capital, Bakhchisarai, owing only the duty to bring himself and 20,000 to 30,000 horsemen when summoned to the sultan's wars. Twelve hundred miles to the west, the Barbary states of Tripoli, Tunis and Algeria obliged their Ottoman master in war by diverting their fast corsair ships, normally engaged in lucrative peacetime piracy against all nations, to attack the fleets of the great Christian naval powers, Venice and Genoa.
In the sixteenth century, under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), the Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith. This was a golden age for Constantinople, when great wealth poured into the city, a dozen beautiful imperial mosques were built and sparkling pleasure palaces sprang up along the shores of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Suleiman himself was a patron of literature, the arts and science; he loved music, poetry and philosophy. But first he was a warrior. Along the great military road that led north to Belgrade, Buda and finally Vienna, the Ottoman armies marched, leaving mosques and minarets scattered across the Balkan hills and valleys. Outraged by these visible signs of Moslem occupation, the Christian kingdoms of the West saw the Turks as oppressors of the Greeks and other Christian peoples of the East. But the Ottoman Empire, more generous in this respect than most Western kingdoms, tolerated religions other than its own. The Sultan formally recognized the Greek Church and acknowledged the jurisdiction of its patriarch and archbishops, and Orthodox monasteries retained their property. The Turks preferred to rule through local political institutions, and in return for tribute, Christian provinces were permitted their own systems of government, rank and class structure.
In a curious way, the Ottoman Turks paid the highest compliment to their Christian subjects: They recruited them to fill the ranks of their own central imperial administration and to form the special regiments of the sultan's guard, the Janissaries. In the subject Balkan provinces, conversion to the Moslem faith was the key to success for bright young Christian boys who were sent—at first by force—to Moslem schools, and given a rigorous education designed to purge every memory of mother, father, brothers and sisters, and to eradicate every trace of the Christian religion. Their only allegiance was to the Koran and the sultan, and they became a corps of fearless and devoted followers, available for any service. The most intelligent might serve as pages in the palace or apprentices in the civil service and might rise to the very top of the imperial administration. Many distinguished men followed this path, and the mighty Ottoman Empire was often administered by men who had been born as Christians.
But most of these young men entered the regiments of guards, the Janissaries. As boys, and later as soldiers, they lived all their lives in barracks, forbidden to marry or have children, so that their total devotion might be given to the sultan. In status, the Janissary was a slave; the barracks was his home, the Koran his religion, the sultan his master and fighting his profession. In the early centuries of the empire, Janissaries were like an order of fanatical military monks, pledged to fight the enemies of Allah and the sultan. They provided the Ottoman armies with a steely corps of superbly trained and dedicated infantry, superior to any military force in Europe until the advent of the new French army of Louis XIV.
A company of Janissaries made a colorful sight. They wore red caps embroidered in gold, white blouses, baggy pantaloons and yellow boots. The Janissaries of the sultan's personal guard were distinguished by their red boots. In time of peace, they carried only a scimitar, but when he went into battle, each Janissary was allowed to arm himself with the weapons he liked best: javelin, sword, arquebus or, later, a musket.
In the fourteenth century, there were 12,000 Janissaries; in 1653, a count produced 51,647. As the centuries passed, older Janissaries were allowed to retire, marry and have families. Moslem as well as Christian families begged to have their sons enrolled in the corps and, in time, the privilege was restricted to the children or relations of former Janissaries. The Janissaries became a free-born, privileged, hereditary caste. In peacetime, they took up trades, like the Streltsy. Ultimately, as with regiments of imperial guards in many countries, they became a greater danger to their own master than to his enemies. Grand viziers and even sultans rose and fell at the whim of the Janissaries until finally, in 1826, they were abolished.
Approached from the sea, the historic city of Constantinople seemed like an immense, flowered pleasure garden. Rising from the blue waters of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara, its domes and minarets set amidst dark-green cypresses and flowering fruit trees, it was one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Today, as Istanbul, it is vividly alive, but is no longer a capital; the republican government of Turkey, to cleanse itself of the city's sins, has removed itself to the austere, modern purity of Ankara in the center of the Anatolian plateau. But in the seventeenth century, Constantinople was the capital of the Moslem world, the military, administrative, commercial and cultural hub of the mighty Ottoman Empire. With a population of 700,000, larger than any city in Europe, blending many races and religions, it was studded with great mosques, colleges, libraries, hospitals and public baths. Its bazaars and wharves were piled with merchandise from every corner of the world. Its parks and gardens were filled with flowers and fruit trees. In the spring, wild roses bloomed and nightingales sang in the hedgerows.
Overlooking the great city from a high point of land where the Golden Horn separates the Bosphorus from the Sea of Marmara was the Topkapi Palace, the seraglio of the sultan. Here, behind high walls, lay dozens of buildings: barracks, kitchens, mosques, gardens with bubbling fountains and long avenues of cypress trees bordered with beds of roses and tulips. A city within a city, existing entirely for the pleasure of a single man, the Seraglio made huge demands on the outside world. Every year, from all provinces of the empire came shiploads and cartloads of rice, sugar, peas, lentils, pepper, coffee, macaroons, dates, saffron, honey, salt, plums in lemon juice, vinegar, watermelons and, in one year alone 780 cartloads of snow. Inside this city 5,000 servants fulfilled the sultan's needs. The sultan's table was presided over by the Chief Attendant of the Napkin, assisted by the Senior of the Tray Servers, the Fruit Server, the Pickle Server and the Sherbet Maker, the Chief of the Coffee Makers and the Water Server (as Moslems, the sultans were teetotalers). There were also the Chief Turban Folder and the Assistants to the Chief Turban Folder, the Keeper of the Sultan's Robes, the Chiefs of the Laundrymen and Bathmen. The Chief of the Barbers had on his staff a Manicurist who pared the sultan's nails every Thursday.
Besides these, there were pipe lighters, door openers, musicians, gardeners, grooms and even a collection of dwarfs and mutes whom the sultan used as messengers, the latter being especially useful for attending the sultan during confidential moments.
Hidden through it was from the eyes of his subjects, the Seraglio was in fact but the outer shell of an inner, even more closely guarded private world, the harem. The Arabic word 'harem' means 'forbidden,' and the sultan's harem was forbidden to all but the sultan himself, his guests, the women who lived there and the eunuchs who guarded them. It could be approached from the Seraglio only by passing down a single passage through four locked doors, two of iron and two of bronze. Each door was guarded day and night by eunuchs who kept the only keys. At the end of this passage lay an intricate maze of luxurious apartments, corridors, staircases, secret doors, courtyards, gardens and pools. Because many rooms were surrounded on all sides by other rooms, light filtered down through stained glass in skylight domes and windows. In the royal apartments, the walls and ceilings were covered with intricate patterns in blue and green Nicean tiles. The floors were spread with glowing Turkish carpets and low sofas on which the inhabitants could sit cross-legged while sipping Turkish coffee and eating fresh fruit. In rooms where the sultan might wish to speak confidentially to an advisor, there were fountains so that the sound of running water would keep the wrong ears from hearing what was said.
The harem was a closed world of veils, gossip, intrigue and—at any moment of the sultan's choosing—sex. But it was also a world rigidly ruled by protocol and rank. Until the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, sultans had married; the Moslem religion permitted them four wives. But Suleiman's wife, a red-haired Russian woman named Roxelana, had interfered so much in matters of state that thereafter Ottoman sultans did not marry. The sultan's mother, therefore, became the ruler of the harem. The Turks believed that 'heaven lay under the feet of the mother,' that no matter how many wives or concubines a man might take, he had only one mother, who held a unique place in his life. Sometimes, when the sultan was young or weak, his mother issued orders in his name directly to the grand vizier. Beneath the sultan's mother ranked the mother of the heir apparent if there was one, and then the other women who had borne the sultan's male children. Finally, there came the odalisques, or concubines. All of these women, technically, at least, were slaves, and, as Moslem women could not be enslaved, it followed that all the harem women were foreigners: Russians, Circassians, Venetians, Greeks. From the end of the sixteenth century, most came from the Caucasus,
because the blue-eyed women of that region were renowned for beauty. Once she passed through the harem doors, a woman remained for life. There were no exceptions.
On entering the harem, usually at the age of ten or eleven, a girl was rigorously schooled in feminine charm by experienced older women. Fully trained, the hopeful girl awaited the moment of preliminary approval when the sultan tossed a handkerchief at her feet and she became 'gozde' ('in the eye'). Not every gozde reached the supreme moment when she was summoned and became 'ikbal' ('bedded'), but those who did received their own
