Morals Change with Place and Time
The difference between Christian and Ottoman customs shows how far the moral rules of any society shift with geography and period. In the same lands where Byzantine Christianity had once officially upheld monogamy, polygamy now ruled without challenge, and women of the same soil, who had once sat on the thrones of the Caesars, now hid themselves in the harem. Suleiman provided for his harem dutifully, without the hesitation and pangs of conscience of Francis I, Charles V, Henry VIII or Alexander VI, and without shirking his responsibilities. Turkish civilization, like ancient Greece, kept women apart from public life behind a veil, and this left the field open to various irregularities of conduct, as it had in the Greek world.
By the Quran each man might take up to four wives and a number of temporary wives, but only a small minority could afford such expense. Ottoman soldiers, often at war and long away from their wives, married the widows or daughters of defeated Christians or took them as temporary wives. No religious or racial prejudice stood in their way. They accepted Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian, Mongol, Persian and Arab women alike and called them the mothers of their children, who were without exception legitimate and full members of Ottoman society. Adultery, where it occurred, was punished severely. A husband could divorce his wife simply by declaring his will, while a wife could free herself from marriage only after long and laborious proceedings.
The Sultan's Household
Suleiman did not marry until he was about forty. Ever since Bayezid I's wife fell into the hands of Tamerlane, the Ottoman sultans had, to avoid a repeat of such a disgrace, vowed not to marry formally and to admit only slave girls to their beds. Suleiman's harem consisted of some three hundred concubines, all bought in slave markets or captured in war, nearly all of them originally Christian. When the sultan was to visit, the women put on their finest clothes, adorned themselves and lined up to greet him. He spoke courteously to as many as he had time for and laid his handkerchief on the shoulder of the one who pleased him most. As he left, he asked her to return it that night, and next morning she was given a robe of gold-woven cloth and a larger allowance.
The sultan might stay in the harem two or three nights, then return to his palace and spend his days and nights among men. Women were seldom seen in his palace and had no place at formal dinners and gatherings. Even so, to be accepted into the sultan's harem was thought a great honor. A concubine who had not received the sultan's handkerchief by the age of twenty-five was freed and usually found a husband among the country's highest class. In Suleiman's case the arrangement fortunately did not lead him into excess or weakness, since he was a temperate and self-controlled man.
Manners, Cleanliness and Coffee
Social life in Ottoman society went on mostly among members of the same sex, so men's gatherings lacked the charm, laughter and chatter that women bring. Yet the rules of courtesy were observed there as well as in Christian lands, and perhaps better than anywhere except China, India, Italy and France. Household slaves were numerous but treated humanely, several laws protected their rights, and the terms of freeing them were easy.
Public sanitation was scarce, but personal cleanliness was general. The custom of public baths, which the Persians seem to have borrowed from Hellenized Syria, passed to Turkish society, and in Constantinople and other large cities such baths were built of marble with great ornament and luxury. There had been a time when certain Christian saints boasted of needing no water and shunned washing, whereas in Islam every person had to wash before entering a mosque or beginning prayer. Islam in fact ranks cleanliness next to the knowledge of God among religious duties.
Table manners held no advantage over Christian custom: food was eaten with the fingers from wooden dishes, and there was no fork. Wine was never drunk at home, but drinking in taverns was common, though drunkenness was much rarer than in the West. From the eighth century of the Hijra (the fourteenth AD) coffee-drinking spread among Muslims. It is first heard of in the history of Abyssinia and seems to have passed from there to Arabia, and it is generally said that Muslims first drank it to stay awake for night devotions. No European writer mentioned it before 1592.
The Turkish Character
The Turks were strong and sturdy and known the world over for their endurance. Busbecq was amazed to see some Turks bear a hundred strokes of the rod on their feet and ankles, "while sometimes the sticks of cornel wood splintered on their bodies" and not a groan escaped them. Even ordinary Turks walked with dignity from habit, helped by loose robes that hid the faults of well-fed figures. The common people wore a plain fez, and the well dressed and wealthy wound a turban around it. Men and women alike loved flowers to excess, and Turkish gardens were famous for their varied colors. Jasmine, tulips, the lilac, the cherry laurel and the anemone seem to have reached western Europe from there. The Turks had a delicacy and sensitivity that lay buried under the ashes of their wars.
Today it surprises us to read in Christian travelers' accounts that the Turks, outside war, were "not cruel by nature," but were a "docile, tractable, good-humored and lovable" and generally kind people. Francis Bacon complained that they were kinder to animals than to their fellow men. In truth their harshness showed when their faith and zeal were threatened, and then they displayed the fiercest human traits.
The Laws of War and Justice
Turkish rules of war were especially severe. No enemy was spared quarter. Women and children were exempt from the slaughter, but enemy men, even when disarmed and no longer resisting, were put to death. Still, many cities that fell to the Turks fared better than Turkish cities that fell to Christians. When Ibrahim Pasha took Tabriz and Baghdad (941 AH, 1534 AD) he forbade his soldiers to plunder the city and molest the people, and when Suleiman took Tabriz again (given in the book as 992 AH, 1584 AD) he likewise kept it from killing and looting. When Charles V took Tunis (942 AH, 1535 AD), by contrast, he could pay his troops only by letting them loose to plunder the city's spoils. Even so, Turkish law was a match for Christian law in harsh penalties, and theft was punished by cutting off part of a hand.
The Turks' moral code resembled the Christians'. They counted faithfulness to a pledge among their moral honors and usually treated surrendered enemies according to the terms of capitulation. Yet Turkish moralists held that no promise should bind a faithful Muslim to act against his interests or religious duties, and by the same reasoning the sultan could break the formal treaties of himself and his ancestors.
Christian travelers noted that the Turks in general had "honesty, a sense of justice, benevolence, piety and charity," but that nearly all officials were willing to take bribes. One Christian historian adds that most Turkish officials were originally Christian, to which it must be added that they were in any case raised in the customs of the Muslim Turks. In the Ottoman provinces the local pashas, like the proconsuls of ancient Rome, hurried during their term to amass wealth, so as to pack their bags before the sultan's whim put someone else in their place. At the first opportunity they collected from the local people what they had paid in bribes for their posts. The sale of public offices flourished in Constantinople or Cairo as much as in Paris and Rome.
Schools and Poetry
The weakest link in Ottoman civilization was the lack of means for acquiring and spreading knowledge. General education was usually a neglected matter, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Educational facilities were mostly for students who meant to learn teaching, law and administration, and in those fields the curriculum was strict and detailed. Mehmed the Conqueror and Suleiman the Lawgiver found the opportunity to improve Ottoman schools and, with their grand viziers' help and funds, founded colleges. The teachers held a respected position and were better off than their colleagues in Latin Christendom. The teaching rested mainly on the Quran, but literature, mathematics and philosophy were included, so that graduates, though better versed in theology than in the sciences, kept pace with the West in engineering and statecraft.
Only a small minority could read and write, but among those who could nearly everyone wrote poetry, and Suleiman was no exception. Like the Japanese, the Turks held public poetry contests where poets recited their work, and Suleiman greatly enjoyed presiding over these gatherings. In that age the Turks had a hundred celebrated poets honored by the public. We in the West, absorbed in the greatness and particulars of our own languages, have neglected others and have not even heard the name of the greatest Turkish lyric poet, Mahmud Abdulbaki. His career spanned four reigns; he was forty when Suleiman died and lived thirty-four years more. He began as a saddler, then abruptly left the trade to live by writing poetry, and without the pension Suleiman set for him from mosque endowments he would certainly have fallen into poverty. The sultan added a eulogy to his gift and praised Baki's verse in a poem of his own. Baki repaid the debt with a strong and moving elegy on Suleiman's death. Even in European translation, which loses the dignity of the original in trying to keep its repeated rhymes, the depth of feeling and grandeur show through. It mourns the lord of fortune for whom the world was too narrow when he rode, before whose sword the unbelievers of Hungary bowed, a king generous and kind, whose soul flew up like a bird of paradise and left only a few bones in the dust.
Painting, Tiles, Textiles and Carpets
The Turks were too busy fighting and conquering strong countries to find leisure for the delicate arts that distinguished Islamic civilization. Some good Turkish miniatures appeared, with simple designs and a free, flowing style. Pictorial painting did not suit the devout Turk, and only Christians went on painting the walls of their churches and monasteries with saints and scenes from their lives. Among them Manuel Panselinos, who may have borrowed some traits of Italian Renaissance style, painted the murals of the Protaton church on Mount Athos (1535-1536), freer, bolder and more delicate than the Byzantine painting of the time.
The Ottoman sultans gathered famous artists at court, such as Gentile Bellini from Venice and the noted miniaturists Shah Quli and Vali Jan from Iran. In making colorful tiles the Ottomans needed no foreign help, and they used their glowing tiles on buildings to dazzling effect. The city of Iznik won renown for its excellent imitation-porcelain tiles. Scutari, Bursa and Hereke in Asia Minor became chief centers of weaving, and their brocades and velvets with floral designs in deep red and gold impressed Venetian and Flemish designers. Turkish carpets lacked the poetic finish of Persian ones, but their magnificent patterns and warm colors greatly pleased Europeans. Colbert urged Louis XIV to order French weavers to copy the carpets of Ottoman palaces, but the effort came to nothing, and Muslim mastery of the craft stayed beyond Western skill.
The Mosques of Constantinople
Ottoman art reached its peak in the building of the mosques of Constantinople. Neither Mashhad, with its tightly massed and splendid mosque architecture, nor Isfahan in the age of Shah Abbas could rival the grandeur of Suleiman's capital, and perhaps only the Persepolis of Xerxes in the history of Iran or Islam could stand beside it. In that city half the booty the sultans won in victory was spent for God's sake on buildings that were at once an expression of religious humility and of royal pride, for the sultan's purpose was to impress his people with both splendor and the power of arms. (In 1930 the city regained its earlier name and was again called Istanbul.)
Suleiman competed with his ancestor Mehmed the Conqueror by building seven mosques. One, called by his name (964 AH, 1556 AD), surpasses Hagia Sophia in beauty. It imitates Hagia Sophia in grouping smaller domes around a great central dome, but the contrast between its soaring minarets and its mountainous body creates a striking effect. Inside is an astonishing treasury of ornament and luxury: gilded inscriptions on marble or imitation-porcelain tile, porphyry columns, arches of white or black marble, windows of painted glass set among stones with lacelike patterns, and a carved pulpit that cost a lifetime of labor. One might say the radiance of this ensemble is such that the beholder feels less religious humility than the urge to admire. An Albanian architect named Sinan designed this mosque and seventy others, and he is said to have lived to the age of a hundred and ten.