Murad II: The Poet-Sultan Who Went Back to War
At the battle of Varna in 1444, Murad II proved himself as good a soldier as any great commander. He then retired to Magnesia in Asia Minor, where twice a week he gathered poets and scholars around him and spent time reciting verse and holding scientific and philosophical conversations. A rebellion at Edirne called him back to Europe.
Murad put it down and then defeated John Hunyadi at the second battle of Kosovo. When he died in 1451 after thirty years on the throne, Christian historians counted him among the greatest rulers of his time. His will stated that his body should be buried at Bursa in a small chapel without a roof, so that divine mercy and forgiveness, together with the rays of the sun and moon, rain and dew, might fall upon his grave.
Mehmed II: The Conqueror
Sultan Mehmed II, called the Conqueror, equaled his father in learning, culture, conquest, political shrewdness and length of rule, but was not his match in justice and generosity. He broke formal treaties at will and stained his victories with needless killing. In the Eastern style he was cunning and secretive in his military plans. Once, asked about them, he answered that if a single hair of his head knew his plans he would pull it out and throw it away.
He spoke five languages and knew the literature of several countries well. He was skilled in mathematics and engineering, encouraged the fine arts, set stipends for thirty Ottoman poets and sent royal gifts to poets in Iran and India. His grand vizier Mahmud Pasha was no less a lover of letters and arts. The sultan and his vizier supported schools and charitable institutions so generously that Mehmed was called "the Benefactor Father".
He was also "the Conquering Sultan". Constantinople fell before his power and artillery. Under the guns of his navy the Black Sea became a Turkish lake. Before his disciplined troops and shrewd diplomacy the Balkan states knelt and accepted his yoke. But the conqueror could not master himself. By fifty, after excess in his appetites, he was exhausted and weakened, and no medicine could help him. He died in 1481, aged fifty-one, just when his armies were close to bringing Italy under Islam.
Bayezid II: The Reluctant Warrior
After a rivalry among his sons, the throne passed to Bayezid II. He had no taste for war, but when Venice occupied Cyprus and threatened Ottoman control of the eastern Mediterranean, he answered deceit with deceit. He signed a non-aggression pact with the Venetians, used the time to prepare a navy of two hundred and seventy ships, and then destroyed the Venetian fleet near the coast of Greece. A detachment of Turkish troops also raided northern Italy eastward as far as Vicenza (1502).
Venice asked for peace. Bayezid accepted on easy terms and went back to the seclusion of his poetry and philosophy. His son Selim then pushed him off the throne and took his place (1512). According to some historians Bayezid II died soon after, poisoned.
Selim the Grim
History is in some respects an alternation of opposites. The character of one age is rejected by the next, which is tired of the monotony of past traditions and eager for novelty: classicism produces romanticism, which gives way to realism, from which impressionism is born. A period of war inevitably prepares the ground for ten years of peace, and a long peace calls forth an age of aggression.
Sultan Selim I despised his father's peaceful policy. Strong in body and will, he cared nothing for pleasure or ease and preferred hunting and camp life to everything. He put down internal revolt by executing nine of his close relatives, and after repeated campaigns and victories he earned the title Yavuz, "the Grim" or "the Terrible".
When he heard that the Safavid shah Ismail of Iran had attacked the Turkish frontier, he was glad. He formally vowed that if God gave him victory over the Persians, he would build three great mosques in Jerusalem, Buda and Rome.
Conquest of the East and the Caliphate
After stirring his people's religious zeal up to the pitch of holy war, Selim rushed to meet Shah Ismail, took Tabriz and annexed northern Mesopotamia. In 1515 he turned his artillery and Janissary corps against the Mamluks and added Syria, Arabia and Egypt to his domain (1517). He took the last Abbasid caliph to Constantinople as an honored captive. From then on, like Henry VIII of England, the Ottoman sultans held the reins of both religion and state.
At the height of his power, Selim planned to take the island of Rhodes and conquer Christendom. When all preparations were ready, plague struck him down (1520). Pope Leo X, who had trembled more at the sultan's plan of attack than at Luther's religious revolt, ordered all churches to sing hymns of thanksgiving to God.