Osman's Dream

Praise for Osman’s Dream

“[Finkel’s] mastery of the historical literature is obvious: The sheer amount of information packed between these two covers makes it a landmark achievement.”

—New York Sun

“With this superb book, Finkel boldly covers new ground in striving to show the Ottoman Empire from within. . . . Having spent 15 years living in Turkey, Finkel is uniquely positioned to overcome the practical hurdles to Ottoman research, but her real strength is in historiography: she has a keen ability to extract salient observations from her sources even as she renders their political motives transparent.The result is a panorama of the Ottoman Empire to rival the best portraits of the Romanovs and Habsburgs, and a must-have for history collections.”

—Booklist (starred review)

“Possibly the first book in English on the entire history of the Ottoman Empire for general readers. In [Finkel’s] well-written narrative, she breaks with Western scholarship by not treating the empire as the stereotypical ‘Sick Man of Europe,’ preferring to let the extensive Turkish sources tell a story of an enormous, complex, multiethnic state.”

—Library Journal

“Readable survey on one of the world’s great empires. . . . Finkel’s text is a satisfying blend of narrative history, anecdote and character study. . . . The more we know about the Ottomans, the more easily comprehensible the subsequent history of the region they ruled becomes. Finkel’s study makes a useful contribution.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Finkel’s striking innovation is to turn a mirror on the Ottomans and examine how they saw themselves and their empire. . . . A refreshingly original perspective . . . this history makes a riveting and enjoyable read for all audiences.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A magnificent new historical panorama. . . . For perhaps the first time in English, a genuine Ottoman scholar has written a clear narrative account of the great empire based mainly on Turkish rather than hostile western accounts.The result is not only a revelation; it is a vital corrective to the influential but partial and wrong-headed readings of the flagbearers of intellectual Islamophobia, such as V. S. Naipaul, Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntingdon, all of whom continue to manufacture entirely negative images of one of the most varied empires of history . . .”

—WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, The Scotsman

“Osman’s Dream is a deeply sympathetic, compelling and highly readable account of the rise and fall of an immensely complex and dynamic society which, at its height was the most the most far-reaching and the most powerful Empire the world had ever seen. But it is also something more. For Caroline Finkel has not only told the history of how a band of Turcoman warriors from eastern Anatolia came to dominate so much of the world. She has also shown why that history matters, why today we are in no position to understand, not merely the modern Republic of Turkey but also modern Islam unless we also understand the past, and the present perception, of the greatest and most enduring of the Islamic states.”

—ANTHONY PAGDEN, Distinguished Professor of History and Political Science, UCLA

“How timely to have such a lucid, well-researched, and fair-minded history of the Ottoman Empire—and one too which treats it not as some exotic and alien world, but as part of our common past.”

—MARGARET MACMILLAN, author of Paris 1919

“Osman’s Dream is a treasure for anyone who wants to know exactly what happened when in the Ottoman Empire. Here at last is a reliable history that takes into full account not only the work of international and Turkish historians but also the writings of the Ottomans themselves.”

—HUGH POPE, author of Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World

“Finkel has brilliantly woven together a highly readable survey of 600 years of Ottoman history. Well researched and beautifully written, Osman’s Dream will be essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the Empire that ruled for centuries over so many of our contemporary trouble spots—from the Balkans to the Arab world.”

—HEATH W. LOWRY, Ataturk Professor of Ottoman & Modern Turkish Studies, Princeton University

“The Ottoman Empire has been in the spotlight of late, and the subject of a fair few studies—some of high quality—which makes the freshness of Finkel’s history the more striking. The secret, apart from an irresistible narrative style, is a generous openness to every aspect of Ottoman life and culture, and a willingness to address Ottoman problems on their terms. What has often come across as an impossibly exotic procession of Viziers, Beys and Pashas is here brought vividly home to the general reader.”

—The Scotsman

Illustrations

  1. First third of an endowment charter for a dervish lodge established by Sultan Orhan in 1324

  2. The beheading of the companions of Johann Schiltberger

  3. An Ottoman official and his assistant register Balkan Christian boys selected for the youth levy

  4. Bayezid I held in a cage following his capture by Tamerlane at the battle of Ankara, 1402

  5. Equestrian statue of Emperor Justinian that stood outside Hagia Sophia

  6. View over the Covered Bazaar, Istanbul

  7. The Tiled pavilion in the outer gardens of Topkapı Palace

  8. Portrait of Mehmed II, 1481

  9. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers receives Cem Sultan on his arrival on Rhodes

10. The Castle of Bourganeuf where Cem Sultan was held

11. Süleyman I wearing the helmet-crown commissioned for him by Grand Vezir İbrahim Pasha

12. The coffin of Grand Vezir İbrahim Pasha being carried out of Topkapı Palace

13. The sacred shrine at Mecca

14. Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Süleyman I and Hürrem Sultan

15. Underglaze-painted İznik tile

16. Detail from a minature showing three Kızılbaş being presented with caftans on giving up the red bonnets symbolizing their ‘heretical’ status

17. The Selimiye: the mosque of Selim II in Edirne

18. A couple apprehended by janissaries as their wine cools in a stream

19. Murad IV setting out on the Baghdad campaign of 1638

20. The Venetian bailo in Istanbul, Giovanni Soranzo, and his delegation, being led away in chains following Venice’s refusal to cede Crete

21. The New mosque built by Turhan Sultan in the port district of Istanbul

22. The Chief Black Eunuch

23. The strangulation of Grand Vezir Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha

24. ‘Le fameux croissant du Turc partage entre l’Imperialiste, le Polonois et le Venetien’

25. Three sons of Ahmed III being escorted to their circumcision feast

26. Tulip varieties ‘That increases the Pleasure of Ahmed Efendi’s Banquet’ and ‘Source of Joy’

27. Detail of the monumental fountain built by Ahmed III outside Topkapı Palace

28. Patrona Halil and fellow rebels

29. Detail from a scroll illustrating the route of the water supply from outside the city to Topkapı Palace

30. An Ottoman and a Russian official discuss the Dardanelles

31. Mehmed Ali Pasha of Egypt

32. Sultan Abdülmecid in uniform at the time of the Crimean War

33. Interior view of Ayasofya

34. Reverse of a medal issued by Sultan Abdülaziz

35. Ottoman military cadets

36. The palanquin symbolizing the Sultan’s presence emerges from Dolmabahçe Palace at the start of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca

37. Kaiser Wilhelm II being rowed on the Bosporus, autumn 1917

Preface

There has been an explosion of history-writing in recent years, and on the shelves of bookshops together with histories of every other time and place are now to be found Ottoman histories of varying scope and subject matter. Some are intended for an academic audience, some cover only limited periods of time, some are based entirely on non-Turkish or non-Ottoman sources. My purpose has been to try to provide for a general audience an up-to-date history of the whole chronological span of the Ottoman Empire – and beyond; my aim has been to counter the over-simplified notion that the Ottoman Empire rose, declined, and fell – and that is all we need to know about it.

Like history itself, historical research does not stand still, and the last ten or fifteen years have produced exciting new perspectives and interpretations. Nevertheless current general perceptions of the Ottoman Empire still owe a great deal to the observations and prejudices preserved in European sources written in the heat of the various confrontations between western states and the Ottomans. Characterizations of the empire as an ‘Oriental despotism’ or ‘the Sick Man of Europe’, for instance, derive from particular moments in time when such ‘soundbites’ suited particular purposes. Unfortunately, they have been continually repeated and recycled as though they encompass the whole history of the empire and are adequate to embrace the historical insights gained since they were coined.

Much of what passes for general history-writing about the Ottoman Empire in its varied aspects is in reality quite innocent of ‘history’ and reduces the Ottomans and their world to a theatre of the absurd – a parade of salacious sultans, evil pashas, hapless harem women, obscurantist clerics – stereotypical characters frozen into a well-worn setting which lacks all but the barest acknowledgement of the dynamics of history. It tells a timeless tale of an alien and exotic universe, and fails to inform the reader of the processes which shaped that universe. That these books sell well is evidence of general interest in the Ottoman Empire; that they are grounded neither on the more recent historical perceptions nor on the original sources is a reflection of the fact that Ottoman historians have rarely stirred themselves to write for a general audience. I hope my ‘new narrative’ will entertain the general reader, while at the same time serving as a modest corrective, furthering our understanding of the connections between past and present and of how we got to where we are today.

My own approach to Ottoman history is perforce coloured by long residence in the Turkish Republic, the final successor state of the Ottoman Empire, where I have lived for some fifteen years. The past is truly another country in Turkey, whose citizens have been deprived of easy access to the literary and historical works of previous eras by the change of alphabet in 1928 from Arabic script to the Roman alphabet familiar to most of the western world. At the same time, an ongoing programme to make the vocabulary more Turkish is expunging words of Arabic and Persian derivation – the other two components of the rich amalgam that was the Ottoman tongue, today in danger of becoming as ‘dead’ as Latin. On the other hand, works from the Ottoman centuries are now being published in modern script with simplified language, enabling modern readers to gain some understanding of what went before. The situation would otherwise be dire: imagine an English literary canon which lacked anything written before the 1930s!

It once seemed possible that, with the passing of those generations who had learnt the Ottoman language before the change of alphabet, there would be few who were able to read the voluminous documents and manuscripts which are the basic source-material for Ottoman history. However, students continue to train as historians, and learn Ottoman, and they hold university positions in Turkey and abroad alongside non-Turkish-born Ottoman specialists. Yet it has not been easy for Turks to cast off the ‘official history’ taught them in school, a version of their past which took its impetus from the revolution identified with the name of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the ‘father of modern Turkey’. In the early years of the republic the Ottoman centuries were considered to be a closed book and disdained as though they had no connection with its citizens, for whom a more distant Turkic past was considered appropriate. But as the Ottoman period has receded in memory, it is becoming open to scrutiny; and although Turks have been enjoined by the gurus of education to see themselves as inheritors of a proud past which can be described but not interrogated, this too is changing. Thus official history now endorses the notion that the Ottoman dynasty was invincible and its sultans all-powerful – except those remembered with such soubriquets as ‘Sot’ or ‘Crazy’ – but little attention has yet been given to the opposition to the state and its writ which occurred from the earliest years of the empire: a reluctance to acknowledge the existence of dissent which is an abiding feature of politics in modern Turkey.

Yet, despite the practical hurdles which hinder an understanding of their Ottoman past, the citizens of the modern Turkish state are endlessly curious about their history. Political discourse is peppered with lively exchanges of a kind quite unfamiliar to western observers: varying perceptions of the past provide a rich source of reference as politicians and interest groups quibble over which version of history will best serve tomorrow’s purposes (a tomorrow that has often seemed more uncertain than it is elsewhere). Many conversations allude to topics whose roots stretch back into history. The most visible example of the past haunting the present is the ‘Armenian question’ – which in its current manifestation revolves around Armenians lobbying for national governments to declare the communal massacres in Anatolia in the First World War a genocide. Less obvious to outsiders are two other topics high on the Turkish agenda: the role of the military in politics, and the limits of the acceptable in religious expression. These are themes that pervaded Ottoman history, and preoccupied the statesmen and people of the past as they do today’s. The historian’s task is to show how the past led up to the present, or to a present that is now past. In Turkey history-writing thus becomes a more serious matter than it is in some other countries, and the writer of Ottoman history cannot enjoy the luxury of supplying entertainment at the cost of explanation.

It is customary for studies of the Ottoman Empire to end in 1922, the year of the abolition of the sultanate; in 1923 when the Turkish Republic was declared; or even in 1924, when the caliphate was abolished. I have extended my account into the republican period, to 1927, the year when Atatürk made a great speech justifying his role in the overthrow of the empire and the establishment of the republic, and setting out his vision, his dream for the future. Herein lies the conceit behind the title of my book, which alludes to a dream the first sultan, Osman, is said to have had, a dream interpreted as prophesying the birth and growth of the empire whose story I endeavour to tell. Continuing this history until 1927 also allows me to point to some of the continuities between the republic and the history of the empire: the received wisdom that the republic was a tabula rasa which bore only the imprint of the Atatürk revolution is gradually being challenged by historians.

In writing a work of such ambitious scope I have been faced with many hard choices. I make no claims to completeness – which would, after all, have been impossible to achieve. A strong narrative line seemed desirable. At some points, readers may object that it would be easier to understand what is going on if unfamiliar elements like the janissaries or the harem were treated separately, outside the main flow of the text. I contend that these features are integral aspects of the society which produced them, that they did not exist in a vacuum; by the same token, art and architecture arise from the complexity of society, and cannot be interpreted as isolated expressions of pure creativity. Nor does it make any sense to deal with religion in a chapter entitled ‘Islam’, since religion is a major dynamic force in history, and the way it is practised at any time or in any place has political repercussions. Viewing history through ‘institutions’ tends to freeze-frame what was dramatic, and obscure the interconnections between related events. It has the further drawback of encouraging the reader to seize upon the very aspects of Ottoman history that have so often been treated pejoratively, without explaining how they arose and why they developed as they did. Thus is any attempt to interpret Ottoman history by the same standards as other histories hindered, and that history made to seem unique. There are unique aspects to the history of every state, of course; but to emphasize them rather than the aspects that are comparable to the history of other states seems to me to miss the point.

The ‘black hole’ that is Ottoman history is a cause for regret in and of itself, but more regrettable still is the present palpable ‘iron curtain’ of misunderstanding between the West and Muslims. This stems to a large degree from the West’s ‘old narrative’ of the Ottoman Empire, which by extension is the narrative of many centuries of the Islamic past. To understand those who are culturally and historically different from us – rather than resorting to such labels as ‘evil empire’, ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘terrorist’ to mask our ignorance – is a matter of urgency. The greatest hubris is to ask why ‘they’ are not like ‘us’, to accept our cultural biases lazily and without question, and to frame the problem in terms of ‘what went wrong?’

This, then, is a book intended for several audiences. I hope general readers who know little of the Ottomans apart from the ‘old’ narrative will find the ‘new’ narrative every bit as entertaining – and much more complex and satisfying, since it explains how the empire and its people saw themselves and how this perception changed over time. I have written much about the Ottomans’ neighbours and rivals to east and west, so there is something, too, for those interested in territories on the Ottoman frontiers as well as further away. It is also intended for students embarking on a study of Ottoman history, who presently lack a single-volume narrative in English. I hope, indeed, that it will be read by all those for whom the long centuries of the Ottoman Empire hold a fascination.

A note on spelling, names, maps and quotations

The modern Turkish alphabet has 29 letters, of which three vowels and three consonants are unfamiliar to those who do not know the language, and one consonant is pronounced differently from English. The letters in question are these:

Turkish also has a dotted capital i – İ – which I have used for Ottoman and Turkish personal and place-names, e.g. İzmir, not Izmir, but have not used, exceptionally, for Istanbul, which I have written thus and not as İstanbul as is proper.

Imposing entirely consistent systems for personal and place-names has proved an insurmountable challenge. For people who may be deemed Ottomans I have used modern Turkish ‘academic’ spellings: the name Mehmed, for instance, is today Mehmet in popular usage, and Bayezid, Beyazit; I have preferred the older version. I have also used the Turkish version for the names of the Turcoman rulers of, for example, Karaman and the Akkoyunlu. For Seljuks, Mamluks, Safavids and other non-Ottomans I have relied on the spelling in the Cambridge History of Islam (omitting indication of vowel length) except for a few individuals familiar to English readers, such as Tamerlane (properly Timur).

Place-names are still more problematic; for every watertight reason for preferring one spelling over another, there is an equally watertight reason for preferring the second. Most places had more than one name; some places in central Europe, for instance, are known by four names e.g. Nové Zámky (mod.), Uyvar (Ott.), Érsekújvár (Hung.), Neuhäusel (Ger.). The Ottoman place-names (which have usually been retained in modern Turkish) are most familiar to me, but would have confounded English readers. I have therefore, since they have the virtue of being easy to locate, but at risk of anachronism, chosen to use modern place-names as given in The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World (Millennium Edition, 2000) except in the case of some Ottoman provinces for which to use a modern name would have been an anachronism too far, and idiosyncrasy seemed a lesser sin – Uyvar is a case in point. An alternative, perhaps more familiar, place-name is often given at first mention in the text, and alternative names are also found in the Index.