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First printed in Great Britain in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Maritime
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd.
47 Church Street
Barnsley,
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

A CIP record for this book is available from the

British Library.

PAPERBACK ISBN: 978 1 78 346 2940

PDF ISBN: 978 1 47 383 6853
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47 383 5092
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47 383 5979

The right of Philip Kaplan to be identified as

Author of thisWork has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission from
the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in England

By CPI Group (UK) Ltd. Croydon, CR0 4YY

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the

Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword
Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen &
Sword Military, Pen & Sword Discovery,
Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe True
Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword
Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo
Cooper, The Praetorian Press, Remember
When, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline
Publishing.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please

contact Pen & Sword Books Limited
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70
2AS, England

E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

MERCHANTMEN

MERCHANT SAILORS

HUNTERS

WILL SHE STARVE?

LIBERTY SHIPS

THE HUNTED

TANKER

A CADET’S STORY
Reasonable efforts have been made to trace the copyright holders
of all material used in this book. The author apologizes for any
omissioins. All reasonable efforts will be made in future editions to
correct any such omissions. The author is grateful to the following
people for the use of their published and/or unpublished material, or
for their kind assistance in the preparation of this book: Christine
Ammer, Jack Armstrong, Brooks Atkinson, Robert Atkinson, Francis
Bacon, Malcolm Bates, Charles Bishop, William Bourner, Samuel
Butler, George Gordon Lord Byron, Winston S. Churchill, Samuel T.
Coleridge, Joseph Conrad, Jack Currie (for his text), Peter
Donnelly, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Fabry,The Falkirk Herald,
James E. Flecker, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Kenneth Grahame,
Charles Graves, Peter Guy, H.G. Hall, Cyril Hatton, Thom
Hendrickson, Charles Hill, Samuel Johnson, Joseph J. Kaplan, Neal
B. Kaplan, Ernest J. King, Rudyard Kipling, Collie Knox, Frank
Knox, John Lester, Steven Levingston, Peter Lewis, Peter
MacDonald, Otto Marchica, Edwin Markham, John Masefield,
Wilson McArthur, Nicolas Monsarrat, Eugene O’Niell, John Palmer,
A.H. Pierce, C.H. Rayner, Phil Richards, Francis Rockwell, S.
Roskill, Thomas Rowe, Owen Rutter, Carl Sandburg, Leonard
Sawyer, Frank Shaw, Neil Thompson, Harry S. Truman, Nancy
Byrd Turner, Jack Thompson, Peter Wakker, Herbert Werner,
Robert Westall, W. Whiting, J.W.S. Wilson, Woodrow Wilson, Roger
P. Wise, E. Withers.
 Merchantmen

The badge of the Merchant Navy

For the bread that you eat and the biscuits you nibble, the sweets
that you suck and the joints that you carve, they are brought to you
daily by all us Big Steamers—and if any one hinders our coming—
you’ll starve.
—from Big Steamer by Rudyard Kipling

God and our sailors we adore, when danger threatens, not before.
With danger past, both are requited, God forgotten, the sailor
slighted.
—anon, circa 1790

After every war, monuments are raised to the memory of those who
died gloriously. The officers and men of the Merchant Navy, fighting
this grim Battle of the Atlantic, would probably scorn such homage
to their simple devotion; but it is a regrettable fact that the one
memorial they would care for—the refutation of the charge explicit
in the above quotation—is still, after two hundred years,
unforthcoming and the slur unexpunged from the annals. For two
hundred years and more, these brave men, lacking the training and
organisation that adapts their brothers in the Royal Navy so readily
to the rigours of war, have, nevertheless, fashioned their own
magnificent tradition. Day in, day out, night in, night out, they face
today unflinchingly the dangers of the deep, and those that lurk in
the deep—the prowling U-boats. They know, these men, that the
Battle of the Atlantic means wind and weather, cold and strain and
fatigue, all in the face of enemy craft above and below, awaiting the
specific moment to send them to death. They have not even the
mental relief of hoping for an enemy humane enough to rescue; nor
the certainty of finding safe and sound those people and those
things they love when they return to homes, which may have been
bombed in their absence. When the Battle of the Atlantic is won, as
won it will be, it will be these men and those who have escorted
them we shall have to thank. Ceaseless vigilance and the will to
triumph over well nigh insuperable obstacles will have won their
reward.
—Admiral Sir Percy Noble, Commander-in-Chief, Western
Approaches
14th August 1941

When Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated Napoleon’s Franco-Spanish

fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21st October 1805, only to die in his hour
of triumph, the population of the British Islands, mourning the hero
while rejoicing in the victory, numbered approximately sixteen
million. They were a proud and almost self-sufficient people,
needing little more than such luxuries as silks, tobacco, tea and
coffee to satisfy their wants from overseas. Nearly one-hundred and
thirty-four years later, when World War Two began, there were
more than fifty million mouths to feed, and Britain had become
increasingly reliant on a constant flow of imports, not only to
maintain her position as a major manufacturing nation, but merely to
survive.
Whether it was ever pedantically correct to give the title
“Merchant Navy” to Britain’s trading fleet can probably be
questioned. There had been a time when the same ships were used
for fighting and for trading, but those days had passed with the
cannon and the cutlass. The fighting ships, their officers and men,
remained in the service of the Crown, ever ready to wage the
nation’s wars, while the rest sailed the oceans of the world with one
main objective—to enrich the ship-owners. And the owners were a
very diverse group, with their offices in all the major ports, with a
wide variety of vessels, embracing Saucy Sue of Yarmouth and the
Queen Elizabeth, with motives ranging from the frankly mercenary
to the idealistic, and with their employees’ wages varying between
the handsome and the barest subsistence levels.
So the Red Ensign flew above a multitude of ships, belonging to
a multitude of individuals, each with different notions of how to run a
shipping business. Nevertheless, it was due to their industry, by
whatever means and for whatever motives, that by the 1930s the
British Empire and the Commonwealth had developed into the
greatest trading community the world had ever seen, with global
port facilities and a merchant fleet of approximately 6,700 vessels—
more than double the number of their nearest rival, the United
States of America. It was said that, on any one day in the year,
2,500 vessels registered in Britain, were at sea or working in a port,
somewhere in the world. But Britain’s dependence on the imports
carried by those ships was her greatest weakness in wartime, when
her long-established freedom of the sea was challenged by a
foreign power. That weakness had been ominously demonstrated
during World War One when the U-boats of the Kaiser’s navy had
targeted Britain’s cargo ships, and there had been times in 1917
when starvation had stared her people in the face.
With that vulnerability in mind, the government requisitioned all
shipping at the start of World War Two. In service, the ships
remained under the management of the line owners, who acted as
agents for the Ministry of Supply, and later for the Ministry of War
Transport, which, on 1st May 1941, was formed from the Ministries
of Transport and of Shipping. Experts from the shipping lines, with
civil servants from the Ministries, formed a central planning group
which, for the duration of the war, was to decide where the ships
would sail and what cargoes they would carry. The owners
remained responsible for maintaining and provisioning their ships,
while the newly-formed Merchant Navy Pool assumed the task of
crewing.
A merchant sailor climbing to his job at sea.
Part of an Allied convoy bringing vitally-needed goods from North America to Britain in the
Second World War.

From 1939 to 1945, the names of ships built in British shipyards

for the Government, old World War One vessels purchased from
the United States, or captured tonnage, took the prefix “Empire”,
Empire Byron, for example, Empire Chaucer and Empire Starlight,
while those built in Canada were “Fort” or “Park” (suffix) (Fort
Brunswick, Avondale Park). The Canadian-built ships were owned
by the Canadian government and manned by Canadian seafarers.
Some did come under the British flag and were renamed with a
“Fort” prefix. American-built ships were “Ocean”, as in Ocean
Vengeance, or, if they were to be manned by British crews, “Sam”
boats, as in Sampep and Sambolt, and were emergency-built
Liberty ships that were bare-boat chartered to the British
government and renamed. The “Sam” was popularly taken to be a
reference to “Uncle Sam”, but the official interpretation was that it
described the profile of the ship—“Superstructure aft of midships”.
At any period of time in World War Two, there might have been
a dozen convoys on the wide Atlantic, each numbering anything
between ten and over a hundred ships, some bound for Britain with
their vital cargoes, others sailing outbound in ballast to collect the
next consignment. The commercial fleets were composed of many
varieties of ship—fast and slow, large and small, old and new, coal-
fired and oil-fired—and the ships were crewed by men of widely
different nationalities and faiths, some of whom felt loyalties which
lay more with their calling and their shipmates than with their
owners or the British Crown.
A merchant sailor on convoy duty,
 above and below: Convoy conferences were held at Admiralty House in Halifax, Nova
Scotia and were normally attended by the captain and the wireless operator of each ship to
sail in a convoy.
 The merchant ship captains, or masters, were accustomed to
taking orders only from their owners, and not from officers of the
Royal Navy, nor of the Reserve, no matter how much gold braid
they might wear on their sleeves. In the first few months of war, few
were in favour of the convoy system, and preferred to make their
way alone. In this they were at one with their owners, who regarded
the days spent in assembling the vital convoys and attending
Commodore’s conferences as so much unproductive time. The
masters, for their part, did not care for the discipline required. They
mistrusted (and not without reason) the rendezvous in mid-Atlantic
when they were supposed to exchange escorts with a convoy
coming west, and they feared the dangers of collision in the fogs
that were common, at all times of the year, off the coast of Nova
Scotia. It was only later, when the U-boat wolfpacks began to make
their deadly presence felt, that most owners and masters accepted
the fact they had to have protection, and that ships sailing alone
could not be protected. Although they were as diverse in their ways
and opinions as any other group of men in skilled occupations, the
masters had it in common that, like their crewmen, they took pride
in their calling; they also tended to believe in a destiny that shaped
all human ends, and to accept whatever blows of fate, and
particularly of nature, that might come along.
Until June 1940, many merchant ships were employed in the
transport of the British Expeditionary Force, to the western coast of
France, and in maintaining its supplies. It is remarkable that, in the
nine months of the operation, only one ship was lost, and that was
due to misadventure, not to action by the enemy.
Then, in May 1940, came the Blitzkrieg—the lightning strike by
the Wehrmacht, spearheaded by the Luftwaffe, on Belgium,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France. Soon, every ship that
could be mustered was needed to evacuate the bulk of the BEF,
along with many French soldiers, from the beaches of Dunkirk, and
to bring detachments home from Calais, Brest, St Nazaire, Le
Havre and Boulogne. On 17th June, the Cunarder Lancastria, which
a week earlier had taken part in the withdrawal from Norway, was
ready to sail from St Nazaire with approximately 5,300 servicemen
aboard, including a large RAF contingent, when she was hit by
bombs from a Dornier Do-17, and went down. There were only
enough lifeboats and rafts for a fraction of the complement, and
despite all rescue efforts by the destroyer HMS Highlander, HM
trawler Cambridgeshire, and other ships, during the continued air
attack, 2,833 of Lancastria’s crew and passengers were lost.
The day following the Lancastria disaster, the Blue Star liner
Arandora Star, which had also been involved in the Norway
operation, and had been plying to-and-fro between France and
England with a weary crew ever since, sailed from Liverpool for St
John’s, Newfoundland, carrying 1,213 German and Italian
internees, eighty-six German POWs, a military guard 200-strong,
and a crew of 174. She was sailing on a zig-zag course, as was
customary when a ship was not escorted, off the northwest coast of
Ireland shortly before dawn on 2nd July when she was hit by a
torpedo launched from Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien’s U47. The
Arandora Star went down with 750 of her passengers, her Captain,
twelve officers and forty-two members of her crew.
The so-called “phoney war”, which, for the men of the Royal and
Merchant Navies, had never been anything but in deadly earnest,
was over, and now its reality was clear to all the world. Materially
and physically supported by her Commonwealth and Empire, and
morally at least by the majority of Americans, Britain was left to
carry on the fight against a rampant Germany, now joined by an
opportunist Italy, and with access to captured bases stretching from
Norway to the Spanish border. In July 1940, two outward-bound
convoys, CW7 and CW8, were attacked in the English Channel by
E-boats (German motor torpedo-boats) and bombers. In that month,
forty Allied cargo ships were sunk by air attack alone. The ports of
Dover, Weymouth, Portland, Plymouth and Cardiff were all heavily
bombed, and inbound vessels had to be re-routed to the Bristol
Channel, the Mersey and the Clyde. Nor were they immune there
from the Luftwaffe’s attentions.

Wrens working in the Operations Plotting Room at Naval Services Headquarters, Ottowa,
December 1943.
Admiral Sir Max Horton was a British submariner in World War One and Commander-in-
Chief of the Western Approaches during the latter part of World War Two.

It was decided that the headquarters of the C-in-C Western

Appraches Command, from which the shipping routes to Britain
around the north and south of Ireland were controlled, should move
from Plymouth to Derby House in Liverpool, where Winston
Churchill, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, had
foresightedly required a bomb-proof operations centre to be built.
The “Dungeon”, as it was known, was staffed by hundreds of
communications and crytographic experts, many of them members
of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, all working an eighty-four-
hour week, and it was from there that Admiral Sir Percy Noble, and
his successor Admiral Sir Max Horton, directed the Battle of the
Atlantic.
The losses incurred by the Royal and Merchant Navies in the
first year of the war included a battleship, an aircraft carrier, five
cruisers, three destroyers, two submarines and 438 merchantmen,
all at a cost to the enemy of twenty-eight U-boats. Then, in
September 1940, the major docks in the Pool of London, the East
India, the Royal Victoria, the King George V and the Royal Albert,
suffered forty bombing raids, in the course of which on ship, the
Minnie De Larrinaga, was sunk and eighteen damaged, in addition
to the destruction of installations and equipment, and to civilian
casualties throughout the dockland area. On the 9th of the month,
only one ship of five in the Victoria Docks remained afloat. Of the
four ships sunk there, all were eventually raised and returned to
service. These figures were severe enough, but worse were to
come. From the beginning of March to the end of May 1941, 142
merchant ships, ninety-nine of which were British, were sunk by U-
boats, 179 by aircraft, forty-four by surface ships and thirty-three by
mines. The tonnage lost in those three months exceeded the
existing rate of British ship production by three to one, and the
combined British and American production by two to one. It was not
until August 1942 that the combined ship production of the Allies at
first balanced the losses, and then began to exceen it as month
followed month.
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That Ibrahim married need not astonish us, for marriages arranged
with eunuchs by fathers of many daughters were not uncommon.
Sometimes a sultana was married to a eunuch for his fortune, in
which case he generally died soon after his marriage; sometimes no
other suitable husband being found for her, she was given to a
eunuch of high rank. In stories we occasionally read of a father who
marries his daughter to a eunuch as a punishment. Ibrahim probably
married a sultana, which curiously enough would be a more natural
marriage than with a woman of lower rank, for it has never been
deemed advisable that the daughters of sultans should have male
children, and if such were born, they were condemned to immediate
death by the omission to knot the umbilical cord. This measure
became a law in the reign of Ahmed I,27 with the idea of saving the
country from the civil war of rival princes of the blood, but was
probably a custom long before it was legalized. Therefore Suleiman
may have thought that the marriage of his relative to a man of
Ibrahim’s position, fortune, and charm, was a happy fate for a
princess who might not hope to be a mother.
We have seen that the fact that Ibrahim was a Greek, and a
Christian by birth, was no barrier to his rise, so long as he adopted
Islam. Many of the great officials of Turkey were of Christian
extraction; as for instance, the two men who succeeded Ibrahim
Pasha as Grand Vizirs, Rustem Pasha and Mehmet Sokolli,
considered the greatest of Turkish vizirs and both Croats by birth.
Furthermore his humble family was no obstacle, for in Turkey it has
always been possible for a bootblack or a grocer to rise to the
highest position, if good fortune or marked ability led him thither.
Ibrahim suffered from still another disability, as we in the Occident
would consider it: he was a slave. How did that affect his
advancement? To understand the position of a slave in Turkey in the
fifteenth century we must recognize at the outset the fact that
Turkish slavery was quite different from that of the Occident, and so
approach the subject free from our natural prejudice.
The only slavery sanctioned by Islam is that imposed on infidels as a
result of supposed inferiority of race and religion,28 and has never in
fact included the rayahs (Christian subjects) but only prisoners of
war. The rayah might not be enslaved but neither might he hold
slaves, except in very rare instances before 1759, and not at all after
that date.29
There were two kinds of legal slaves, those made by capture in war,
and those by birth. Slaves by purchase, taken from Africa and the
Caucasus, were not recognized by law, but nevertheless such slavery
existed.30 Brigands also seized foreigners from time to time and sold
them as slaves. Prisoners of war lost their civil liberty according to
Islamic law. The Prophet repeatedly enjoins their destruction.31
According to the Turkish code, the sovereign might perpetuate their
captivity, or free them to pay tribute, or cause them to be
slaughtered, if more expedient. The exceptions to this law were the
cases of any orthodox Moslems who might fall into Turkish power,
and the case of the Tatars of the Crimea, who were Shiites, or
heretic Moslems, and who were enslaved.32
Prisoners of war formed two classes of slaves, prisoners of the state,
and private slaves. To the first class belonged all soldiers and
officers, and a fifth of the rest of the slaves, or their value. Of these
some were exchanged or resold after the peace, others were
employed in the Serai or given away. Some were handed over to
public works, especially to the admiralty, where they were
confounded with criminals and condemned to hard labor. To the
second class belonged all the prisoners not given to the sultan,
including those captured by the soldiers. These were generally sold.
Merchants would purchase them in the camps, and sell them all over
the Empire. These slaves taken in war were far the greater number
of slaves in the Empire; many were enfranchised before they had
children, and children of one free and one slave parent were
themselves born free. The adoption of Islam after captivity did not
free the slave.
The power of the master was absolute over the person, children and
property of his slaves. He might sell, give, or bequeath them, but he
might not kill them without some reason. As a corollary of this
power, the master had full responsibility for his slave; he must
support him, pay his debts, stand behind him in any civil affair, and
give consent to his holding of property. A slave might not act as a
witness nor as a guardian. He was entirely dependent on his master.
Thus far the theory is not unlike that of the West, but there were
two facts which changed the entire situation. The first was the
brevity of time of enslavement in most cases; the second was the
absence of odium attached to the position of a slave. In regard to
the first fact, it was not considered humane to keep persons long in
slavery, and it was a general rule to enfranchise them either before
their marriage or on their coming of age, or when they had served
sufficiently long. Enfranchisement is a voluntary and private act by
which the patron frees his slave from the bonds of servitude and
puts him into the free class.33 It is also considered by the Turk to be
a noble action, one especially befitting a dying man, who often frees
his slaves in his testament. The enfranchisement of slaves was
regarded by the Moslem as the highest act of virtue.34 A less
disinterested form of enfranchisement has a pecuniary inducement,
the slave buying his freedom from his master.35
Thus the slave never thought of himself as by nature servile, nor
always to be a slave, but could look forward to his freedom in a few
years more or less. This fact induced self‐respect and hope. The
slave’s dress did not in any way distinguish him from the free man;
he was in no way branded.
Sir Henry Bulwer said of white slavery in Turkey in 1850, “It greatly
resembles adoption, and the children often become the first
dignitaries of the Empire.”36 This statement is confirmed by Fatma
Alieh Hannum, a living Turkish lady, who gives a most attractive
picture of the home care and affection given to slaves,37 and my
own observation of slavery in Constantinople would bear her out.
The condition described by Bulwer would seem also to have
obtained in the sixteenth century. George Young in his Corps de
Droit Ottoman38 speaks of two systems of slavery in Turkey, the
Turkish system and the Circassian system, which have been fused in
our day, but of which only the former existed in Ibrahim’s day, and in
contrasting them he says: “The Turkish system by its moderation
scarcely went beyond the limits of apprenticeship, and could be
classed with the voluntary servitude that for a determined time was
permitted in some of the European colonies. While the Circassian
system fixed the slave forever in the servile class, the Turkish system
has always permitted and in some cases prescribed his
enfranchisement. Furthermore the social situation of a slave under
the Old Regime of the Empire favored his advancement even to the
highest office.... The Turkish system made a career of slavery....
Many slaves by birth have played leading roles in the history of the
Empire.” The last statement admits of no argument, but the question
how far the Turkish system made a career of slavery, and how far
slavery was beneficent, demands further consideration.
Let us return to the classes of slaves spoken of above. Some, we
saw, were put into public works; these could have found no career in
their forced labor, although they might have bought or otherwise
earned their freedom, and then have made a career for themselves.
Some were owned by private individuals where they were given no
opportunity to rise, although life in a private house, as in the case of
the widow of Magnesia, might prepare a slave for a career. But the
only slaves who would naturally have an opportunity for a career
were those who served in the royal palace or in the house of some
important officer. To them slavery truly opened a career. We cannot
perhaps agree with Mr. Young that the Turkish system “made a
career of slavery”, but it certainly was no barrier to a career, and it
even opened up such opportunities as could not come otherwise to a
Christian youth, nor indeed to most Moslem youths.
The mild and even beneficent quality of Oriental slavery has been
maintained by many writers. Busbequius, writing from
Constantinople in Suleiman’s reign, commends Turkish slavery on
economic grounds, and then, moved by the contemplation of this
fatherly system, bursts into a defence of slavery in general.39
Robert Roberts in his monograph says that the condition of slaves in
modern Moslem lands is “not so bad”, and that the slavery he
himself saw in Morocco “is only formally to be distinguished from
Christian service”.40 The Baron de Tott speaks of seeing Moslem
slaves in 1785 “well fed, well clothed, and well treated,” and adds, “I
am inclined to doubt if those even who are homesick have in general
much reason to be satisfied with their ransom. It is possible in truth
that the slaves sold into the interior parts of the country, or to
individuals who purchase them on speculation, are not as happy as
those who fall to the lot of the sovereign or the grandee. We may
presume, however, that even the avarice of the master militates in
their favor, for it must be confessed that the Europeans are the only
people who ill‐treat their slaves, which arises no doubt from this
cause,—that they constitute the wealth of the Orientals, and that
with us they are means of amassing wealth. In the East they are the
delight of the miser; with us they are only the instrument of
avarice.”41 In interesting support of de Tott’s idea that Oriental
slaves might not care to be ransomed is the fact that after the treaty
of Carlowitz, when the Porte engaged to set European prisoners at
liberty for a ransom, and did attempt to do so, there were a large
number of captives who rejected their liberty and their fatherland.42
Perhaps the chief explanation of the lack of distinction between
freeman and slave lay in the fact that the Turks had very little
conception of freedom, and the man legally free was practically
almost as bound as the slave. As we have seen in the introduction to
this study, loyalty and obedience were the two great virtues in the
eyes of the Turks, so that in the idea of service there was no
degradation. All who served the Crown were called Kol, or slaves of
the Sultan, even the grand vizir receiving this title, which was much
more honorable than that of subject, the kol being able to insult the
subject with impunity, while the latter could not injure a royal slave
in the slightest degree without subjecting himself to punishment.43
Turkey was a land of slaves with but one master, the sultan, even
the brothers and sons of the monarch being kept in durance for the
greater part of their lives. In the case of women, no practical
distinction that we should recognize existed between slave and free.
The mother of the sultan was always a slave, one of the sultan’s
titles being “Son of a Slave”. Most of the pashas were born of slave
mothers, as the Turks had more children by their slaves than by their
wives.44 Such conditions rendered obviously impossible the sharp
line which is drawn in the West between the freeman and the
despised slave, and placed the slave potentially with the highest of
the land. Slavery was certainly the Greek Ibrahim’s opportunity.
Slavery brought him into the court, placed him before the sultan,
educated him, gave him ambition, and finally gratified it. When
Ibrahim was freed, no one thinks it worth while to record; certainly
before his marriage, perhaps much before. But evidently the
moment when Suleiman said to him: “Thou art enfranchised, thou
art free”45 was a moment not worth recording, so natural and
inevitable was his enfranchisement the moment that slavery ceased
to be the ladder of his advancement.
It is evident, then, that Ibrahim’s lowly birth, his Christian origin, his
experience as a slave, and his being a eunuch were none of them
barriers to a great career. What was there, on the other hand, to
give him such a career? His extraordinary ambition, his marked
ability, and above all his immense good‐fortune in falling into the
hands of the sultan and winning his affection, so that Suleiman was
dominated by his love for Ibrahim, and unable to resist any of his
caprices;46 these were the prime factors in his extraordinary rise.
While still master of the household (khass‐oda‐bashi) he was often
spoken of as “Ibrahim the Magnificent” by the Venetian baillies.
Barbarigo relates that the serai was never so splendid as in the days
when the magnificent Ibrahim was oda‐bashi of the Grand Seigneur,
and also when he was grand chamberlain. As the title of “the
Magnificent” is that which Europe has accorded to Sultan Suleiman,
a love of pomp and display must have been one of the interests that
he and his ennobled slave had in common. But such showy qualities
are hardly suitable to a mere master of the household. Ibrahim had
to be raised to the rank of pasha.
A pasha was a sort of military governor, although the title might be
given as a mere title of nobility, and in any case was indefinite, being
determined by the particular office the pasha held. The pashas were
generally very proud and stately persons, with grave, leisurely
manners, and were always surrounded by a large number of pages
and other richly‐garbed domestics when they went abroad mounted
on superb steeds, banners and horse‐tails waving before them, and
the people paying homage. But their power was often very small,
and their income frequently quite inadequate to the state they were
obliged to maintain.47
The famous horse‐tail banner which distinguished a high official
originated in the following way: the banner of one of the old Turkish
princes having been lost in battle and with it the courage of his
soldiers, he severed with one blow a horse’s tail from its body and
fastening it to his lance cried, “Behold my banner! who loves me will
follow me!” The Turks rallied and saved the day.48 The banner was
called the Tugh. Each sandjak bey was entitled to one horse‐tail,
being, as Europeans say “a pasha of one tail”; a beylerbey (literally
prince of princes or colonel of colonels) was entitled to two or three
tails; the grand vizir sported five horse‐tails, and before the Sultan
seven of these banners were carried.
In 1522 Ibrahim became Ibrahim Pasha, Grand Vizir, and Beylerbey
of Roumelie. Turkey has always been divided into Turkey in Europe,
or Roumelie or Roum,49 and Turkey in Asia, or Anatolia. These two
divisions of the empire during Suleiman’s reign were each ruled by a
governor, or beylerbey, who had general charge of the sandjakbeys
over each sandjak50 or province. The beylerbeys of Roumelie
generally resided at Monastir or Sofia, but here again Ibrahim seems
to have been an exception to the general rule and to have resided at
Constantinople.
The office of vizir was a venerable one, its institution being ascribed
by some to the Prophet, who appointed as first vizir Ali, his son‐in‐
law and successor, and by others to the first Abasside, who
bestowed the title on his first minister. The duties of vizir in the
sixteenth century have been defined as follows:51 “The vizir
commands all the armies, is the only one except the Grand Seigneur
who has the power of life and death throughout the whole extent of
the Empire over criminals, and can nominate, degrade, and execute
all ministers and agents of the sovereign authority. He promulgates
all the new laws, and causes them to be put in effect. He is the
supreme head of the justice that he administers, although with the
aid and according to the opinion of the Ulema, the legal body. In
short, he represents his master to the full extent of his dignity and
temporal power, not only in the Empire, but also with the Foreign
States. But to the same degree that this power is splendid and
extensive, it is dangerous and precarious.”
Mourad I (1359–1389) was the first sultan of Turkey to name a vizir.
Mohammed the Conqueror thought the office concentrated too much
power in one person, and planned to abolish it, but instead left it
vacant for eight months.52 Selim I, as strong a monarch as the
Conqueror, left vacant for nine months this office which almost
rendered a sultan unnecessary. But his son Suleiman soon after his
accession put his favorite Ibrahim into the highest office in a sultan’s
gift, and kept him there thirteen years. Probably with the idea of
dividing the immense power of this office, he increased the number
of vizirs to three and later to four. Of these one was known as the
grand vizir (Vizir Azam) and to him alone applies the description
given above. Ibrahim Pasha was at first the third vizir, the other two
being Piri Mustafa Pasha and Ahmed Pasha. There was always great
jealousy among the vizirs. Ahmed Pasha, anxious to rise to the first
rank, accused Piri Pasha of sedition and procured the latter’s
downfall; but to his inexpressible chagrin was himself passed over in
favor of Ibrahim, who was “told the good news of his appointment
as grand vizir and brought gladness and brilliance into the divan.”53
Ahmed’s feeling was so great and the consequent dissensions in the
divan were so considerable, that Suleiman sent Ahmed to Egypt as
governor, leaving the field clear for Ibrahim, who in his palace
received at the hands of a noble of the sultan’s service the imperial
ring as a symbol of his new power.
The grand vizir lived in a palace modeled after the Sultan’s, having
under him the same class of officials and servants even to ministers
of state, and his household was conducted with great ceremony.
Ibrahim’s salary was increased over that of the preceding grand vizir
from 16,000 to 25,000 piastres54 but he obtained much more from
the disposal of public offices, and he also received enormous
presents from those under him, although this was balanced by the
large gifts he had to make to others. The property of a grand vizir
was always confiscated at his death, which was doubtless one
reason why a sultan could afford to lavish so much on a favorite
minister, knowing that eventually it would all return to the imperial
coffers. Dress and style were very carefully regulated in Turkey in
the XVI century. The turban of the grand vizir, his barge with twelve
pairs of oars and a green awning, the five horse‐tails that might be
carried before him, all distinguished him from lower officials. He had
eight guards of honor, and twelve led horses. When he appeared in
public his hussars would cry aloud, “Peace unto you and divine
clemence”, while the other soldiers responded in chorus, “May your
fortunes be propitious; may Allah be your aid; may the Almighty
protect the days of our sovereign and the pasha, our master; may
they live long and happily.”55 All of the public officials except the
sheik‐ul‐Islam received their offices from the grand vizir, and were
garbed in his presence with a caftan, or robe of state. The grand
vizir and the sheik‐ul‐Islam were the only officials invested by the
sultan himself and appointed for life.
The divan was the imperial council, consisting of the vizirs, the
defterdar, or secretary of finance, the nishanji who made out royal
firmans and berats, and the sheik‐ul‐Islam or head of Islam. It was a
council for discussion and wholly without power.
On the 22d day of May, 1524, the Sultan celebrated with great pomp
the marriage of Ibrahim Pasha. Who the bride was we cannot be
certain, but this is in accord with Turkish etiquette which strictly
forbids all mention of the harem,56 and considers any public
knowledge of woman as an insult to her, thus depriving historians of
desirable information concerning such important political figures as
Roxelana, who greatly influenced Suleiman the Magnificent, Baffa
the Venetian sultana, and others. Von Hammer says that Ibrahim
married a sister of Suleiman, but I can find no proof of it.57 A
wedding in Turkey always includes two distinct feasts, the one for
the bride and her women friends, the other for the groom and his
men friends. Now‐a‐days the woman’s part is ordinarily more
important, but in Ibrahim’s time a wedding or a circumcision was the
occasion of a great public feast for the men. Ibrahim Pasha, as we
have seen, was always spoken of by the Venetians as “Il Magnifico
Ibrahim.” Perhaps since so much stress has been laid by historians
on the splendor of the court and the grand vizir, a description of this
great public marriage will not be out of order.58
The feast or series of feasts was held in the Hippodrome, a great
piazza being erected near Agia Sophia from which the sultan might
view all the proceedings. Here was set up the Blessed Throne of
Felicity, adorned with precious gold embroidery and rich velvets,
while in the Hippodrome below, artistic, vari‐colored tents were set
up, and carpets of gold thread were spread over the ground.
Terraces and canopies and pavilions for the nobles were raised
above the ground, but below the sultan’s terrace. Hangings of velvet
and satin covered the grey walls of the buildings surrounding the
Hippodrome.59 The second vizir, Ayas Pasha, and the agha of the
janissaries went to the palace to invite the sultan to honor the feast
by his presence. Suleiman received them graciously, delivered a
pompous eulogy upon Ibrahim, and made them rich presents.
To the first banquet “all the world” was invited;60 the seven that
followed were given to various branches of the army, there being
very splendid feasts to the janissaries, vizirs, beylerbeys and
sandjakbeys. To the first feast came Ayas Pasha and the agha of the
janissaries, escorted by a troop of slaves. When they reached Bab‐
el‐Saadet, that gate of the city leading from the Seraglio grounds to
the space before the Agia Sophia, they met the glorious sultan
“whose throne is in the heavens.” His escort bore scarlet banners
and carried robes of honor with which they garbed those who had
come to meet them, and they led also richly caparisoned steeds to
present to Ayas Pasha and his two followers, for which, says
Solakzadeh, “there was limitless thanks.”
On the ninth day, the eve of that on which the bride would be
brought from the palace, Ayas Pasha and the other vizirs, and the
defterdar, and the agha of the janissaries sought the bridegroom and
led him through the streets of Stamboul in gorgeous procession.
From the Bab‐i‐Humayoun (The Sublime Porte) to the Hippodrome
the streets “were full of pleasure from end to end,” all hung with
silks of Broussa and velvets of Damascus, through which passed the
ranks of the janissaries and the vizir who thus honored Ibrahim
Pasha.
Ibrahim was a lean, dark man, slight in stature and bearing himself
gracefully in his cloth‐of‐gold robes.61 He was escorted by brilliant
officers on prancing steeds. There is no finer setting for a procession
than the grey streets of Stamboul under the vivid Southern sky.
When the procession approached the sultan’s throne, the dignitaries
of the state and the nobles of the Empire, approaching on foot over
the richly carpeted street, fell on their faces before his Majesty.
“This day they enjoyed riches and booty and sumptuousness without
end”. “Especially were the people charmed with the sounds of
rejoicing flutes and trumpets, whose music rose from earth to the
first heaven”. The wise ulema and sheiks were present on this
occasion, the sultan seating on his right the venerated Mufti Ali
Djemali and on his left the great hodja (teacher) of the princes,
while other learned doctors were arranged confronting the Imperial
Majesty. The sultan presided over a learned discussion of the verse
from the Koran, “O David, I will make thee Caliph in the world”, a
sufficiently courtly text. The meaning was discussed and questions
were propounded and answered. After this literary episode, knights‐
at‐arms, wrestlers and other athletes displayed their skill. Then a
rich feast was served and Mehmet Chelebi had the honor of
presenting to the sultan sherbet in a priceless cup cut from a single
turquoise, a souvenir of Persian victories, and the pride of the
nation. Others drank their sherbet from goblets of china, then a rare
and valuable ware. Food was served to the sultan and the ulema on
silver trays,62 and each of the guests took away with him a tray of
sweetmeats. From evening to morning fireworks and illuminations lit
up the city, and were reflected in the Bosphorus and Marmora. On
his return to the palace Suleiman was informed of the birth of a son,
who afterwards became Selim II.
The wedding was followed by several days of dancing, races,
contests of wrestlers and archers, as well as poetic contests in honor
of the newly‐wedded couple. Such was a public festival in the city of
the sultan in the days of the magnificent Suleiman. It reminds us of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold, whose splendor delighted the French
and the English in this same quarter century, the most striking
difference being the literary side which the Turkish festival possessed
and the European lacked.
Solakzadeh tells an interesting anecdote in connection with another
great feast, that of the circumcision of Suleiman’s three sons.63 This
was also a very splendid function and Suleiman is said to have asked
Ibrahim in pride, whose feast had been the finer, Ibrahim’s or that of
his sons. Ibrahim replied: “There has never been a feast equal to my
wedding.” Suleiman, somewhat disconcerted, enquired how that
was, to which Ibrahim gave the following courtly answer: “O my
Padisha, my wedding was honored by the presence of Suleiman,
Lord of the Age, firm Rampart of Islam, Possessor of Mecca and
Medina, Lord of Damascus and Egypt, Caliph of the Lofty Threshold,
and Lord of the Residence of the Pleiades: but to your festival, who
was there of equally exalted rank who might come?” The padisha,
greatly delighted, said, “A thousand bravas to thee, Ibrahim, who
hast explained it so satisfactorily.”
Of Ibrahim’s relations to the sultan a good deal has been said. He
was brought up in close contact with his master, eating and sleeping
with him. They often changed garments and Ibrahim told an
Austrian ambassador that the sultan never ordered garments for
himself without ordering the same for his favorite. The Venetians
spoke of seeing the two friends taking pleasure rides together in a
cäique, and visiting what shores they pleased.
Ibrahim was said to exert such an influence on the sultan that the
latter could deny him nothing, and from the time that he became
grand vizir, he almost took over the sovereignty of the land: as von
Hammer says, “from this time he divided the absolute power with
Suleiman”. In becoming grand vizir and presiding over the divan,
Ibrahim occupied the highest position open to any except a member
of the imperial Ottoman family. Here the romantic story of his rise
merges into the account of his public career, and this in its turn is a
part of Turkish and South European history.
 CHAPTER II

Ibrahim the Administrator

After 1522 Ibrahim Pasha combined in his person the highest

administrative, diplomatic and military functions. Although these
naturally interact, it is our plan to consider them separately, first
taking up Ibrahim’s administrative work.
We have seen that Ahmed Pasha, second vizir, was sent to Egypt
when Ibrahim climbed over him to the grand vizerate. Ahmed’s
indignation at the treatment accorded him by Suleiman led him into
treachery; he attempted to usurp the sovereignty of Egypt. Intrigues
failing of success he openly threw off his allegiance to the sultan,
and attacked Cairo, capturing the fortress. This threw Alexandria and
the coast into his power, and he proclaimed himself sultan.64
This revolt of Ahmed Pasha has all the features of the typical revolt
against Turkish authority: the sudden disgrace of an official high in
power, his banishment under the name of change of office, a
tampering with the loyalty of the troops of the province (in this case
the Mamelukes), a conflict with the loyal janissaries, sudden success,
betrayal, a rapid fall and a sudden punishment, ending in the
triumph of absolutism. The same story with change of names is told
a hundred times in Turkish chronicles. The only way in which
Suleiman differed from most of the sultans under such
circumstances was that he recognized the need of a reorganization
of the revolted province and sent the grand vizir to effect it.
Four months after his marriage Ibrahim Pasha was sent to Egypt
with a fleet and an army to settle the new governor in Cairo and to
reëstablish the former legislation of the country.65 The Turkish
historians66 give much space to the splendid state in which Ibrahim
left the Porte and the unparalleled honor paid him by the company
of Sultan Suleiman as far as the Princes Isles, and also to the
difficulties of the voyage, interrupted several times by storms. The
last part of the journey was made overland, Ibrahim visiting Aleppo
and Damascus, where he put the terror of the sultan into the
beylerbeys, who had been forgetting all but their own interests.
Throughout the journey, the grand vizir received complaints and
rendered justice, earning the blessings of the people whom he
visited.67
The arrival of the imperial mission in Cairo was marked by great
ceremony, the Mamelukes showing themselves as splendid in all
their appointments as were the Ottomans. “All the people of Egypt
came to meet Ibrahim Pasha,” declares Solakzadeh, “each one
according to his rank being garbed in a robe of honor, and from the
forts guns sounded, and fêtes and rejoicings were held.”
Ibrahim Pasha spent three months in Egypt, actively engaged in
improving the condition of that province, which he found “ailing, but
amenable to the skill and zeal of a clever doctor.”68 The first move
was to punish those who had assisted Ahmed Pasha in his treachery,
several Arab chiefs being publicly hanged, so that the Arab people
“began to weep for fear.”69 Ibrahim next relieved many individuals
who suffered under injustice, receiving in person crowds of
petitioners, and relieving as many as possible. Among these acts of
mercy were the release of 300 debtors from prison and the
satisfaction of their creditors.70 He improved the appearance of
Cairo by restoring several buildings that had fallen into disrepair,
particularly mosques and schools, and also built some new ones at
his own expense. To erect such buildings has always been
considered an act of piety, so that sultans, vizirs, and even the
favorites of sultans have acquired merit in this fashion, as the
numerous mosques and religious foundations of Turkey testify.
Ibrahim was thus following the usual custom. He further drew up
some rules for education, and for the care of orphans.71 But the two
main accomplishments of Ibrahim’s sojourn in Egypt were the
reëstablishment of the law and the placing of the treasury on a
better basis. Ahmed Pasha, and probably several of his
predecessors, had ignored and weakened the law of the land, which
Ibrahim undertook to restore. He enforced the local laws and also
some of the general Koranic laws which had been neglected; but he
seems to have moderated and lightened them to suit the needs and
desires of the people, “for” says Solakzadeh, uttering a sentiment so
un‐Turkish that one is inclined to attribute it to the Greek vizir rather
than to the Ottoman chronicler, “the best things are the golden
mean.” He further states that the ideal striven for was uniform rule
for all the inhabitants of Egypt.72
The province was a rich one even before the days of great dams,
and one of the most important of the grand vizir’s duties was to see
that the taxes were properly gathered and placed in the treasury at
Cairo, and that a suitable tribute was sent annually to the Porte.
Ibrahim built two great towers to contain the treasure. With Ibrahim
Pasha on this expedition was the Imperial defterdar or treasurer,
Iskender Chelebi, who calculated that Egypt could pay annually
80,000 ducats to the Porte, after deducting the cost of
administration.73 Ibrahim’s final act in Egypt was to appoint
Suleiman Pasha, the Beylerbey of Damascus to the office of
governor of Egypt. He seems to have chosen this man for his
economical disposition, for Solakzadeh says “he watched, and shut
his eyes to those who desired to spend money, and then appointed
Suleiman Pasha.”
Called back to the Porte by a Hatt‐i‐humayoún, he left Egypt with
her revolt quieted, her mutineers punished, her oppressed
temporarily relieved, her city improved, her law reëstablished, and
her finances arranged quite satisfactorily to the Porte, if not to
herself. Ibrahim showed himself clear, forceful, just and merciful, if
not a great constructive statesman. He took back to Stamboul a
large sum in gold for the Imperial treasury, and was received by
Suleiman with great honor.74
The recall of Ibrahim Pasha was induced by an insurrection of the
janissaries who were tired of inactivity, and showed their
restlessness by pillaging the houses of the absent grand vizir and
defterdar, and several rich institutions. Suleiman promptly executed
several of the most audacious leaders, then sent for Ibrahim Pasha
to come and deal with the situation. Clothing himself in mourning
garments, Ibrahim hastened back to the capital. On the way he
executed a number of Persian prisoners in Gallipoli, for the Sultan
had determined to quiet the janissaries by the only effective means,
namely to offer them a chance for fighting and loot by making war
against the most convenient enemy, which in this case was Persia.
Of the war we speak elsewhere. Suffice it to say that from this time
on, Ibrahim was so occupied in war and diplomacy that his
administrative functions must have been delegated largely to lower
officials. His power, notwithstanding, was very great, as will be seen
from the berat of investiture bestowed on him by the Sultan before
the campaign of Vienna, which is substantially as follows:
“I command Ibrahim Pasha to be from today and forever my grand
vizir and the serasker (chief of the army) named by my Majesty in all
my estates. My vizirs, beylerbeys, judges of the army, legists,
judges, seids, sheiks, my dignitaries of the court and pillars of the
empire, sandjakbeys, generals of cavalry or infantry, ... all my
victorious army, all my slaves, high or low, my functionaries and
employees, the people of my kingdom, my provinces, the citizens
and the peasants, the rich and the poor, in short all shall recognize
the above‐mentioned grand vizir as serasker, and shall esteem and
venerate him in this capacity, regarding all that he says or believes
as an order proceeding from my mouth which rains pearls. Everyone
shall listen to his word with all possible attention, shall receive each
of his recommendations with respect, and shall not neglect any of
them. The right of nomination and degradation for the posts of
beylerbeys and all other dignitaries and functionaries, from highest
to lowest, either at my Blessed Porte or in the provinces, is confined
to his sane judgment, his penetrating intellect. Thus he must fulfil
the duties which the offices of grand vizir and serasker impose on
him, assigning to each man his suitable rank. When my sublime
person enters on a campaign, or when circumstances demand the
sending of an army, the serasker remains sole master and judge of
his actions, no one dare refuse him obedience, and the dispositions
which he judges best to make relative to the collections in the
sandjaks, the fiefs and the employments, to the increase of wages or
salaries, to the distribution of presents, except such as are made to
the army in general, are in advance sanctioned and approved by my
Majesty. If against my sublime order and the fundamental law a
member of my army (which Allah forbid!) rebel against the order of
my grand vizir and serasker; if one of my slaves oppress the people,
let my Sublime Porte be immediately informed, and the guilty,
whatever be their number, shall receive the punishment which they
shall merit.”75
This amazing gift of power brings out some characteristics of the
Ottoman state. There is no state, as such, apart from the army. All
the civil offices have military names, and generally include military
duties. It has often been said that the Turkish empire is an army
encamped in Europe, an epigram that conveys much truth. The
church, the state, and the army are one and the sultan is the head
of the trinity.76 To Ibrahim were delegated full powers as general
and administrator, but he had no sacerdotal power except such as
was involved in the general power of appointment and supervision.
It follows that he did not appoint the sheik‐ul‐Islam, and had no
special dealings with ulema.77 But curiously enough one of the few
events of his administration of which we have an account is
connected with religious interests. It is the Cabyz affair.
Cabyz was a member of the body of ulema, or interpreters of the
sacred law, who became convinced of the superiority of Jesus to
Mohammad, hence was a traitor both to Allah and to the sultan. “He
fell in to the valley of error and took the route of destruction and
danger, deviating from the glorious path of truth.”78 Haled before the
judges of the army, Cabyz was summarily condemned to death, with
no attempt to convince him of his error. The grand vizir reproved
them for this unsuitable treatment of a heretic, saying that the only
arms against heresy should be law and doctrine. The affair being
therefore laid before the divan, the sultan who was present behind
his little window was dissatisfied with the clemency of Ibrahim,
perhaps because the latter was Christian born, although now a
zealous Moslem.
“How is this” he demanded, “an irreligious infidel dares to ascribe
deficiency to the Blessed Prophet, and he goes without being
convinced of his error or punished?” Ibrahim claimed that the judges
lacked the knowledge of the sacred law necessary to deal with the
case. So the judge of Stamboul and the Mufti were called in and
after a long discussion Cabyz’ “tongue was stopped and he lowered
his head.” Cabyz was condemned by the sacred law and executed.
This case in which a heretic was first brought before the judges of
the army and then before the council of state before he was finally
condemned by the religious law, shows the awkward working of a
state whose functions were so slightly differentiated. Perhaps the
easiest way to think of the grand vizir is as the alter ego of the
sultan, as he has been called.79
For details of Ibrahim’s official work we have a bit here and a bit
there, but no general account. He seems to have been zealous in the
cause of commerce, out of which he made a considerable profit. He
established a monopoly of Syrian commerce afterwards taken over
by the sultan,80 and caused all the trade of that country to pass
through Constantinople.81 He encouraged trade with Venice, freeing
that country from payment of duty on merchandize brought from
Syria.82 He was always a friend to Venice, helping her trade and
keeping the Porte from war with her as long as he lived.83
From the Venetian reports we see how general Ibrahim’s interests
were;84 now he is looking after the corn trade, now receiving
cargoes of biscuits, now concerning himself in the building of a
canal, now opening new trade routes, now watching the coming of
new vessels to the Porte. The trade of the Dalmatian coast he
encouraged. As beylerbey of Roumelie he would be most interested
in the European trade and other relations. The export and import
trade of Turkey was scarcely born in his day, although the Muscovy
and other trading companies were beginning to ask for concessions
in the Ottoman dominions. Ibrahim’s ideas on this subject were not
great nor especially in advance of his time.
In his quality as judge, he settled disputes and arranged wills to the
apparent satisfaction of the interested parties. Every envoy to the
Porte, whether on state, commercial, or personal business, was first
presented to the grand vizir, who might take complete charge of his
affair, or he might refer him to the sultan. The grand vizir received in
great state and the Venetian letters are full of advice as to how to
conciliate the great minister. There seems to be little disagreement
among his critics as to Ibrahim’s ability. He is pronounced by all to
be a wise and able man; but he had at least one severe critic among
the Venetians, who felt that his power was too arbitrary. Daniello di
Ludovisi in 1534 wrote thus:85

Suleiman gave his administration of the empire into the hands of another. The
sultan, with all the pashas and all the court, would conduct no important
deliberation without Ibrahim Pasha, while Ibrahim would do everything without
Suleiman or any other advisor. So the state lacked good council, and the army
good heads. Suleiman’s affection for Ibrahim should not be praised, but blamed.

And again:

Another evil existed in the Turkish army, and was caused, first, by the negligence
of the sultan (who, to tell the truth, is not of such ability as the greatness of the
empire demands), and secondly, by the actions of Ibrahim Pasha, who by the
same means as those used to raise and maintain himself—namely, to degrade, and
even to kill, all whose ability aroused his suspicion—deprived the state of men of
good council and the army of good captains.
For instance, he decapitated Ferad Pasha, a valiant captain, and was the cause of
the rebellion of Ahmed Pasha, who was beheaded at Cairo, and he caused Piri
Pasha to leave office, an old man and an old councillor, and some even accused
him of causing his death by poison. And it followed, also, that Rustem, a young
fellow, master of the stables of the Grand Seigneur, became familiar with the
latter, and Ibrahim, warned of this, and being then in Aleppo, sent him to be
governor in Asia Minor, a long distance away. Rustem, feeling very badly, asked
the Grand Seigneur not to let him go, who replied, “When I see Ibrahim, I will see
that he causes you to return near me.” For this reason the army was without
council except Ibrahim alone, and men of learning and force, from fear and
suspicion, hid their knowledge and ability. So the army was demoralized and
enervated. I feel certain that Ibrahim Pasha realized this (for he was a man of
good parts, but not of such merit as to find a remedy for such evils), but he loved
himself much more than he did his lord, and wished to be alone in the dominion of
the world in which he was much respected.

This criticism of Ibrahim Pasha was later repeated in a more general

form by one Kogabey, who presented to Sultan Mourad IV a
memorial on the decadence of the Ottoman state. The two first
reasons that he assigned for the deterioration were the sultan’s
ceasing to preside over the divan in person, and the placing of
favorites in the office of grand vizir, the latter custom having been
started by Suleiman I, who raised his favorite Ibrahim from the
palace to the divan. Such vizirs, Kogabey explained, had no insight
into the circumstances of the whole nation. They generally were
blinded by the splendor of their position and refused to consult
intelligent men on affairs of government, and so the order of the
state was destroyed through their carelessness.86
The custom of appointing favorites to the most important office in
the empire was certainly a bad one, but Ibrahim was a more
efficient administrator than could have been expected from his
training, and ranks among the great vizirs of the Ottoman Empire.
 CHAPTER III

Ibrahim the Diplomat

We must now turn from Turkey’s internal affairs to her foreign

relations. Turkish political history during the sixteenth century was so
interwoven with that of the European states, the influence of
Ottoman interference upon the wars and negotiations of Christian
princes was so marked, that a study of Suleiman’s foreign relations
becomes almost a study of contemporary Europe.87 The two sultans
who succeeded Mohammed the Conqueror had not extended Turkish
power in Europe, Bayazid having failed in his attempts at conquest,
and Selim having turned his attention from Europe to the East. This
caused a period of transition and preparation for the great events of
Suleiman’s reign.
When Suleiman came to the throne, he found certain relations
established with Ragusa and Venice, the two commercial cities of the
Adriatic, whose large carrying trade made an entente cordiale with
the Porte very desirable.88 Ragusa was the first foreign state to
reach the new sultan with her congratulations on his accession,89
and the sultan renewed with the Ragusan republic the commercial
privileges it had enjoyed in Egypt.
After Venice had been defeated by Turkey in the battle of Sapienza
in 1499 and had been obliged to sue for peace, she had received the
following answer from the then grand vizir: “You can tell the doge
that he has done wedding the sea, it is our turn now.”90 This boast
became steadily more completely realized as Turkish conquest in the
Mediterranean continued, and Venice soon saw that her chance of
freedom on the seas lay in keeping on good terms with the Turk,
whom she could not conquer. In vain she sought for help against the
Moslems; in vain she carried on a single‐handed struggle against
their encroachments, earning the title of “Bulwark of Christianity”.
Had she not “learned to kiss the hand that she could not cut off,”91
she could not have continued to exist as even the second‐rate power
in the Levant to which she had been reduced. Frequent missions
were sent from Venice to the Porte, and a Venetian baillie was kept
at the Porte. These baillies were very good statesmen, and they not
only kept Venice on good terms with Turkey for thirty‐three years,
but they made an invaluable contribution to recorded history by
sending frequent and detailed reports to the signories.
Russia also sent an embassy to the Porte, after the conquests of
Belgrad and Rhodes had demonstrated the power of Turkey; and the
Tsar, recognizing the value of an alliance with the Porte, made two
attempts to form one, but without success. Suleiman saw no
advantage in such an alliance, but he never assumed an unfriendly
attitude towards Russia, at that time still an unimportant power. In a
letter written later in his reign he recalls the amicable relations that
had existed between the Porte and Russia, and recommends his
Ottoman merchants to buy furs and merchandise in Moscow.92
As Suleiman’s conquests naturally threw him into antagonism with
the House of Hapsburg, it is desirable to review briefly the political
conditions in the Holy Roman Empire at this time.
The accession of Charles of Spain to the Imperial throne took place
in October of the same year as Suleiman’s accession, 1520.
Handicapped in every possible way by the German princes, for
whose safety and prosperity the emperor assumed the entire
responsibility without receiving in return any equivalent whatever,93
Charles V presented a great contrast to Suleiman, whose slightest
word was law throughout his extensive dominions. With the empire,
Charles acquired the enmity of Francis I of France, his unsuccessful
rival, and hereafter his constant foe. Another rival not outwardly so
dangerous, but destined to be a great source of anxiety and
weakness to the empire was Ferdinand, the emperor’s brother.
Concerning him, Charles’ counsellor, de Chièvres, is reported to have
said to Charles,94 “Do not fear the king of France nor any other
prince except your brother”. Ferdinand’s ambition had been early
recognized. His grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, had attempted to
construct an Italian kingdom for him, but failed. Charles, after his
election to the Empire, tried to satisfy Ferdinand’s craving for power
by conferring on him the old Austrian provinces, and further by
marrying him to Anna, heiress of the kingdom of Hungary and
Bohemia, whose child‐king, Lewis, was weak physically and not
destined for a long reign. This opened to Ferdinand a large sphere of
activity in the southeast, and brought him into direct contact with
the steadily encroaching Suleiman; a sphere that effectually
absorbed his energies and made him but a source of weakness to
the Empire.
Thus Charles V, in name the imperial ruler of Central Europe, was
confronted with four rivals who desired to divide with him the
supremacy; Francis I, a relentless foe; his brother Ferdinand, an
ambitious claimant: the conquering Suleiman; and the Protestant
Revolt. The weakness and disunion of Christendom was the strength
of Suleiman, and he was far too shrewd not to trade on it.
It had in fact been long since Europe had been sufficiently united to
oppose with any vigor the oncoming Turks. The Popes of Rome had
been the most persistent foes of Turkish advance in Europe; notably
Calixtus III, who in 1453 tried in vain to save Europe from
Mohammed’s conquering armies; Pius II, who having for his master
—thought the freeing of Europe from Islam, preached a general
crusade, and even attempted to convert Mohammed by letter; Paul
II, who gave lavish aid to Scanderbeg and the armies in Hungary
and Albania in their struggle against Turkish invasion; Alexander VI,
who held Prince Jem, the mutinous brother of Sultan Bayazid, as
hostage for the friendliness of the sultan whom he attacked after
Jem’s death; and Julius II, who planned a crusade early in the
sixteenth century, but failed to execute it.95 All this time Turkish
conquest continued practically unhindered. By the close of the
fifteenth century the Turks were accepted as a permanent political
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