In this simplicity, this single‐mindedness, they are totally different from the Arabs of the Khalifate, with whom they have been so much associated in Western minds, but with whom they have no relationship beyond that of a common religion. The Turks, I repeat, are a much simpler as well as a more warlike people than any other Oriental nation.
The sources for the life of Ibrahim are classified naturally in three groups: (1st) The Turkish histories and biographies, first and second hand; (2nd) the accounts of European travelers and residents in Constantinople, such as Mouradjia D’Ohsson, Busbequius, and the Venetian baillies; and (3rd) the diplomatic correspondence and documents of the time as found in such collections as Charrière’s Négociations, Gévay’s Urkunden und Actenstücke, and Noradunghian’s and de Testa’s Recueils. A student would also wish to consult the histories written by foreigners, such as von Hammer, Zinkheisen and Jorga, whose sources are found in the three classes of evidence cited above.
It is impossible to confine ourselves to the Turkish sources, because of the notable omission of accounts of institutions, and the total absence of description. Abdurrahman Sheref, the present historiographer of Turkey, is the first Turkish writer of whom I know, who devotes some chapters to general subjects such as “The Provinces”, “Literature”, etc., in imitation of European histories. The historians of Suleiman’s time were rather chroniclers, the Comines and Froissarts of their day though with much less of petty and personal detail. Therefore we must turn to Occidental observers for accounts of the Turkish manner of life, their warfare and their government, except where we can learn from Turkish law or poetry. But practically all that the Ottomans have told us of themselves and of their rulers, we may trust in a way we cannot trust Western evidence. Every one who knows the East is aware how a report will pass through the bazaars and into the interior of the country, or up the Nile for hundreds of miles, with marvelous rapidity and more marvelous accuracy. Just as the story‐teller repeats a tale as his remote ancestor first told it, so do men hand down a tradition unembellished and unchanged. Turkish tradition is an expression of the sincerity and simplemindedness of the Turkish character. The Turks are neither sceptics, nor desirous of deceiving, therefore they transmit an account as they have received it.
There are of course exceptions to this: Suleiman’s Letters of Victory are overdrawn at times, and a legendary history of him has been found,[6] written a century after his reign, in which the events of his life are hard to discover amidst a mass of legend. But this last case seems to have been a direct attempt to write an epic piece, and is quite different from the clear, straight narrative of the ordinary chronicler. The court chronicler’s embellishments consist mainly in flowery phrases, such as “Sultan Suleiman Khan, whose glory reaches the heavens, and who is the Sun of Valor and Heroism, and the Shadow of God on Earth, may Allah keep his soul.” In other words, the style is embellished but not the facts, the latter being related as uncritically and directly as a child relates an event.
Sometimes the perspective seems to us very odd, since the emphasis seems to be placed on the unimportant part of the narrative, but in such cases we must seek in the Turkish mind for an explanation of why that phase, unimportant to us, is to the Turkish writer and reader, of importance. As an illustration of this, take the Turkish accounts of Ibrahim’s Egyptian expedition. The Sulimannameh and later histories all give more space to the hardships of Ibrahim’s voyage to Egypt, and to the honor paid him by the Sultan than to the organization of Egypt, which occupied seven months. This seems, and doubtless is naïve, but we can see from it what a great effort a sea expedition was to this inland people, and also how above everything else in importance loomed the favor of the monarch, by whom all subjects rose to power or fell into disgrace. It further shows the stress laid on the lives of courtiers and officials rather than on the ordering of a province, in which, of course, it resembles all early histories.
For details in regard to the sources used for this study, the reader is referred to the Bibliography.
CHAPTER I
Ibrahim’s Rise
Ibrahim was a Christian of base extraction, the son of a Greek sailor of Parga.[7] He was born in 1494.[8] In his childhood he was captured by Turkish corsairs.[9] It would seem that he was first sold to a widow of Magnesia, who clothed him well and had him well educated, and especially trained to perform upon a musical instrument resembling the violin, which he learned to play beautifully.[10]