions of Sultan Mehmet. Writing of Mehmet, he says, ‘In sum, he has become so insolent after the capture of Constantinople that he sees himself soon becoming master of the whole world, and swears publicly that before two years have passed he intends to reach Rome; and…unless the Christians take action quickly, he is likely to do things that will fill them with amazement.’

  News of the fall of Constantinople first reached the West on 9 June 1453, when a Cretan ship that had escaped from the city docked at Candia (Herakleion), the Venetian capital of Crete. A monk from the mountains of central Crete brought the sad news back to his brethren at the monastery of Angarathos, where one of them recorded it in their archives. ‘Nothing worse than this has happened, nor will happen’ he noted, writing that he was praying to God to deliver his island from the Turks.

  The news reached Venice on 29 June on a ship from Corfu, and on the followi
ng day the Senate wrote to inform Pope Nicholas V ‘of the horrible and most deplorable fall of the cities of Constantinople and Pera’. The pope, who received the news on 8 July, referred to the fall of Constantinople as the ‘shame of Christendom’. The news reached England in a papal letter, which Thomas Gascoigne, chancellor of Oxford University, recorded in his Chronicles of London, writing: ‘Also in this yere…was the Cite of Constantyn the noble lost by Cristen men, and wonne by the Prynce of Turkes named Mahumet.’ A Georgian chronicle recorded: ‘On the day when the Turks took Constantinople the sun was darkened.’

  Three weeks after the Conquest Mehmet left Istanbul for Edirne. According to Tursun Beg, before leaving for Edirne, Mehmet announced ‘to his vezirs and his commanders and his officers that henceforth his capital was to be Istanbul’. At the same time Mehmet appointed Karıştıran Süleyman Bey as prefect of Istanbul.

  Kritoboulos describes Süleyman Bey as ‘a most intelligent and useful man, possessed of the finest manners’, and he writes that Mehmet ‘put him in charge of everything, but in particular over the repopulating of the City, and instructed him to be very zealous about this matter’.

  Mehmet then spent the summer in Edirne Sarayı, which he had expanded and embellished the year before the Conquest. One of Mehmet’s first orders of business at Edirne Sarayı was to deal with the grand vezir Çandarlı Halil Pasha, who had been undermining him since he first came to the throne, and whom he had suspected of being in the pay of the Byzantines. According to Archbishop Leonard of Chios, before Grand Duke Notaras was executed he told Mehmet that Halil ‘had often sent letters to the Emperor, had dissuaded him from making peace, and had persuaded him to stand firm’. This enraged Mehmet, and ‘he ordered that Halil should be bound and imprisoned and stripped of all his wealth and property; and after this he gave orders that he should be removed to Edirne and deprived of his life’. Mehmet then appointed Zaganos Pasha as grand vezir, ending the virtual monopoly that the powerful Çandarlı family had held on that office.

  During the summer of 1453 a succession of foreign ambassadors came to call on Mehmet at Edirne Sarayı, including envoys from the Venetians, Genoese, Serbs, Albanians, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Karamanid Türkmen, and the Knights of St John from Rhodes, all of them seeking friendly relations with the young conqueror, who imposed tribute on those who recognised his suzerainty. George Branković, Despot of Serbia, was to pay him 12,000 ducats annually; Demetrius and Thomas Palaeologus, Despots of the Morea, were levied 10,000; the Genoese administration of Chios 6,000; Dorino Gattilusio, the Genoese lord of Lesbos and other northern Aegean isles, 3,000; and John IV Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor of Trebizond, 2,000. The Knights of St John refused to pay tribute, saying that they could only do so with permission from the pope. Mehmet did not press the point, for his naval forces were not strong enough for him to impose his will on Rhodes, whose capital was the most heavily fortified on the Aegean isles.

  When Mehmet returned from Edirne to Istanbul, his first concern was to repopulate the city. According to Kritoboulos, ‘He sent an order in the form of an imperial command to every part of his realm, that as many inhabitants as possible be transferred to the City, not only Christians but also his own people and many of the Hebrews… He gathered them there from all parts of Asia and Europe, and he transferred them with all possible care and speed, people of all nations, but more especially Christians.’

  Mehmet also resettled in the city all the Greek prisoners who had been part of his share of the spoils. Kritoboulos writes that he gave them land and houses ‘along the shores of the city harbor’, and ‘freed them from taxes for a specified time’. He notes further that Mehmet ‘commanded also that the Roman prisoners should work, and should receive a daily wage of six aspers or more’, which was about the same as the enlisted men of the janissaries were paid. He goes on to say: ‘This was in a way a piece of wise foresight on the part of the Sultan, for it fed the prisoners and enabled them to provide for their own ransom by earning enough to pay their masters thus. Also, when they should become free, they might dwell in the City.’

  The non-Muslims among the new settlers were grouped into millets, or ‘nations’, according to their religion. Thus the Greek millet was headed by the Orthodox patriarch, the Armenian by the Gregorian patriarch and the Jewish by the chief rabbi. The authority granted to the head of each millet extended not only to religious matters but also to most legal questions other than criminal cases, which were always tried before the sultan’s judges. The millet system instituted by Mehmet was continued by his successors right down to the end of the Ottoman Empire, forming the core of its multi-ethnic character.

  The first Armenian patriarch after the Conquest was Havakim, whose patriarchate was at the church of the Virgin Peribleptos on the Seventh Hill. The first chief rabbi was Moses Kapsali, whose headquarters were in Balat, on the shore of the Golden Horn below the Fifth Hill, an area that had been the principal Jewish quarter since late Byzantine times.

  There was no Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople at the time of the Conquest, for the last to hold that position before the siege, Gregory III Mammas, abandoned the city in August 1451 and fled to Rome, never to return.

  Thus it was that Mehmet decided to choose a new patriarch to head the Greek millet, as Melissourgos writes: ‘He issued orders for the election of a patriarch, according to custom and protocol… The high clerics who happened to be present, and the very few members of the church and the lay population designated the scholar George Scholarios, and elected him patriarch under the name Gennadios.’

  Gennadios took office on 6 January 1454, when he was consecrated by the metropolitan of Heracleia on the Black Sea. Before the ceremony Mehmet received Gennadios and invited him to share his meal, after which he presented him with a silver sceptre and a palfrey from the royal stables. Mehmet then personally escorted Gennadios in the first stage of his procession to the church of the Holy Apostles on the Fourth Hill, which had been assigned to the new patriarch as his headquarters. The sultan later issued a firman that guaranteed to Gennadios ‘that no one should vex or disturb him; that unmolested, untaxed, and unoppressed by an adversary, he should, with all the bishops under him, be exempted from taxes for all time’.

  Gennadios found that the church of the Holy Apostles was not a suitable location for the patriarchate, and so he received permission from Mehmet to move to the church of the Virgin Pammakaristos on the Fifth Hill. Mehmet made three visits to the Pammakaristos to call on Gennadios, and in their conversations, through an interpreter, they ranged widely over questions of Christian theology. Gennadios wrote a summary of his theological beliefs and had it translated into Turkish for Mehmet’s private study.

  The sultan’s contacts with Gennadios give rise to rumours that he was inclined towards Christian beliefs. Mehmet had always been interested in Christianity, perhaps because of his mother, who may have been Greek, but would have converted to Islam when she entered the harem of Murat II. Mehmet’s favourite wife, Gülbahar, mother of the future Beyazit II, was probably also Greek, and tradition has it that she never converted to Islam.

  Teodoro Spandugnino, an Italian who lived in Galata, claims that Mehmet took to worshipping Christian relics and always kept candles burning in front of them. Another story about Mehmet’s attraction towards Christianity is reported by Brother George of Mühlenbach, who spent the years 1438-58 as a Turkish prisoner. As he writes in his Treatise on the customs, conditions and inequity of the Turks: ‘The Franciscan brothers living in Pera have assured me that he [Mehmet] came to their church and sat down in the choir to attend the ceremonies and the sacrifice of the Mass. To satisfy his curiosity, they ordered him an unconsecrated wafer at the elevation of the host, for pearls must not be cast before swine.’

  Mehmet’s interest in Christianity appears to have been superficial, for he seems to have been basically irreligious, and in his observance of Islam he merely observed the forms of the Muslim faith, as was necessary for him as h
ead of state. Giovanni-Maria Angiolello, an Italian captive in the Ottoman service, writes that Prince Beyazit was heard to say that ‘his father was domineering and did not believe in the Prophet Mohammed’.

  The Ottomans were orthodox Muslims, as opposed to what they condemned as the heterodox doctrine of the Persian Shiites. Mehmet had shown a leaning towards Shiite beliefs since his first brief sultanate in Edirne, when the Persian dervish he tried to protect was burned at the stake. Mehmet was also very interested in Persian literature, particularly the poetry of the Sufi mystics. This was taken as further evidence of his heterodoxy, since an old Ottoman proverb says: ‘A man who reads Persian loses half his religion.’

  The Ottoman court in Mehmet’s time was still simple in its customs, free of the ostentation and elaborate ceremonies surrounding the sultan that would develop in later times, as Brother George of Mühlenbach observes.

  I saw the ruler, followed only by two young men, on his way to the mosque far away from his palace. I saw him going to the baths in the same way. When he returned from the mosque to his palace, no one would have dared to join his followers, no one would have made bold to approach him and to cheer him as is done in our country, to burst into the cry ‘Long live the king,’ or other such applause as is customary with us. I have seen the sultan at prayer in the mosque. He sat neither in a chair or on a throne, but like the others had taken his place on a carpet spread out on the floor. Around him no decoration had been placed, hung, or spread out. On his clothing or on his horse the sultan had no special mark to distinguish him. I watched him at his mother’s funeral, and if he had not been pointed out to me, I would not have recognized him. It is strictly forbidden to accompany him or to approach him without having received express permission. I pass over many particulars that have been related to me about his affability in conversation. In his judgments he shows maturity and indulgence. He is generous in giving alms and benevolent in all his actions.