Ibrahim Pasha: Grand Vizir of Suleiman the Magnificent

by Hester Donaldson Jenkins

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 Ottoman[38] 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.