Islam—And Christianity—Turks and the law of the Prophet—Their relations to the Sultan—Bajazet II and his army—Slavs go over to Islam—The rebellion of Djem—Matthias Corvinus—The growth of Western culture—Jews expelled from Spain—Kemal-Reis and Turkish sea-power—Bajazet and his sons—The revolt of Selim—Selim kills his brothers—Selim defeats Shah Ismail—Selim and his Grand Vizier—Selim defeats the Mamelukes—The death of Selim—Solyman the Great—Contemporary history—The conquest of Rhodes—The invasion of Hungary—Buda-Pesth surrenders—The first siege of Vienna—Sea victories of Barbarossa—Solyman and Roxalana—Solyman’s death.

RELIGION affects the private life of the Turk as also the life of the body politic more than is the case among the followers of other creeds, and Islam is singularly adapted to the sons of Othman, or rather has made them what they are. Mohammed assumed both spiritual and temporal power in the name of a god, who thrones high above the humble faithful, who is so far concerned in each believer that he arranges every detail of his life long before the poor mortal enters upon it. There is no mercy, no departure from the course marked out, no hope of propitiating a stern deity, aloof and vengeful, by prayer and intercession; Islam—obedience, submission. Allah is not often moved by loving-kindness, but anger may rouse him to punish by the hand of his “shadow on earth,” the Caliph-Sultan. He is particularly easily incensed against non-believers, and through his Prophet has promised all happiness after death to those to combat unbelief, and by war and rapine, murder and outrage, proclaim the fact that “La ilaha illa ’Uah!”
 
The Gate of Adrianople Through this gate, Edirné Kapoo, as the Turks call it, the Sultan’s army marched out to war; through it his soldiery, defeated, sick, wounded, returned in small parties from the battlefields.
The Gate of Adrianople
Through this gate, Edirné Kapoo, as the Turks call it, the Sultan’s army marched out to war; through it his soldiery, defeated, sick, wounded, returned in small parties from the battlefields.

{188}

It is not surprising to find that, whatever its theory, in practice Islam discouraged any serious regard for human life, whether a man’s own or the life of his neighbour. It also strengthened the ruler’s hands, for he was the voice of Allah on earth, and therefore privileged to take life without trial, inquiry, or any formality. Of this privilege Sultans have availed themselves freely, though it was not bien vue to kill more than a thousand in a day. For political reasons Mohammedan subjects were less exposed to violence, whereas Christians became more and more subject to ill-treatment as Christianity gained strength and helped to build up Empires strong enough to check the flowing tide of Islam.

Islam acted as an intellectual stimulus on its first adherents, the poetic-minded Arabs, though possibly it did not assume its present rigidity when they were a ruling power in Asia, Africa, and Southern Europe. I think it likely that the Arabs did not allow the strict letter of the law to cramp their intellectual development, but their converts, the Turks, a race devoid of the power of imagination, proved incapable of interpreting the “Book” in a liberal spirit even if it were possible, for the Koran, with all its contradictions, contains hard-and-fast dogma, definite rules to regulate conduct, and threatens those who depart from its teachings by but a hand’s-breadth with all the pains of Eternal Damnation. Gautama, the Prince, retired into seclusion, and by the beauty of a soul trained to deep meditation became Buddha; Christ came to earth and suffered all indignities and pains at the hands of men, rather than assert the power of His Godhead by offering political opposition to those who spurned His teachings: “His kingdom is not of this world.” After the awful day on Calvary none of the temporal powers of the day attached any further importance to His sayings,{190} nor to the small band of disciples who went out into the outer darkness of the world carrying with them the first flickerings of a light which should illumine the earth and draw from mortals the best that is in them. Buddha lived alone in deep seclusion, renouncing all earthly vanities, and his few disciples went abroad poor and homeless searching for the souls of men. Mohammed drew men to him by promises of glory and honour on this earth, ease and luxury in the Beyond. Christianity bids you forgive your enemies; Mohammed led his followers to battle against the unbelievers, conquered their cities, and called those places holy when he had fixed the strongholds of his militant faith. Mohammed died in the possession of great power, spiritual and temporal, enjoining his descendants to maintain and increase it by the sword. The realm thus founded was inherited by the Caliphs, but they in time became enfeebled and hard pressed by their enemies, till first the temporal then spiritual power went to a race of rulers incapable and disinclined to widen the intellectual horizon of their subjects, the House of Othman. So the sovereign’s power was absolute, in his hands were life and death, all property but that applied to pious purposes came from him and by him could be retaken. The strict adherence to religious observances had its beneficial effects, for the laws that regulate the conduct, that prescribe for each hour of the day, allowed of no expansion and could not openly be disregarded, therefore the life of the people, at least to outward appearance, was clean and decorous. Mollahs and imams never gained the ascendancy over the minds of men which Christian priests and holy men of Buddhism have from time to time acquired; they played an unimportant part, acting rather as precentors at the worship of Allah in the mosques, though as preachers they could incite the fierce passions{191} of a people untrained to independent thought. From time to time the Sultan would think fit to consult the mufti, the head priest, as to the advisability of some political measure, and that official generally found it convenient to agree, as his appointment was in the sovereign’s gift and could be recalled by him.

Under the law, administered by the Sultan, the Turks increased in numbers, extended their possession, carved a large Empire out of the ruins of former civilizations, and left unsought those Elysian fields wherein the intellect of a nation gains those victories that make for stability, the fields of progress, scientific, literary, artistic. Under the law they built up their body politic, each member sincerely, blindly devoted to the dynasty of Othman, however many corpses of its scions might pave a Sultan’s upward path to power. They swept over Asia Minor carrying their few belongings with them, nomads ever, expressing even in their poor attempt at imagery no other spirit than that of the houseless wanderer: The edifice of state is but a tent, its supporting poles the viziers, judges, treasurers, and secretaries of state. Its entrance, the Sublime Porte, is likened to curtained opening, and curtains rather than doors still screen the latticed chambers of many a present-day Turkish harem. The provinces they conquered were distributed among the fighting men as military fiefs and called Sanjaks, banners, remaining purely military organizations until more stable conditions led to the raising of a standing army; and civil officials always looked to their sovereign for guidance in the smallest matters as they had looked to him for leadership in the field.

Thus equipped the sons of Othman set out for conquest, and in one respect at least the records of those early days show signs of great capacity, though always the output{192} of one active mind, not resulting from the reasoned growth of a collective national intelligence.

Mohammed the Conqueror had established the Ottoman Empire in Europe by means of a well-trained, Koran-disciplined army, his successor Bajazet II increased and strengthened it. Great attention was paid to all matters of artillery and military engineering, in which the Turks of those days outshone all other nations, and which made the hastily levied undisciplined armies of the West, the bands of hired condottieri, or enthusiastic swarms of Christian knights, go under before the sword of Othman. The conquered provinces provided recruits for the corps of Janissaries. In those days, too, the Turkish armies were more mobile and better found than even that which Charles VII of France raised in 1445, the first standing army of the West; supplies were well organized and transport effected by beasts of burden, not by carts which depend upon good roads. So Bajazet inherited a great Empire, won by the sword of a people in arms and governed by warriors devoted to his House, and over whom the Sultan had complete control; they could not rise above their fellows, for according to the law all Moslems are equal under the Caliph, and no ruling caste rose to defy the power of the sovereign or force him to grant concessions. Fresh blood was added to this homogeneous body politic by the voluntary desertion of Christians from the conquered provinces to Islam: Croats, Albanians, Bosniaks, Russians, even Scotsmen, adventurers mostly, and among the fiercest followers of the Prophet. Many of these rose to high office.

The reign of Bajazet II began with civil war, a not unusual occurrence, for Prince Djem, his brother, laid claim to the throne. But Bajazet vanquished his brother’s army, and Djem consoled himself by a visit to Mecca and{193} Medina, which makes for holiness and raises a Moslem in the estimation of his fellows. Building on this Djem made further attempts to displace Bajazet, and went to the Knights of Rhodes to enlist their sympathies. These nobles kept the Prince a prisoner and made him a source of income from the Sultan by threatening to set him at large again. Djem finally escaped from Rhodes and sought help elsewhere, in Western Europe, but met with little encouragement, and was finally treacherously murdered by a servant of the Pope, bribed by Bajazet.

In the meantime Bajazet felt the need for expansion—there were still worlds to conquer and he was minded to acquire a few. His efforts on land were not particularly successful, he had at least one strong man against him, Matthias Corvinus, who had restored order in Hungary and was thus enabled to check the encroachments of Islam. There were other Powers of some importance in Europe at the time: the Medici, under whom the glories of Italian art, inspired by ancient Byzant, were preparing the way for enfranchised thought; and in Germany Meister Gutenberg had set up his printing-press. All glory to that great man whose gentle craft made the Reformation possible. “Buchstaben,” beech staves, for the selfish beech tree, which allows no growth under its spreading branches, found the wood out of which were cut those first strong Gothic letters. Laboriously pieced together those staves grew into sentences, and in time the first Bible, printed and bound in solid calf-skin, was given to the world. Luther perused it, studied it, absorbed it, and with it filled his soul till his voice arose above the jealousies of Papal Medicis and rang out over all the earth, is ringing still wherever the free-born praise their Creator and glorify His works. Even here it resounds, and strongly, since Christian men and women are aiding the sick and{194} wounded of an alien race, a hostile creed, and are bringing them back from those dark depths where they were cast by their own kin, by those whose lives are overshadowed by rigid Islam. Ferdinand the Catholic had married Isabella of Castile, and thus brought the Kingdoms of Spain under one sceptre. They expelled the Jews from Spain to the “greater glory of God”; the descendants of those Jews now inhabit Saloniki and still speak Spanish, though they write it in Hebrew characters. John II of Portugal impoverished his country by the same method at the same time, though he derived some temporary advantage by taxing the exiled children of Israel heavily while they passed through his country on their way to more congenial surroundings. Macchiavelli was born in that era, and was composing his work on the ideal Prince when Bajazet was compassing the death of his brother Djem. Columbus arose to widen the world’s horizon, and Vasco da Gama’s ships felt their way cautiously round the Cape of Storms to India. But greatest of all these was Leonardo da Vinci, who rescued fragments of the art of old Byzant and breathed into it the life that created all the glories of the Renaissance. Those were brave days, my masters, when the world was young and strong, when art and literature revived, free from the trammels of warped classicism and showed mankind what beauty is and where and how it may be found and duly reverenced.

But Bajazet had no ideas beyond conquest. His campaign on land being unattended by the great success his predecessors had prepared him for, he turned to seaward and did his best to cripple rising Western Europe. A slave presented to his father was the instrument to hand, Kemal-Reis, the former name meaning “Perfection,” given him by the Sultan because of his great beauty. In constant sea war against Venice and the other states by{195} the Mediterranean Sea, Kemal-Reis laid the foundations of Turkish sea power.

Bajazet sought to extend his power to Egypt, but was baffled by the Mamelukes, a body of militant nobility superior in training and “morale” to anything the Othmans could muster. This and other matters cast clouds over the last days of Sultan Bajazet. Dissensions arose among his sons, Korkoud, Achmet, and Selim, Governor of Trebizond, who even threatened his father with war and marched ............