Suleiman Pasha

“ Whenever the Pasha is known to be in trouble at home, they become refractory, refuse to pay their tribute, and attack the caravans or towns on the coast; seldom indeed does a year pass in which the sovereign of Tripoli is not engaged in war with some of their tribes. Of these tribes, one called the Waled Suleiman had long been formidable for its numbers and its rebellious disposition; under a daring and sagacious chief the Sheik Safanissa, it had set at defiance the power of the Pasha, and had frequently pushed its inroads to the gates of the capital. ”

“ Ibrahim’s rapid rise began to alarm him. The inconstancy of fortune, as exampled by the fate of many of the great men of the Ottoman court, created in him an apprehension of the great peril which attached to those favorites who enjoyed the high dignities of the court, and served as a bridle to restrain his desires. He besought Suleiman not to advance him so high that his fall would be his ruin. He showed him that a modest prosperity was safer than the greatness wherewith he would honor him ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suleiman in his letter gives Ibrahim credit for the taking of Peterwardein and Illok. As to Mohacz he says:165
“The accursed king (Lewis) accompanied by the soldiers of perdition fell before the army of Roumelie, which was commanded by the Beylerbey of Roumelie, my grand vizir, Ibrahim Pasha (May Allah glorify him eternally!) . It was then that the hero displayed all his innate valor.” ”

“ The fiercest of animals, the lion, must be conquered not by force, but by cleverness; by the food which his master gives it and by the influence of habit. Its guardian should carry a stick to intimidate it, and should be the only one to feed it. The lion is the prince. The Emperor Charles is a lion. I, Ibrahim Pasha, control my master, the Sultan of the Turks, with the stick of truth and justice. Charles’ ambassador should also control him in the same way.
From this he went on to expatiate on his own power:
The mighty Sultan of the Turks has given to me, Ibrahim, all power and authority. ”

“ This was not mere personal vanity; under the pretext of the community of good which should exist between father and son he cloaked the Sultan’s usurpation of Hungary, and the fraternity of Ferdinand and Ibrahim served to disguise the humiliation of the former, who was placed in the same rank as a vizir.134 But in the long speech that Ibrahim Pasha made to the ambassadors, he revealed his personal pride. We quote from the speech: “It is I who govern this vast empire. What I do is done; I have all the power, all offices, all the rule. What I wish to give is given and cannot be taken away ”

“ Life consists in vigilant action, and he that sleeps doth not truly live; so you may punish his disloyalty and not violate your oath.’ Suleiman sends for Ibrahim, and after they have supped he shows him his crimes by his own letters to Charles V and Ferdinand, reproaches him for his ingratitude, and commands his mutes to strangle him while he himself is asleep. ”

“ At the close of the reign of Selim the Grim, Turkey, although it was a conquering nation, was still an excrescence in Europe. But the time had come when it must enter into the affairs of the Northern nations, and for that time Suleiman, unusually tolerant towards the West, with a great idea of the destiny of Turkey, and aided by his Christian grand vizir, was ready, and by the end of his reign he had made himself felt in every court on the continent, and had88 to be reckoned with in every European cabinet. ”

“ 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) , 52 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. ”

“ There was not a court in Europe that was not forced to reckon with Sultan Suleiman. So the career of Ibrahim, his distinguished grand vizir, is not a mere romance; it is a career which intimately affected the hopes and fears of Ferdinand of Austria, Charles V of Spain, Francis I of France, and even Henry VIII of England, as well as the Pope and the Venetian Signory.
At the height of their power the Turks were nevertheless still a simple people. While western society has moved from complexity to greater complexity, their society has preserved an unembarrassed simplicity. ”

“ The successful siege, and doubtless also the rich reward of his padisha, decided Ibrahim Pasha to besiege Illok on the Danube, which he took in seven days. The sultan now announced that the objective point of the expedition was Buda. The Turkish army advanced along the Danube, devastating as it went, to the marshy plain of Mohacz. Here there was a battle of the first importance in its political results, as we have seen above, for it routed the Hungarian army, killed King Lewis, and gave Hungary into Suleiman’s hands. ”

“ The heir to the throne after his thirteenth or fourteenth year had his own palace separate from his father’s harem, in which he had thus far been brought up. As soon as he showed sufficient promise he was sent to some province, that he might have experience in governing. Thus Suleiman, during the reign of his father Selim, was made governor of Magnesia in Asia Minor, north of Smyrna, where he probably met Ibrahim, a youth of his own age. The court of the shahzadeh had the same officials, with the same titles, as the Imperial court. ”

“ In this way some time passed, and at length Wad Suleiman, who had meanwhile succeeded in getting one of the female servants to admit that her master had concealed the treasure in the wall, returned to the Mahdi, and whispered in his ear that they had found it. The latter, beckoning him to sit down, continued to talk of the vanities of this world, and the great necessity of renouncing them; and then, turning suddenly to Said Pasha, he said, "You swore a most solemn oath of allegiance; why, then, do you refuse to say where your money is? Money is the root of all evil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While we recognize the danger of such rule, yet we also feel that Turkey had a better chance under such men of ability as Mehmet Sokolli Pasha and the Kiuprelli vizirs than under the chance sultans of the Ottoman family, which has produced few great rulers since Suleiman the Magnificent. ”

“ This was the critical point of Suleiman’s fifth Hungarian campaign. After the sultan alone had reduced some thirteen minor forts, he associated the grand vizir with him in this great siege. The little fortress of Güns was brilliantly defended by Nicholas Juritschitz, who had met Ibrahim in former days when ambassador at the Porte.
On August 9th the grand vizir encamped before Güns, and three days later Suleiman arrived. Many small cannon were used in this siege, the largest sending a ball the size of a goose egg, which was, nevertheless, very effective in destroying the battlements. ”

“ But our only chance of understanding it is to banish from our minds western conceptions and accept as facts what seem like wild imaginings. Ibrahim Pasha was not of the Turkish race, a fact which accounts for some of the paradoxes of his career, but his life was passed in a Turkish environment, one of whose notable characteristics is that it has always at once included and modified so many alien elements. In any consideration of the Turkish people, the most important thing to hold in mind is that the Turks are neither Aryan nor Semitic, being unrelated to Persians, Arabs, Greeks, or Hebrews. ”

“ 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 at46tribute it to the Greek vizir rather than to the Ottoman chronicler, “the best things are the golden mean.” ”

“ It is I alone who do everything. I am above all the pashas. I can elevate a groom to a pasha. I give kingdoms and provinces to whom I will, without inquiry even from my master. If he orders a thing and I disapprove, it is not executed ”

“ Of his musical training we have already spoken.18 When their schooling was completed, the pages were taken into the Serai,19 passing through two lower chambers before completing their education in the first chamber. The pages usually lodged near the sultan’s apartments in handsome dormitories having their own mosque and baths. But Ibrahim, as the favorite of Suleiman, used to sleep in the apartments of his lord and master, and generally took his meals with him.20 Bragadino says that when they were not together in the morning they wrote notes to each other, which they sent by mutes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The campaign of Vienna was the next military event for Ibrahim. It was on the eve of this expedition that Suleiman invested the grand vizir with the office of Serasker.168
Says Petchevi:
One day, going from the Divan to the Vizir Khaneh, the great Lord and Conqueror calling the slaves before his presence addressed them with eloquent and pearl‐scattering words and with divine proceedings, saying: “Nothing prevents our extending our arms at once to all parts of our land, but in every case we cannot personally conduct affairs. ”

“ 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 35Turkey 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 following day Skobelev and Mirski attacking together were successful, and Vessil Pasha capitulated with his force, some 36,000, of whom 6000 were sick and wounded. Vessil Pasha had pointed out the danger of his position on Jan. 7th, but, contrary to Suleiman's advice, the war minister, believing an armistice imminent, had ordered him to hold on to the Shipka Pass. Mehemet Ali's force, dangerously delayed owing to interference by the minister of war, eventually reached Tatar-Bazardjik, which was selected by Suleiman (now commander-in-chief) for the concentration of his forces. ”

“ Petchevi takes his account from his grandfather, who was an eye witness of Mohacz. Kemalpashazadeh was sheik‐ul‐Islam under Suleiman and writes an account that is at once that of poet and courtier, but should be fairly accurate as to the movements of the army. The Monumenta Hungariae Historica (Pest, 1857) , vol. i, gives some Hungarian comment on the events. Solakzadeh and Abdurrahman Sheref give second‐hand reports, while Leopold von Kupelwieser has excellent volumes on the subject entitled “Die Kämpfe Oesterreichs mit den Osmanen.” ”

“ Mustafa Pasha, who was descended from Khaled, son of Valíd, and younger brother of Shemsi Pasha: he was educated in the imperial harem, made Chakirji-bashi, commanded the expedition against Malta when Governor of Rumeïli, died on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and was buried by my father.
Begler-begs in the reign of Sultán Suleimán.
Behram Pasha; Davúd Pasha, who died Governor of Egypt; Oveis Pasha, Governor of Shám (Damascus) ; Dukakin Zádeh Gházi Mohammed Pasha, Governor of Egypt; Oveis Pasha, Governor of Yemen (Arabia) , he quaffed the cup of martyrdom at the hand of Pehlevan Hassan, the robber ”

“ It is probably a Turkish sea-song of that time. It says:
"We roam the waters far and wide,
And bring confusion upon our enemies;
Revenge and hatred is our motto,
For we are Khairreddin's troops."
(Khairreddin Pasha was Suleiman's renowned Admiral, known in Europe as Barbarossa.)
101 In the text Bami may possibly be a slip of the pen and intended for "Brahmin."
102 Banians, "Indian merchants," more especially from the Province of Gujarat, who from time immemorial have traded with the harbor-towns of Arabia. ”