Studies in Ottoman Naval History and Maritime Geography 9781463226039

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Studies in Ottoman Naval History and Maritime Geography

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

102

A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Studies in Ottoman Naval History and Maritime Geography

Svat Soucek

The Isis Press, Istanbul

0ór0ÍaS preSS 2011

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright© 2011 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 2008 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2011

K-

ISBN 978-1-61719-150-3

Printed in the United States of America

Svat S o u c c k is a g r a d u a t e of the C h a r l e s U n i v e r s i t y , P r a g u e ; E c o l e N a t i o n a l e d e s L a n g u e s O r i e n t a l e s , P a r i s : C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y , N e w Y o r k . T a u g h t at t h e U n i v e r s i t y of P e n n s y l v a n i a . P h i l a d e l p h i a , and the U n i v e r s i t y of M i c h i g a n , A n n Arbor. Published books: K o n s t a n t i n M i h a i l o v i c , Memoirs of a Janissary, t r a n s l a t e d by B. S t o l z , h i s t o r i c a l c o m m e n t a r y and notes by S. S o u c e k , A n n A r b o r , D e p a r t m e n t of Slavic L a n g u a g e s a n d C u l t u r e s , U n i v e r s i t y of M i c h i g a n , 1 9 7 5 ; V . V . B a r t o l d , An Historical Geography of Iran, translated by S. S o u c e k , P r i n c e t o n University Press, 1984; Piri Reis and Turkish Mapmakini> after Columbus, L o n d o n , The N o u r F o u n d a t i o n in a s s o c i a t i o n w i t h O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1 9 9 6 ; A History of Inner Asia, C a m b r i d g e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s . 2 0 0 0 ; The History of the Persian Gulf., C o s t a M e s a : Mazda Publishers, 2008.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

7

"Piri Reis and Siileyman the Magnificent," in Suleyman

the

Second

and His Time; ed. Halil Inalcik and Cemal Kafadar. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993, pp. 343-52

31

"Piri Reis and the Ottoman Discovery of the Great Discoveries", in Studia Islamica, LXXIX (1994), p. 121 -42

41

"Piri Reis and the Persian G u l f ' , lecture given at the "Uluslararasi Piri Reis S e m p o z y u m u " organized by the Turkish

Admiralty,

Istanbul, 27-29 September 2004 "The Rise of the Barbarossas in North Africa", in

Archivum

Ottomanicum,

57

3 (1971), pp. 238-250

66

"Ottoman naval policy in the Indian Ocean", X. Tarih Kongresi'nden ayribasim, Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu basimevi, 1993

79

"The Portuguese and the Turks in the Persian G u l f ' , lecture given at the Internation Conference "The Portuguese in Hormuz", held at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Paris, 15-17 March 2007

83

"Naval Aspects of the Ottoman Conquest of Rhodes, Cyprus and Crete", in Studia Islamica, 98/99 (2004), pp. 219-261

113

"The Strait of Chios and the Kaptanpa§a's navy" in Halcyon Days in Crete IV. The Kapudan

Pasha, His Office and His Domain.

A

Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 7-9 January 2000, ed. by Elizabeth Zachariadou. Rethymnon: Crete University Press, 2002, pp. 141-63

147

"The Ottoman Merchant Marine", in Studies in Honour

of

Clifford

Edmund Bosworth, ed. Carole Hillenbrand. Vol. 2: The

Sultan's

Turret: Studies in Persian and Turkish Culture. Brill Academic Publishers, 1999, pp. 386-96 "Certain Types of Ships in Ottoman-Turkish Terminology" Turcica,

171

v. 7 (1975), pp. 233-49 "Mina", Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 n d edition, v. 7 (1993), pp. 66-72.

181 195

" M i l a h a " , Encyclopaedia 46 50

of Islam,

2 n d ed., v. 7 (1993), pp. 40, 213

6

NAVAL

HISTORY

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MARITIMK

GEOGRAPHY

Ottoman Cartography (original text of an article whose abbreviated version is forthcoming iri the Dictionnaire de l'Histoire Ottomane)

225

"A Czech nobleman's pilgrimage to the Holy 1 .and: 1493", in Turks, Hungarians and Kipchaks: A Festschrift in Honor of Tibor Halasi-Kun (Journal of Turkish Studies: Tiirkliik Bilgisi Araftirmalari, v. 8, 1984, pp. 233-240) "Harant's Putowanj and Ali's Halat al-Qahire: a Comparison", in Festschrift Andreas Tietze zum 70. Geburtstag, Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 76. Band, 1986, pp. 263-68

239

251

MAPS: The Ottoman Maritime Frontier in 1512

30

The Ottoman Maritime Frontier in 1574

112

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the introduction is to briefly sketch the background of the events discussed in greater detail in the articles included in this collection. The Ottoman Empire became a naval power in the course of the 15lh century, by virtue of both geographical and historical circumstances. Its political center of gravity was in an eminently maritime area - at the juncture of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, with an expanding territory lined by long coasts studded with harbors and anchorages. It also fell heir to a reservoir of seafaring populations, an amalgam of earlier autochthonous mariners and the more recently arrived pre-Ottoman Turks who during the 14lh century had engaged the sea with their coastal conquests and gazi-corsair1

forays throughout the

Aegean. 2 The Ottomans were the first Turks to cross the Dardanelles and start expanding their territory on the European side of the Straits. After its transitory possession in 1354 they definitively seized Gallipoli in 1376 and began to develop it as their premier naval base. Gallipoli retained this status for the duration of the Ottoman Empire, although in terms of size and importance it was overshadowed by the imperial arsenal founded by Selim I at Kasimpa§a in 1518. The first naval war fought by the Ottoman Turks was with Venice in 1415-1416. It took place off Gallipoli in the Dardanelles, and Venetians were the winners. The clash had occurred through a misunderstanding, and the Turkish defeat was not catastrophic. The goals of the Serenissima were moderate: a return to peace and restoration of the status quo rather any conquests or drastic concessions was what she wanted. Barring a few exceptions, this attitude was to persist throughout the long history of the Republic's relations wiih the Ottoman Empire. The 1415-1416 war with Venice was also the only one which the Ottoman Empire lost; all the others, with a few partial exceptions, ended with peace treaties which whittled away the Republic's once extensive maritime empire in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. The second Turco-Venetian war lasted from 1463 to 1479 and ended with the session of the Republic's several insular possessions in the Aegean to the Ottoman Empire.

' Gazi is the Turkish f o r m of the Arabic ghazi, a M u s l i m engaged in the holy war, gaza. ^ A l r e a d y at the end of t h e l l t h century there had been a brief p r e c e d e n t when the S e l j u k prince f a k a Bey and his gazis established a short-lived principality on the A e g e a n coast and the island of Lesbos (Midilli).

8

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in 1499, the third T u r c o - V e n e t i a n war broke out, and by the time of its conclusion in 1502 victorious T u r k e y had gained the status of a m a j o r naval power. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512) launched this war because he knew the time was right for c o m p l e t i n g the conquest of G r e e c e which his father, Mehmet II. had achieved three decades earlier. T h e conqueror of C o n s t a n t i n o p l e had o \ e r w h e l m e d that country in 1460-1461, and had followed this up in 1470 by adding the Venetian-held island of Euboea to his expanding empire. Several ports and coastal fortifications, however, escaped the Turkish conquest, and these all f o r m e d part of the V e n e t i a n maritime d o m a i n s ; the most important were L e p a n t o , Navarino, M o d o n , Koron, and Nauplia. B a y e z i d ' s c a m p a i g n gained the first f o u r for the O t t o m a n s ; only Nauplia had to wait until its turn c a m e in 1540. It does not appear that V e n i c e expected to be attacked when a large Turkish fleet under Kuijiik Davud Pa§a sailed f r o m Gallipoli in M a y 1499. Since her d e f e a t in the 1463-1479 war, the republic had r e f r a i n e d f r o m initiating any conflict with the O t t o m a n E m p i r e ; for trade, not territorial expansion, was what she w ished to pursue in her relations with the mightyM u s l i m neighbor. Instead, it was the K n i g h t s of St. John at R h o d e s w h o feared they might be the target, and thus appealed for help to France, their strongest link in Europe. On the other hand, V e n i c e ' s policy w a s different in Italy; there, she participated in what was b e c o m i n g a prolonged and shifting mosaic of E u r o p e a n alliances and wars over territory and influence. This reflected the disunity of Christian Europe in the face of Muslim expansion, a disunity that w a s gaining d r a m a t i c proportions. V e n i c e and France w e r e m o m e n t a r y allies who divided the conquered Duchy of Milan between them, with the tacit approval of I'ope A l e x a n d e r VI Borgia. T h e opposition this provoked on the part of others, including the Habsburg e m p e r o r Maximilian I and the King of Naples Frederick IV, generated a string of e n v o y s to the O t t o m a n sultan with suggestions that an attack on V e n i c e w o u l d not be u n w e l c o m e ; s o m e even offered financial support. Bayezid II w a s willing to oblige, both on account of this opportune political configuration and because of a lingering apprehension: the king of France Charles VIII had been k n o w n to be planning a crusade, and Bayezid feared that Louis XII might do likewise, especially if he continued his predecessor's designs on the kingdom of Naples as a step toward that goal. 1 Venice wished to preserve peace with the Ottoman Empire, and then to quickly restore it once war had broken out. She had an additional reason for accommodation or even cooperation with the Porte. Their c o m m o n

interests

' Louis may have been using tht crusade as a convenient pretext f o r dividing up this k i n g d o m , with Ferdinand II of A r a g o n . as many suspected and as happened in 1501-1504.

INTRODUCTION

9

were threatened by the Portuguese irruption into the Indian Ocean and the l o o m i n g deflection of the spice trade f r o m the Near Eastern-Mediterranean route to the a l l - m a r i t i m e C a p e of G o o d H o p e - A t l a n t i c route, and the Serenissima w a s sending messages of alarm on this matter to the S u b l i m e Porte. Thus after the surrender of Lepanto to the Turks, V e n i c e dispatched an e n v o y , Luigi M a v e n t i , to Istanbul in the hope that by a c k n o w l e d g i n g this loss she might persuade Ihe sultan to end the hostilities, but Bayezid replied: "If you wish to m a k e peace with me, you must surrender M o d o n , Koron, and Nauplion in the Morea, and send us an annual tribute". T h e war lasted three years, but the principal events occurred in 1499 and 1500. In 1499, Lepanto was conquered; the next year, the s a m e fate befell M o d o n , Koron, and N a v a r i n o ; several points on the Dalmatian coast, with D u r a z z o as the most valuable prize, were also seized f r o m Venice. While in the first two years the republic faced her adversary alone, in 1501 and 1502 a crusade was organized by the Pope. Besides the papal states and Venice herself, Spain and France joined the campaign. T h e crusade achieved little. T h e only noteworthy e f f o r t m a d e by V e n i c e ' s allies w a s an ultimately unsuccessful French siege of Mytilerie, the fortified chief town and port of the island of Lesbos, in 1501. T h e choice of this target was characteristic of the divergence of interests plaguing such alliances: the Venetians had suggested, as the target, the strategically important harbor of Valona, an O t t o m a n possession since 1417, but the French preferred Mytilene, a port and island " m o u l t riche, fertile et prenable". 1 T h e peace treaty that the t w o original adversaries signed on 14 D e c e m b e r 1502 ratified all the gains made by the Turks, with one concession to Venice, namely the recovery of the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea (Venetian possession, 1350-1479, 1502-1797). T h e war of 1 4 9 9 - 1 5 0 2 d e m o n s t r a t e d the g r o w i n g strength of the Ottoman navy. T h e T u r k s won their first m a j o r battle against the great naval p o w e r that w a s V e n i c e when the t w o o p p o n e n t s clashed off the island of Prodano/Proti (named Burak adasi by the Turks, after Burak Reis, the heroic gazi-corsair w h o perished in this battle) in A u g u s t 1499. It w a s this victory that enabled the O t t o m a n fleet to proceed north toward L e p a n t o , already besieged f r o m the l a n d w a r d side; o n c e he saw the a p p r o a c h i n g fleet, the V e n e t i a n g o v e r n o r surrendered. N o t e w o r t h y a l s o was the participation of Turkish gaz/-corsairs, with Kemal Reis as the most prominent a m o n g these. In 1495 Sultan Bayezid had s u m m o n e d him to assume an official position in government service, creating a precedent that would have beneficial and lasting ' Jean d ' A u t o n , Chroniques de Louis XII, ed. R. de M a u l d e L a Clavière, v. 2, Paris 1981, p. 156, cited by N. Vatin, " L e Siège de Mitilène (1501)", in Turcica 21-23 (1992), p. 4 3 7 , and reprinted in Analecta Isisiana, no. 5 1 , N. Vatin, Les Ottomans et l'occident (XVe-XVIe siècles), Istanbul 2001, p. 9.

10

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AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

c o n s e q u e n c e s f o r the O t t o m a n n a v y . A l t h o u g h D a v u d Pa§a, a m a n of t h e p a l a c e e s t a b l i s h m e n t , had the overall c o m m a n d of the O t t o m a n fleet in this c a m p a i g n , K e m a l Reis w a s not o n l y t h e m o s t e f f e c t i v e c o m m a n d e r in t h e battle, but as a gazi-corsair he w a s o n e of those l e a d i n g f i g u r e s in the O t t o m a n m a r i t i m e e x p a n s i o n a n d naval history w h o s e c o n t r i b u t i o n s w e r e m a r k e d by their i n i t i a t i v e a n d s t r a t e g i c v i s i o n . T h e role of K e m a l R e i s i n d e e d w e n t b e y o n d t h e actual f i g h t i n g role, f o r he acted as a kind of c o n s u l t a n t to t h e s u l t a n , a d v i s i n g him w h i c h places to c o n q u e r . K o r o n and M o d o n , c a l l e d by h i m t h e " t w o e y e s of V e n i c e " , w e r e at t h e t o p of a list that a l s o i n c l u d e d p l a c e s like R h o d e s and C o r f u . A n o t h e r a s p e c t of this role, i n v i s i b l e on t h e o f f i c i a l level b u t p e r h a p s e v e n m o r e c r u c i a l , w a s the f a c t that in the t h r e e d e c a d e s of t h e i r c a r e e r s as s e a f a r i n g gazis,

K e m a l R e i s a n d his T u r k i s h

c o m p a n i o n s ventured farther w e s t into the central and western M e d i t e r r a n e a n , f a m i l i a r i z i n g t h e m s e l v e s with t h e c o n d i t i o n s a n d o p p o r t u n i t i e s t h e r e . T h e g r o w i n g p r e s e n c e of the T u r k i s h m a r i t i m e gazis

a l o n g t h e c o a s t s of N o r t h

A f r i c a , e s p e c i a l l y those of T u n i s i a a n d A l g e r i a , p r e p a r e d the g r o u n d f o r t h e next g e n e r a t i o n of T u r k s w h o . led by H a y r e d d i n B a r b a r o s s a , w o u l d in t h e r e i g n s of S e l i m I ( 1 5 1 2 - 1 =¡20) a n d S t i l e y m a n t h e M a g n i f i c e n t ( 1 5 2 0 - 1 5 6 6 ) s t a v e off the extension of the reconquista

into N o r t h A f r i c a , and instead play

a c a t a l y t i c role in i n c o r p o r a t i n g this t e r r i t o r y i n t o t h e O t t o m a n F i n a l l y , a m o n g t h e T u r k i s h m a r i t i m e gazis

Hmpire.

led by K e m a l R e i s w a s his

n e p h e w Piri R e i s , w h o on the b a s i s of t h i s e x p e r i e n c e later i n v a l u a b l e c a r t o g r a p h i c and h y d r o g r a p h i c w o r k s (the Kitab-i

Bahriye

produced and t w o

world m a p s ) that gave the O t t o m a n m a r i t i m e and naval a c h i e v e m e n t s a special stature and international acclaim. A f t e r t h e 1499-1502 w a r w i t h V e n i c e , t h e O t t o m a n s u l t a n ' s a t t e n t i o n t u r n e d e a s t w a r d and s o u t h w a r d . T h e w a r with E g y p t o v e r the p o s s e s s i o n of f u k u r o v a ( C i l i c i a ) had e n d e d in 1491, and n o w their r e l a t i o n s h i p t o o k a totally d i f f e r e n t tack: the M a m l u k s w e r e g r a p p l i n g with a n e w a d v e r s a r y , P o r t u g a l , and Bayczid w a s s e n d i n g logistical h e l p t o t h e m - both s h i p b u i l d i n g materials and expert seamen - to f o u n d and staff an arsenal at Suez, and to lead their f l e d g l i n g f l e e t in w a r against the E u r o p e a n intruders. M e a n w h i l e K e m a l R e i s a n d his n e p h e w Piri Reis with their c o m p a n i o n s did not w h o l l y a b a n d o n t h e i r original p u r s u i t of m a r i t i m e gaza indirect e v i d e n c e in the Kilabi Bahriye

( h o l y w a r ) in t h e M e d i t e r r a n e a n , as suggests.

B a y e z i d died in 1.5! 2, o n e y e a r a f t e r t h e d e a t h of K e m a l R e i s . O n t h e m i l i t a r y l e v e l , a l t h o u g h land w a r s in the B a l k a n s , o n t h e f r o n t i e r w i t h t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e ' s m a i n t a r g e t . Christian E u r o p e , r e m a i n e d t h e leitmotif the imperial

and religious expansion

of t h e s u l t a n s in t h e i r

of

empire's

p r i m e period, Bayezid is r e m e m b e r e d chiefly for extending or consolidating t h e

INTRODUCTION empire's maritime frontier in campaigns in which the fleet played a critical role - the 1484 conquest of Kilia and Akkerman on the northwestern coast of the Black Sea, and that of Lepanto, Navarino, Modon and Koron in 14991502. These victories had great economic as well as strategic significance. Customs duties on trade passing through these ports brought the sultan welcome revenues, and the ports could also function as naval bases. The conquest of Kilia and Akkerman reinforced the process of turning the Black Sea into an Ottoman lake, while that of Lepanto and the other three placed the empire not only on the coasts of the Ionian and Adriatic Seas, but also closer to the critical passage between the eastern and western Mediterranean. These victories were made possible by the energetic expansion of the Turkish navy undertaken by Bayezid II. The resources of the empire dwarfed those of Venice and continued to grow with its expanding coastline in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, multiplying the number of shipbuilding sites, some backed by timber-rich hinterland. Thus in terms of geo-strategic, material and human resources, the Ottoman Empire would soon surpass any other Mediterranean power. By 1512, the terminal year of Bayezid's reign's, the empire's coastal frontage was longer than that of this sea's any other riparian state. Leaving aside these gains, it may be worthwhile to examine the nature of the Turco-Venetian war of 1499-1502 in terms of its purpose and ultimate effects. A striking and many-faceted imbalance between the two adversaries faces us here. An already huge, primarily land-focused warrior empire challenges a small, essentially maritime and commercial republic, in a dispute over what at first looks like almost no territory at all - just a few fortified ports. Their economic and strategic value was considerable, however, and was the main reason why the Serenissima wanted to retain them. Venice needed them and used them as vital stations in her commerce spanning much of the eastern Mediterranean, and as bases for her fleets protecting this seaborne trade that was the economic lifeblood of the republic. By 1499, she had learned the lesson gained from the 1463-1479 war that it was wiser not to provoke her mighty neighbor, and pcacc with Turkey was henceforth her lasting preference. In contrast, the Ottoman sultan had no need for peace if the circumstances allowed him to resume the empire's march forward, and his father's conquest of Greece remained unfinished as long as Venice still possessed those valuable ports. The war was a completion of the land conquests that had taken place four decades previously, and the Turkish victory gave the Ottoman navy a chance to strengthen its position near a crucial intersection of the Mediterranean. So what about Bayezid's wish to develop the splendid strategic sites won in 1499 and 1500 as permanent bases for effective naval control of

12

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the Adriatic, to use them as launching pads for penetration into the central Mediterranean, and to turn the eastern half of this sea into an Ottoman lake? T o have his realm replace Venice also as a commercial seaborne empire? There is no evidence of such a policy. The strategic and economic dimension went as far as a d e s i r e to c o m p l e t e territorial c o n q u e s t s and to b e n e f i t f r o m the lucrative nature of the conquered ports, but the Ottoman sultan did not take the extra steps that would have turned his realm into a seaborne merchant empire - nor did any of his successors. A glance at a historical m a p shows that by 1537 the size of the tricontinental O t t o m a n Kmpire, as well as the length of its maritime frontier, had d o u b l e d within one-and-a-half generations, since the end of the last Venetian war in 1502. T h e sultans Selim I and S u l e y m a n the M a g n i f i c e n t conquered Syria and Egypt (1517), Belgrade (1521), Rhodes (1522), the greater part of H u n g a r y (1526), and Iraq (1535), and the gaz/'-corsair

Hayreddin

Barbarossa established Ottoman control over Algiers between 1518 and 1529. T h i s phenomenal e x p a n s i o n also meant that with the e x c e p t i o n of southeasternmost Spain and Morocco, and a transitory loss of Tunisia (1535-1574), almost the totality of Mediterranean coasts inhabited by Muslims came under Ottoman rule. The e m p i r e ' s naval power had grown exponentially with further integration of gazi corsairs into the sultan's n a v y , the generation of t h o s e corsairs following Kemal Reis who took the center stage of the imperial fleet with Hayreddin Barbarossa. T his corsair-turned-statesman and admiral rendered the e m p i r e invaluable service on two levels. Seizing power in Algiers and installing his own rule there, he presented it to Sultan Selim in 1518 as a new p r o v i n c e of the e m p i r e ; and b e c o m i n g kaptanpa^a

or c o m m a n d e r of the

Ottoman navy under Suley man the Magnificent in 1533, he brought Ottoman sea power to a dominant position in the entire Mediterranean, a position that would last until the battle of Lepanto in 1571.' There were several reasons for this success: in the first place, the quality of seamen of H a y r e d d i n ' s m o l d , men hardened in the searing adventure of the maritime gaza\

secondly, the

material and human resources of the O t t o m a n E m p i r e , u n m a t c h e d by any single European power; and lastly, the priceless advantage of unified c o m m a n d along the e m p i r e ' s maritime frontier, stretching f r o m the C r i m e a to western Algeria. These assets should be projected against their reverse, the disunity of Christian Europe. Not onl\ did it lack unity; the recurrent wars between the Habsburg Empire and France meant that even the third of the Mediterranean f r o n t that r e m a i n e d Christian w a s paralyzed by this internecine struggle, relegating defense against Muslim expansion to an uncertain and shifting place

' Or well beyond it, some historians would say, basing their view on the re-conquest of T u n i s in 1574.

INTRODUCTION

13

on this baffling chessboard. Nevertheless, when in 1537 the efforts of Pope Pius III (1534-1549) to effect what should have been a ten-year truce between Charles V and François I seemed to have succeeded, he managed to cobble together an alliance against the Turks. Its members were, besides the Papal States, the Hispano-Sicilian segment of the Habsburg

Empire,

Portugal, Genoa, and a reluctant Venice, while France was of course absent. On the Turkish side, Hayreddin advised the sultan to seize the initiative by conquering the island of Corfu, thereby completing the Ottoman hold on the eastern side of the strategically vital Strait of Otranto. In September 1537 the moment was propitious, for the allied fleet under Andrea Doria had withdrawn to Messina and other bases farther west, leaving Venice to face the assault alone. The siege was graced by the presence of Siileyman the Magnificent, who camped with his land troops on the shore facing the island. The island was easily occupied, but the fortified chief city and port put up a stiff resistance. The Venetian navy did not dare to engage the Turkish fleet, which was commanded by the best seaman of the age. After a siege of some three weeks, the enterprise had come close to succeeding, when the sultan ordered withdrawal despite the protestations of his admiral that the fortress was on the verge of falling. The first stage of the 1537-1538 war thus concluded with a Venetian success, albeit a defensive one. The real naval confrontation with the alliance occurred in 1538, when between 25 and 28 September a Christian fleet composed of Spanish, Portuguese, Papal, Genoese, and Venetian units, under the command of Andrea Doria, clashed with the Turkish fleet led by Hayreddin Barbarossa. It happened between Prevesa, a fortress on the Greek coast, and the island of Lefkas (Santa Maura) some six kilometers farther south. The Turkish fleet, although smaller, won. The victory should be attributed to Hayreddin's brilliant leadership and the quality of the Turkish mariners, but also to the chronic ailment of Christian alliances - in this case the uncertain cooperation between Andrea Doria, commander of the Spanish contingent, and Grimani, captain of the Venetian ships. In 1570, the Ottoman Empire was basking in the conviction, largely shared by friend and foe alike, that it was the strongest naval power in the Mediterranean. Three conquests and several spectacular cruises of the imperial fleet as a player in Catholic Europe's power politics instilled respect for the

14

N A V A L

H I S T O R Y

A N D

M A R I T I M E

G E O G R A P H Y

Turks and fear of them throughout the Christian community.' The T urkish success continued to be abetted by the c h r o n i c a i l m e n t of E u r o p e a n Christendom: not only was Catholic Hurope divided as ever, but France had even become, since the 1530s, Turkey's ally, and would remain so for a long time. The French sovereign may have flattered himself with the title "The Most Christian King", but this did not prevent François I from seeking Siileyman the M a g n i f i c e n t ' s alliance in his quarrels with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The alliance led in 1543 to the unprecedented appearance of the donanma-yi kaptanpaça

hiimayun,

the O t t o m a n imperial f l e e t led by its

Hayreddin Barbarossa, along the coasts of western Italy and

southern France with demonstrations off Genoa and Nice as an ally of France; this fleet would then spend the winter of 1543-1544 in the harbor of Toulon. The Franco-Turkish friendship continued under France's next monarch, Henry ill, when in 1558 the Ottoman fleet under Piyale Pa§a cruised through the whole expanse of the western Mediterranean, with a descent on the Balearic island of Minorca as the most conspicuous of the raids undertaken during the cruise. Throughout these three decades Venice and Turkey lived in mutual peace. Both appreciated the lively trade between them: the republic, although deprived by the last war of several valuable key outposts of her maritime empire, still owned pari of it - Corfu, Crete and Cyprus being the most prominent components; bul what she valued most were agreements with the Porte that allowed her to carry on trade throughout the Ottoman possessions. Venice had accepted the dominant position of the Turkish navy in the eastern Mediterranean as a fact she had to live with. T h e one persistent trouble was piracy, both Muslim and Christian - and of several hues, each of which demanded a special approach on the part of peaceful traders and travelers. By 1570, the Muslim corsairs of Algiers and their Christian counterparts of Malta had gained fame (or notoriety) as the most efficient and dangerous. Each side claimed a lofty religious cause to legitimate its livelihood, and in each case a premier Mediterranean power made an attempt to eliminate it. The Emperor Charles V attacked Algiers with a large fleet as early as 1541, but failed;

' T h e reader may point out a contradiction in this argument, and it is a glaring one. If there w a s fear of the Turks throughout the Christian c o m m u n i t y , how could the Pope, the Holy R o m a n E m p e r o r and lesser princes send hints to the Porte that an attack against their Christian rivals would be w e l c o m e ? How could the Catholic King of France b e c o m e T u r k e y ' s ally against the great c h a m p i o n of the Catholic religion, Charles V ? T h e a n s w e r is that there w a s fear on the popular level, and a latent c o m m i t m e n t to unite and fight the T u r k ; this, h o w e v e r , w a s virtually paralyzed by t w o factors: the elites were f a r more c o m m i t t e d to f i g h t i n g each other in their dynastic and feudal wars, and concurrently with the a p o g e e of the O t t o m a n e x p a n s i o n during the 1 6 t h and 1 7 t h centuries, the Catholic - Protestant split took center stage on the ideological level. Both factors combined to relegate war with the O t t o m a n Empire to a place of secondary importance.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

15

Suleyman the Magnificent's fleet under Piyale Pa§a besieged Malta in 1565 and failed as well. Both sovereigns, the Habsburg and the Ottoman, may have considered these Mediterranean targets important, but none the less secondary. For Charles, the feudal and dynastic war with France, and for Philip II - his son and successor on the Spanish throne - suppression of the heretical Protestants in Germany, the Netherlands and France (and, eventually, the "Great Enterprise" against Elizabeth I of England), took center stage, absorbing their kingdoms' major resources; for Suleyman, the holy war in Hungary against Charles's brother Ferdinand I, and curbing the schismatic Safavids in Iran had a similar priority. In this welter of multifaceted conflicts and preoccupations, Venice endeavored to preserve peace with the Ottoman Empire and carry on her business of overseas trade and ownership of two colonies, Crete and Cyprus. It was thus an unpleasant though not quite unexpected surprise when in April 1570 she received a formal demand from the Porte that the latter island be ceded to the Ottoman Empire. The Signoria refused, and a war broke out that passed through two phases: Cyprus itself, whose conquest was achieved with the surrender of Famagusta in August 1571; and the war of the Holy League, which led to the defeat of the Turkish fleet by that of the Christian alliance a month later at Lepanto. The alliance undertook further campaigns in the following year, but disunity thwarted their effective realization, so that in the end Venice was facing the Ottoman Empire alone and had to accept a peace treaty which acknowledged the loss of Cyprus and "looked as if the Turks had won the battle of Lepanto". A large segment of modern historiography concurs, and views the Christian victory as an event without importance. This opinion appears to be supported by the astoundingly fast rebuilding of the Ottoman fleet after its destruction at Lepanto, and the recovery of Tunis, occupied by the Spaniards under Don Juan of Austria in 1573, in the course of the following year when the new fleet under Sinan Pa§a expelled them and reestablished Ottoman rule over this strategically important North African country. In other words, the Battle of Lepanto notwithstanding, the dominant position of the Ottoman Empire as a naval power in the Mediterranean would seem to have been reestablished or even enhanced during the reign of Selim II (1566-74), thanks to the conquest of Cyprus and the re-conquest of Tunis. The reality may have been more complex and quite different, however. The rebuilding of the Turkish fleet within a year after Lepanto demonstrated the vast resources and organizational genius of the Ottoman Empire, but not the fleet's effectiveness, for it was never again tested in full-fledged naval battles with major opponents. New confrontations with an allied fleet did not occur, because the Christian adversaries' disunity led to the virtual

16

NAVAL H I S T O R Y AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

abandonment of the eastern Mediterranean to the Ottomans. Similarly, the reconquest of Tunis took place without any real clash, for Don Juan had by then left with the major part of the Spanish fleet, so that the Turks easily reduced the Spanish garrison in Goletta and occupied the city. Tunis had the potential to be developed as a first-rate naval base and a lucrative emporium at the strategic crossroads of the Mediterranean, but again the Porte showed no interest in using this unique site for such purposes. 1574, the year of the reconquest, while seemingly

marking Ottoman

naval

mastery of

the

Mediterranean, was in fact the closing date of its effective presence west of the Sicilian Narrows. A special and equally revealing significance in this context can be seen in the failure of the 1565 siege of Malta, home of the militant corsair knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who, as Maltese Knights, became a scourge of Muslim shipping in the central and eastern Mediterranean. The island's conquest could have turned Malta from being a thorn in the Ottoman Hmpire's flank into a priceless link in a string of naval bases, from Navarino to Tunis, guarding the eastern Mediterranean and turning it into an Ottoman lake. Its conquest admittedly would have been arduous, but should have been possible if the empire had mounted an effort comparable to that made in the case of C\prus. The fact that the attempt was never repeated is symptomatic of the Porte's lack of interest in this projection of imperial strategy. The peace that marked Ottoman-Venetian relations between 1573 and 1645 coincided with the irruption of the North Atlantic maritime powers chiefly England, Holland, and France - into what had previously been the two states' almost exclusive maritime domain. This was a complex phenomenon, with implications on several levels. Much was new: the types of ship, their armaments, naval strategy, and commercial policy. In all these respects, the Europeans from the North Atlantic overshadowed the Venetians and the Turks, and their superiority would only grow. Venice saw her commercial dominance in the eastern Mediterranean surpassed by that of the newcomers, and the Ottoman Empire recognized them as commercial partners and mariners whose naval power would make Ihem both unbeatable and exploitable in the 18l century. Nevertheless, in the I7111 century Venice and Turkey still pursued their time-honored goals: seaborne trade and retention of the remnants of her colonial empire in the cast of the former, expansion of Ottoman territory in the case of the latter. When in 1645 preparations in Istanbul for a major naval campaign were reported b\ the republic's bailo, the Serenissima's government hoped that some other place was be the target, preferably Malta. Crete, however, was the Porte's choice. The island was easily overrun by the Turkish

INTRODUCTION

17

troops, but the fortified capital, Candia (Heraklion) offered a resistance that lasted until 1669. This 25-year defense, which amazed Europe and elicited her grudging admiration, could not have persisted if the Turkish navy had retained at least some of its erstwhile prowess. Instead, the war of 1645-1669 demonstrated the opposite of what the war of 1499-1502 had done: it signaled the end of the Ottoman Empire's status as a major naval power. The war was also significant in other respects. While the Cyprus campaign had goaded even a truncated part of Catholic Europe to form a Holy League, and thus still appeared as a confrontation between Christendom and Islam, no such thing happened this time. The religious dimension on the European side had shifted its emphasis toward the struggle between Reformation and Counterreformation, and the impact of the Thirty Years' War, still raging in 1645, vastly overshadowed the image of Venice as a Christian nation under attack by the Turk. Moreover, pragmatic considerations with respect to Turkey began to dominate the policies of the Atlantic powers, especially the Protestant ones. Trade took precedence over religion, and, like Venice, these new Europeans wanted to do business with the Ottoman Empire, not to fight it. It is significant that none of the Turkish wars that included naval confrontations involved any of the Atlantic powers, and that commercial shipping between them and Turkey continued even during the empire's wars with Venice or, later, with Russia. The following exception confirms this rule. The sympathy that Venice's heroic defense inspired in England made Oliver Cromwell allow Admiral Blake to destroy the Tunisian squadron, summoned by the Porte to join the war, at its anchorage in Porto Farina (Ghàr al-Milh) in 1655; the Protector forbade Blake, however, to proceed farther east to the Ottoman home waters, lest the trading privileges of the Levant Company be harmed. The laborious nature of Crete's conquest notwithstanding, the outcome raised the gigantic dimensions of the Ottoman Empire still one notch higher, and in theory at least, completed its mastery of the eastern Mediterranean. Had the Porte in 1669 decided not only to modernize its navy but also to expand and protect its mercantile marine, to invest the empire's resources in the commercial arena and emulate the western powers by supporting Turkish merchants engaged in seaborne trade, the history of the Mediterranean - and of the Ottoman Empire - might have taken a different course. The potential was, indeed, enormous. The maritime frontier extended over a vast expanse from the Crimea in the east to Egypt in the south and Algeria in the west. Moreover, the Porte, with its control of the Red Sea all the way to Yemen and Habe§ (northeastern Ethiopia), might have deemed the time right for re-engaging the Indian Ocean. A re-conquest of Aden (evacuated in 1630) would have been a

18

NAVAL

HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

g o o d w a y to start: if it had been a c c o m p a n i e d by a r e a f f i r m a t i o n of t h e O t t o m a n hold on B a s r a a n d the L a h s a c o a s t l i n e of t h e Persian G u l f , the O t t o m a n E m p i r e s h o u l d h a v e b e e n in a p o s i t i o n to d o w h a t E u r o p e ( n o w c h i e f l y H o l l a n d a n d E n g l a n d ) w a s d o i n g - f i g h t f o r a share of t h e lucrative O r i e n t trade, and f o u n d f a c t o r i e s that in d u e c o u r s e could h a v e e x p a n d e d into colonies. An extra dimension even favored the Turks there - they were M u s l i m s , like t h e m a j o r i t \ of the coastal p o p u l a t i o n s of w e s t e r n I n d i a a n d Indonesia. N o n e of that h a p p e n e d , h o w e v e r . Instead of trying to r e - c o n q u e r A d e n , t h e P o r t e set its m i n d on m a k i n g o n e m o r e a t t e m p t to c o n q u e r V i e n n a . T h e 1683 e f f o r t w a s s p e a r h e a d e d by the grand vizier Kara M u s t a f a Pa§a, b u r n i n g with a m b i t i o n to a c h i e v e w h a t the great S i i l e y m a n the M a g n i f i c e n t had f a i l e d to do, and p e r h a p s e v e n to push t h r o u g h the infidel c o n t i n e n t all t h e w a y to t h e R h i n e . 1 In the m i d s t of the c o m m e r c i a l r e v o l u t i o n a n d e x p a n s i o n of the 17 lh c e n t u r y s p e a r h e a d e d b\ E u r o p e ' s North A t l a n t i c p o w e r s , t h e gaza

thus

r e m a i n e d the O t t o m a n e l i t e ' s g u i d i n g goal. I n t e r n e c i n e w a r f a r e of c o u r s e kept r a c k i n g C h r i s t e n d o m itself, d i v i d e d as it w a s by religious s c h i s m s , d y n a s t i c q u a r r e l s , and t h e c o n c o m i t a n t territorial w a r s . Y e t this n i g h t m a r e did n o t p r e v e n t E u r o p e f r o m b e c o m i n g t h e c e n t e r of i n t e l l e c t u a l and s c i e n t i f i c p r o g r e s s , and f r o m e v o l v i n g into a c o n t i n e n t of nation-states that w e r e fiercely c o m p e t i t i v e on the e c o n o m i c and c o m m e r c i a l levels. C o m p e t i t i o n included the d o m a i n of seaborne trade and o v e r s e a s colonization. Against the b a c k g r o u n d of t h e rise of m o d e r n E u r o p e , the O t t o m a n p o l i c y w a s that of the odd man out, intent on p u r s u i n g a lost c a u s e : the m e d i e v a l gaza,

a n d t h e p r e s e r v a t i o n or

e x p a n s i o n of a religious e m p i r e no longer v i a b l e in the m o d e r n world. T h e O t t o m a n e n t e r p r i s e f a c i l i t a t e d P o p e I n n o c e n t X I ' s e f f o r t s to o r g a n i z e a H o l y L e a g u e against the l urks, and t h e w a r lasted sixteen years f r o m 1683 to 1699. T h e l e a g u e , f o r m e d in 1684, c o n s i s t e d of the H o l y S e e , t h e H a b s b u r g E m p i r e , Poland and V e n i c e ( n o t e w o r t h y is the fact that w i t h i n t h e c h r o n o l o g i c a l f r a m e u n d e r d i s c u s s i o n , this w a s t h e first a n d o n l y t i m e w h e n t h e S i g n o r i a d e c l a r e d w a r on the O t t o m a n E m p i r e - all the p r e v i o u s w a r s , as well as the final o n e that w o u l d take p l a c e in 1714-1718, w e r e started by t h e P o r t e ) ; in 1686 it w a s j o i n e d by Russia. T h e principal w a r theater w a s on land, a n d the d e f e a t at the gates of V i e n n a led to the first m a s s i v e T u r k i s h retreat on E u r o p e a n soil, Cor the O t t o m a n E m p i r e lost t h e greater part of its Hungarian territory. Venice occupied the Pelopponese, while t w o dramatic battles w e r e f o u g h t at sea fi>r the p o s s e s s i o n of C h i o s . T h e V e n e t i a n s 1

seized

D o r o t h y M. V a u g h a n , Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances, 1350-1700, Liverpool 1954, p. 268. " . . . H e w a s said nol only to have repeated B a y e z i d I ' s threat, that he would o n e day stable his horses in St. Peter's, but to intend, after capturing V i e n n a , to m a r c h on to the Rhine and match himself against ihe armies of Louis X I V . "

INTRODUCTION

19

this valuable island in late 1694, but its loss provoked a vigorous reaction in Istanbul, and the Porte made a strenuous effort to marshal its navy to confront the enemy. Naval victory reestablished Ottoman rule there, the only bright spot in the otherwise sorry course of the long war that wound up with the Peace of Karlowitz (1699). Several factors contributed to the Turkish success. One was the modernization of the fleet itself, which took place shortly before the outbreak of the war; another was the presence of a former Algerian corsair, Mezemorta Hiiseyin (later kaptanpa^a

of the imperial navy), who as

commander of the newly formed squadron of the sailing warship class outmaneuvered and defeated his Venetian opponent; and lastly the geo-strategic nature of the whole enterprise: again, the Venetians were at a considerable disadvantage, for Chios was even closer than Crete to Ottoman home bases on the Anatolian coast and the two arsenals of Gallipoli and Kasimpa§a. Despite the Turkish success at Chios, however, the overall naval confrontation between the two powers ended up in a draw, for the Turks failed to impose their mastery over the Aegean Sea and lost the Pelopponese with the valuable bases of Koron, Modon and Navarino, so triumphantly conquered two centuries earlier. Thus even the modernization of the Turkish navy and the presence of a very able North African captain did not manage to fully curb the navy of a weakening Venice in the Ottoman home waters. The elation at recovering Chios was dimmed by the Venetian conquest of the Pelopponese, whose loss might have been prevented had the Turkish navy passed from defense to offense. The best strategy would have been to shift the site of the confrontation to the Ionian and Adriatic Seas, where the Turks still possessed several excellent bases such as Lepanto, Prevesa, and Valona, but the Porte stopped short of using its navy in any such strategic way. In the contest with Venice, the main success consisted of recovering Chios as Ottoman territory, and the main grievance was the loss of the Pelopponese, which had similar status. Meanwhile the Porte paid only marginal attention to the latest spin-off of the Viennese enterprise, namely, war with Russia. The young tsar Peter joined the Holy League in 1686, for he saw here an opportunity to tackle a long-standing problem plaguing Russia on her southern frontier, the slave raids and exactions of the Crimean Tatars. The vision of this extraordinary monarch went farther, however. His goal was to reach the Black Sea and make Russia reap the dividends that would accrue from entering this channel, figuratively speaking, to the Mediterranean. The creation of a navy, conquest of the fortified port of Azov on the estuary of the Don River, and construction of a port and naval base on the waterfront of the Sea of Azov were the logical though modest first steps. In his time, they could not but be so, but they had validity as the foundations of things to come. A fleet was built in the wharves

20

NAVAL

HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

of V o r o n e z h on t h e D o n : A z o v w a s seized in a c o m b i n e d naval a n d l a n d o p e r a t i o n in 1697; and T a g a n r o g on the S e a of A z o v w a s f o u n d e d as t h e f i r s t R u s s i a n naval b a s e on the s o u t h e r n f r o n t i e r . T h e s e d e v e l o p m e n t s m a y h a v e a g g r i e v e d t h e T u r k s , but the d e g r e e of i m p o r t a n c e the P o r t e a s s i g n e d t h e m s t a y e d well b e l o w t h e loss of H u n g a r y

to t h e H a b s b u r g s a n d of

the

P e l o p p o n e s e to the V e n e t i a n s ; m o r e s p e c i f i c a l l y , the r e c o v e r y of C h i o s f r o m V e n i c e m a y h a v e f a r o u t w e i g h e d , in the P o r t e ' s e y e s , the loss of A z o v to Russia. T h e w a r of 1683-99, d i s a s t r o u s f o r t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e on l a n d , t h u s a l s o b r o u g h t a b o u t the first b r e a c h e s in its m a r i t i m e f r o n t i e r on the n o r t h . A d e c a d e later a new w a r with R u s s i a b r o k e out, in w h i c h t h e tsar himself took the c o m m a n d of his a r m y . Peter c r u s h e d his o p p o n e n t and T u r k e y ' s ally, t h e S w e d i s h king C h a r l e s XII. at the battle of P o l t a v a in 1709, a n d t w o years later he

advanced

through

the

Ukraine

into

Ottoman

territory

along

the

northwestern rim of the Black Sea. T h e tsar had overreached h i m s e l f , h o w e v e r , a n d w a s s u r r o u n d e d by

Turkish t r o o p s o n t h e b a n k s of t h e r i v e r P r u t in

M o l d a v i a . H e had to a c c e p t the return of A z o v to the O t t o m a n E m p i r e as the price of regaining his f r e e d o m . T h e situation w a s f o r m a l i z e d by t h e T r e a t y of E d i r n e in 1713. A t that point a new grand vizier, D a m a d Ali Pasa, c a m e to p o w e r , a n d his first a m b i t i o n w a s to r e c o v e r the P e l o p p o n e s e , so that in D e c e m b e r 1 7 1 4 t h e P o r t e d e c l a r e d w a r on V e n i c e . W h i l e O t t o m a n t r o o p s , i n v a d i n g t h e p e n i n s u l a f r o m m a i n l a n d G r e e c e , laid s i e g e to the c o a s t a l sites f r o m t h e l a n d w a r d side, the role of the navy w a s essential f o r the r e c o v e r y of f o r t i f i e d coastal points. It w a s the last w a r to be f o u g h t b e t w e e n the E m p i r e and t h e R e p u b l i c , and as a fitting finale it included battles b e t w e e n large f l e e t s entirely c o m p o s e d of s h i p s of the line. T h e s u m total of t h e s e battles f o u g h t f r o m 1715 to 1718 c o u l d be c o n s i d e r e d a d r a w , but that a l o n e b r o u g h t t h e T u r k s positive d i v i d e n d s by h a m s t r i n g i n g V e n e t i a n e f f o r t s to s u p p l y and s u p p o r t the b e l e a g u e r e d ports of the P e l o p p o n e s e . A s i d e f r o m t h e o c c u p a t i o n of t h e h i n t e r l a n d that b e g a n with the s e i z u r e of the i s t h m u s f o r t r e s s of C o r i n t h , t h e principal ports f r o m N a u p l i o n to N a v a r i n o w e r e all taken in t h e s u m m e r of 1715. H a d V e n i c e f o u g h t the O t t o m a n E m p i r e a l o n e , s h e m i g h t h a v e s o o n d e m o n s t r a t e d her characteristic p r a g m a t i s m and c o n c e d e d d e f e a t , r e s u m i n g the s e a b o r n e t r a d e that still w a s h e r p r i m a r y p u r s u i t . In 1716, h o w e v e r , t h e H a b s b u r g E m p i r e , f e a r i n g that the o u t c o m e m i g h t lead to O t t o m a n g a i n s in D a l m a t i a , j o i n e d the w a r as the r e p u b l i c ' s ally, a n d V e n i c e felt e n c o u r a g e d t o f i g h t o n , but to little avail. W i t h respect to r e g a i n i n g f r o m V e n i c e w h a t h a d been given u p at the P e a c e of K a r l o w i t z , Turkey attained h e r goal: the P e a c e of P a s s a r o w i t z , s i g n e d on 21 July 1718, r e i n t e g r a t e d t h e p e n i n s u l a i n t o t h e Ottoman Empire.

I NT R O D U C

H O N

21

The 1684-1699 and 1714-1718 wars are revealing in several respects. The modernization of the navy begun since the 1680s finally bore fruit, for the Turks proved able to face the Venetians no more as the underdogs they had been during the Cretan campaign; the reforms carried out by Mezemorta Hiiseyin Pa§a since the Chios campaign had further beneficial effects; and the participation of commanders and units from the North African regencies, when summoned to join the imperial fleet, continued to be invaluable. Although the Turks lost more ground on the Balkan front to the Austrians, their maritime frontier was restored to its peak length, and with the vibrant caravan trade to back it up, Ottoman seaborne trade should once again have had a chance to develop and grow, in partnership or competition with the European powers, from Venice to England. There is no evidence, however, that this kind of vision played a role in the Porte's decision to re-conquer the Pelopponese. Far from venturing into the maritime world beyond the range of the the imperial navy covering the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, the government as well as private commerce stayed inward-focused, and increasingly availed themselves of the more reliable and safer shipping offered by the Atlantic powers, especially the French, even in their home waters. 1 This could not but have an adverse effect on the naval dimension of Turkish military strength, which, despite repeated efforts at modernization, would keep relapsing into stagnation or decline. The return of Azov to the Ottoman Empire with the Peace Treaty of Edirne (1713) was accompanied by Peter the Great's abandonment of his efforts to establish a Russian naval presence on the Sea of Azov, and for the rest of his life he concentrated on the Baltic front. In spring 1736, however, Russia declared war on Turkey, or provoked her to take that step first (a matter of interpretation). The fact that this happened during the relatively placid reign of Anna (1730-1740), in contrast to the expansive reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, shows that Russia's push southward went beyond the question of personalities and was due to the inner energy of a state aware of geo-strategic challenges and possibilities. Azov was quickly seized, and Russian troops even took the Ottoman-held Ozi (Ochakov), stormed Orkapi (Perekop) and invaded the Crimean peninsula. Like Peter the Great in 1711, however, they had overreached themselves: problems of logistics compounded by long supply lines, Tatar harassment by means of a scorched earth policy, and outbreaks of plague forced the Russians to retreat; the only gain they retained was Azov, this time definitively. Meanwhile Austria joined the fray, but fared even less well than Russia. The Turks scored several victories, which

' S e e E d h e m E l d e m , " K o n t r o l u k a y b e t m e k : 18. yiizyilin ikinci y a r i s i n d a dogu A k d e n i z ' d e Osmanli varligi", in Ozlem Kumrular, ed., Turkler ve Deniz, Istanbul 2 0 0 7 , pp. 63-78.

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were then c r o w n e d by the recover) of Belgrade (T reaty of Belgrade, 1739). T h e return of this historic city , c o n q u e r e d by S i i l e y m a n t h e M a g n i f i c e n t in 1521, to the O t t o m a n fold m a y h a v e s e e m e d m o r e important than the loss of A z o v . There f o l l o w e d a g e n e r a t i o n - l o n g p e a c e , d u r i n g w h i c h t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e c a m e a notch c l o s e r to a c q u i r i n g the u n i q u e status of a great M u s l i m p o w e r that w a s a l s o a r e s p e c t e d a n d p o w e r f u l m e m b e r of t h e C h r i s t i a n E u r o p e a n c o m m u n i t y . A l t h o u g h it did not e m u l a t e its E u r o p e a n n e i g h b o r s to b e c o m e a s e a b o r n e t r a d i n g and colonial e m p i r e , and t h o u g h it still r e m a i n e d t o o alien to t h e o t h e r s i d e ' s c i v i l i z a t i o n to t a k e p a r t in its s c i e n t i f i c , t e c h n o l o g i c a l a n d , e v e n t u a l l y , its i n d u s t r i a l p r o g r e s s , t h e O t t o m a n

state

c o n t i n u e d to d e m o n s t r a t e resilience a n d an ability to r e f o r m a n d i m p r o v e its bureaucratic and social structure. This in turn e n h a n c e d the e m p i r e ' s e c o n o m y and w a s o n e of the f a c t o r s that w o u l d ultimately contribute to its p h e n o m e n a l longevity. M o r e o v e r , a special a d v a n t a g e of the O t t o m a n E m p i r e , r e p e a t e d l y m e n t i o n e d in my a r g u m e n t , w a s the internal unity within its h u g e area w h o s e size rivaled that of w e s t e r n E u r o p e . W h i l e F r a n c e , A u s t r i a , S p a i n , G e r m a n y , E n g l a n d , Poland, S w e d e n , R u s s i a and o t h e r m e m b e r s of that f i e r c e p l a y g r o u n d f o u g h t e a c h o t h e r in i n t e r m i n a b l e w a r s , r e l a t i v e p e a c e r e i g n e d w i t h i n t h e O t t o m a n c o n f i n e s . ' T h e w a r s the e m p i r e w a g e d w e r e external: a g a i n s t Shiite Iran o n t h e east, H a b s b u r g A u s t r i a o n the w e s t , and tsarist R u s s i a on t h e n o r t h . T h e eastern f r o n t , on M u s l i m h o m e g r o u n d , w a s h e a d i n g t o w a r d a s t a l e m a t e a n d ultimately a s t a b i l i z a t i o n of r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n t w o I s l a m i c p o w e r s , albeit s e p a r a t e d b\ s c h i s m . In the w e s t , the g r e a t e r part of O t t o m a n territory w a s in the m u l t i - d e n o m i n a t i o n a l Christian B a l k a n s , and the n e i g h b o r w a s t h e m u l t i e t h n i c H a b s b u r g E m p i r e of A u s t r i a . A s a rule, t h e e m p e r o r s w e r e t o o b u s y f i g h t i n g the k i n g s of F r a n c e , o r g e t t i n g e m b r o i l e d in t h e q u a r r e l s o m e c o m m u n i t y ' s p o w e r politics o v e r such q u e s t i o n s as t h e f a t e of P o l a n d , f o r to w i s h a c o n f r o n t a t i o n with t h e T u r k s . In t h e n o r t h , the T a t a r k h a n a t e of C r i m e a , an O t t o m a n vassal, lay b e t w e e n the T u r k i s h and R u s s i a n e m p i r e s . W i t h their slave raids in S l a v i c territories, t h e Tatars used to be a thorn in R u s s i a ' s flank, bul Peter the G r e a t had s u c c e e d e d in m a k i n g the Porte p e r s u a d e its vassals to scale d o w n this activity. T h e k h a n s , p u t to better use, rendered the sultans good service by lending their cavalry as auxiliaries in w a r ; but the m a i n value of the k h a n a t e , o c c u p y i n g not only t h e C r i m e a n p e n i n s u l a but a l s o an e x t e n d e d s w a t h of s t e p p e land a l o n g t h e B l a c k S e a ' s n o r t h e r n c o a s t , w a s that it b l o c k e d R u s s i a ' s a c c e s s to t h e s e a - or, to e x p r e s s it in m o r e positive t e r m s , that ii played an i m p o r t a n t role in t h e p r e s e r v a t i o n of the

' T h i s political and a d m i n i s t r a t i v e u n i f o r m i t y w a s not an u n m i x e d blessing, h o w e v e r . T h e mutual competitiveness of E u r o p e ' s new nation-states m a y have been o n e of the stimulating factors in the continent's rise toward its multi-faceted modernity.

INTRODUCTION

23

Black Sea as an Ottoman lake. M o r e o v e r , the Pontic steppe w a s still virgin land, sparsely populated by mostly M u s l i m Tatar nomads. It thus beckoned to the Porte to be colonized and settled by Turkish agriculturists, craftsmen and merchants, consolidating Ottoman rule there. The benefits would have been great, for the empire could have expanded in the only truly realistic direction (as opposed, for example, to expansion in the Christian Balkans), permanently acquiring a territory that had great e c o n o m i c as well as strategic promise. A s in the case of maritime strategy, however, such factors played a little or no role in the P o r t e ' s policy; instead, the tide of colonization and settlement would come f r o m the north, and it would overwhelm this critical area. In the two d e c a d e s b e f o r e 1768 A u s t r i a , Prussia and R u s s i a were embroiled in the continent's usual power politics, which increasingly included the Polish question, and would eventually (in 1772) lead to the first of the three partitions of Poland. In Istanbul, K o c a Mehmet Ragip Pa§a (grand vizier 1757-1763) m a d e the Porte avoid getting involved in unnecessary conflicts. U n d e r his w i s e s t e w a r d s h i p the e m p i r e thrived internally, i m p r o v i n g the citizenry's standard of living and quality of life. His death f o l l o w e d by one year and preceded by another two fateful events: the accession of Catherine II ( 1 7 6 2 - 1 7 9 6 ) to the throne of Russia, and that of C a t h e r i n e ' s f o r m e r lover, Stanislaw P o n i a t o w s k i . to that of Poland ( 1 7 6 4 - 1 7 9 5 ) . This signaled the b e g i n n i n g of R u s s i a ' s d o m i n a t i o n of the greater part of that c o u n t r y , a situation which Sultan M u s t a f a III (1757-1774) and a n u m b e r of his advisers d e e m e d u n a c c e p t a b l e . T h e new grand vizier, M u h s i n z a d e M e h m e t Pa§a, although pursuing R a g i p Pa§a's policy, lacked the clout that had enabled his predecessor to prevent the war faction f r o m starting a conflict that would last six years and end with the Peace of Ku§uk Kaynarca in 1774. While thwarting Russian designs on Poland had been the P o r t e ' s goal in this war, R u s s i a ' s was conquering the Black S e a ' s northern littoral and the Crimea. T h e destruction of the Turkish fleet by the Russians at Ce§me in 1770 is the w a r ' s best-known and most spectacular event, but equally significant is the subsequent domination of the A e g e a n and Eastern Mediterranean seas by the Russian navy, to the exclusion of that of the Turks, for the duration of the war. This happened despite the reforms repeatedly carried out since almost a century back. Moreover, we see here a replay on a grander scale of the paradox of the Cretan War: while the Venetian fleet had to cover a long distance f r o m the A d r i a t i c to f a c e the Turkish f l e e t in the Ottoman h o m e waters of the A e g e a n , the Russian fleet had to d o so f r o m the Baltic; and while Venice limited her action to the Aegean, the Russians ended up d o m i n a t i n g m u c h of the eastern M e d i t e r r a n e a n . The perennial question thus b e g s f o r an a n s w e r here. Why again, after the repeated reforms and modernizations since the

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1680s, and after its decent performance in the last two Venetian wars, did the Turkish navy slip back to the position of the underdog? For the earlier period - essentially that of the Cyprus and Cretan wars - I suggested the Ottoman government's lack of a genuine economic involvement in maritime trade and overseas engagement as the underlying cause. This, I would propose, still was one reason behind the outcome of the 1768-1774 war, and was to remain operative, mutatis mutandis,

until the end of the Ottoman Empire. However,

it may not have been the only reason any longer. The military revolution that began in 17 lh "century Hurope was a component of the greater scientific, technological, intellectual, educational and commercial revolutions. It affected naval warfare as well, and while Russia from the time of Peter the Great resolutely participated, Turkey stayed out of the larger framework and concentrated only on its military aspect. Like the tsars, the sultans imported experts from the West and founded military schools to train officers. They failed to obtain similar results, however. Perhaps the religious barrier, though by then seemingly less relevant, was still at work here, creating a cultural resistance to internalizing the new types of modernity.' And while more secular instincts - power politics over Poland - may have guided Mustafa III in his decision to declare war on Russia in 1768, the next war was launched in 1787 by Abdulhamid I chiefly in order to correct a situation repugnant to an Islamic sovereign - seeing a part of his Muslim territory pass under Infidel rule. The most grievous provision of the Peace Treaty of Kiicuk Kaynarca was the "independence'' of the Khanate of Crimea. The Ottoman sultan had to renounce all authority over his vassal state except on the religious level as caliph. Meanwhile Russia acquired virtual suzerainty over the khanate, until nine years later she occupied it militarily and, in 1784, ended the khans' rule by proclaiming their territory's incorporation into the Russian Empire as the Tavricheskaya Guberniya. This was a terrible blow to the Ottoman sultan and society, because for the first time their empire had unequivocally lost Muslim territory to the Infidel. A century earlier the defeat before Vienna had led to a retreat from much of Hungary, but that was Christian land. Catherine the Great's annexation of the khanate was felt unacceptable on religious grounds, and to recover it, on 14 Augusi 1787 the Porte addressed an ultimatum to St. Petersburg demanding its evacuation. The answer was a declaration of war by Russia on 15 September. Practically all the major battles on land were won ' O n e o f t h e m a n i f e s t a t i o n s of t h i s barrier w a s l i n g u i s t i c . T h e l i t e r a t e e l i t e , w e l l v e r s e d i n t h e o t h e r g r e a t l a n g u a g e s o f I s l a m . A r a b i c a n d P e r s i a n , l o n g r e m a i n e d r e l u c t a n t t o m a k e an e f f o r t to m a s t e r t h o s e o f E u r o p e , a n d p r e f e r r e d t o rely o n t h e s e r v i c e s o f r e n e g a d e c o n v e r t s o r o f t h e Ottoman Empire's Greek subjects.

I N T R O D U C T 1 O N

25

by the Russians, but it is the war's naval dimension and consequences that are especially relevant in the context of our story. For the first time full-fledged Russian war fleets operated on the Black Sea. The attention St. Petersburg had paid to founding new wharves on the approaches to the Black Sea, such as Kherson on the Dnepr and Nikolaev on the Bug, as well as the foundation of the naval harbor and base at Sevastopol on the southwestern coast of the Crimea, had begun to bear fruit. When the war broke out, the greater part of the Black Sea coast even along its northern rim was in Ottoman hands, the Crimea being bracketed by the fortified bases of Ozi (Ochakov in Russian) on the west and Anapa on the east. The Turkish fleet, which since 1774 had undergone yet another wave of construction and modernization, had similar numerical strength equal to the Russian one or was stronger, with comparable men-of-war but often faster sailers. There were two types of confrontation. One was siege by land troops of coastal fortresses; the other was naval battles. The case of Ozi is the best example of the former category. This important fortress, besieged by Russian troops, put up a valiant defense and might have withstood the siege, if adequately supported from the sea. However, the Ottoman fleet under the kaptanpa§a Gazi Hasan Pa§a could not support the fortress adequately because the draft of its ships did not allow a close enough approach, a task to be carried out by galleys or river craft. Both opponents thus mustered their river fleets, the Turks their ince donanma from the Danube, the Russians their grebnaya flotilya from the Dnepr. The Russians won, and Ozi was stormed by land troops in December 1788. As for the battles between the fleets of ships of the line, in the early stage of the war no clear winner seemed to emerge; by 1790, however, the Russians had begun to seize the initiative, chiefly because of the improving seamanship of the crews, the efficiency of the gunners, and the mastery of a young officer who would later gain fame in the Napoleonic wars, admiral F. F. Ushakov. The battle off Kaliakria (a cape in present-day Bulgaria to the north of Varna), fought on 31 July 1791, was an event of historic importance. The defeated Ottoman fleet withdrew to the Straits, and naval mastery of the Black Sea henceforth belonged to the Russians. The Peace Treaty of Jassy, concluded in January 1792, ratified the extinction of the Khanate of Crimea, a former vassal of the Ottoman Empire, and the absorption of its territory by the Russian Empire. The new sultan, Selim III (1789-1807), was deeply disturbed by this conclusion of the war, but again for the same reason: the empire's loss of Muslim land. 1 He may not ' S i g n i f i c a n t l y , the main Turkish grievance w a s not of a strategic and e c o n o m i c kind, but of a religious kind.

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h a v e f u l l y a p p r e c i a t e d the d a n g e r that the Black S e a under R u s s i a n d o m i n a n c e w o u l d l a t e r p r e s e n t to his h o m e l a n d . C o n q u e s t of t h e C r i m e a w a s t h e c o m p l e t i o n of o n e s t a g e ; the next o n e , in the t s a r s ' eyes, w o u l d be the Straits and Istanbul. T h i s w a s of c o u r s e not the end of the O t t o m a n naval p r e s e n c e on t h e B l a c k S e a , n o r t h e last w a r at s e a b e t w e e n T u r k e y a n d R u s s i a . T h e d i f f e r e n c e is that f r o m n o w on, it w a s not O t t o m a n sea p o w e r that p r o t e c t e d the Straits a n d Istanbul f r o m R u s s i a , but rather, in t h e 19 lh c e n t u r y , t h a t of G r e a t B r i t a i n ( a n d in the 2 0 t h , f r o m t h e S o v i e t U n i o n , that of the U n i t e d States). True, the protection w a s n e v e r d e m o n s t r a t e d in actual conflict, but t h e threat a l o n e of an intervention kept the realistic s t a t e s m e n in St. P e t e r s b u r g and M o s c o w f r o m a t t e m p t i n g to cut through T u r k e y ' s j u g u l a r vein.

The Indian Ocean T h e m a j o r p u r p o s e of S e l i m I ' s c o n q u e s t of E g y p t in 1517, m a n y h i s t o r i a n s h a v e written, w a s to reestablish the M i d d l e East as t h e corridor f o r the spices b r o u g h t f r o m India and I n d o n e s i a , f o r the age-old r o u t e of t h e s p i c e trade had been d e f l e c t e d b\ the P o r t u g u e s e to the a l l - m a r i t i m e route a r o u n d the C a p e of G o o d H o p e to Lisbon. A n additional reason w a s , s o m e say, to p r o t e c t the holy cities of M e c c a and M e d i n a f r o m t h e E u r o p e a n intruder, and m o r e b r o a d l y , to d e f e n d the M u s l i m s of E g y p t a n d t h e Indian O c e a n a g a i n s t t h e Infidels. T h e ensuing confrontation between the Ottoman and Lusitanian e m p i r e s c o u l d not but be p r i m a r i l y n a v a l , w i t h t h e c o n c o m i t a n t s i e g e s of coastal f o r t r e s s e s and ports, a n d the result should h a v e been clear: if the T u r k s w e r e t h e w i n n e r s , then the s p i c e route w o u l d revert to the M i d d l e East, with t h e a d d i t i o n a l b e n e f i t of s a f e g u a r d i n g M e c c a . A n d this i n d e e d is w h a t h a p p e n e d . By t h e m i d d l e of the I6 ,h c e n t u r y , t h e s p i c e t r a d e f l o w e d v i a its traditional route to the O t t o m a n E m p i r e and E u r o p e m o r e a b u n d a n t l y than e v e r b e f o r e ; the R e d Sea and M e c c a w e r e s a f e ; and M u s l i m s of India and I n d o n e s i a l o o k e d to the O t t o m a n sultan as their d e l i v e r e r f r o m the Infidel. S o w h a t w e r e the battles and strategic c o n q u e s t s or d e f e n s e s that b r o u g h t a b o u t this s u c c e s s ? Of s t r a t e g i c a l l y p l a n n e d b a t t l e s , t h e r e w e r e n o n e . T h i s m a y s o u n d s u r p r i s i n g , f o r m u c h has been written a b o u t the historic c o n t e s t b e t w e e n t h e t w o e m p i r e s , O t t o m a n a n d L u s i t a n i a n , f o r t h e I n d i a n O c e a n in t h e 16 t h c e n t u r y . L o g i c s e e m s to d e m a n d s u c h battles. H o w e l s e c o u l d t h e s p i c e t r a d e h a v e s w i t c h e d b a c k to its t i m e - h o n o r e d M i d d l e E a s t e r n r o u t e ? Y e t t h e historical record is clear. T h e only clash of a n y i m p o r t a n c e h a p p e n e d in 1554 w h e n Seydi Ali R e i s , c h a r g e d to take f i f t e e n g a l l e y s f r o m B a s r a to S u e z , ran into P o r t u g u e s e ships patrolling the A r a b i a n S e a off the O m a n i coast. T h e

I N T R O D U C T I O N

27

result was deflection of the Turkish ships, barred from pursuing their course westward, in the opposite direction toward India where the survivors found refuge and some then set out on an epic march homeward. As for the sieges of Portuguese-held fortifications, there were two: in 1538, the siege of Diu by an Ottoman fleet under Hadim Siileyman Pa§a, and in 1552, that of Hormuz by a fleet under Piri Reis. Both failed, and the latter was the one from which Seydi Ali Reis was to take the remaining ships back to Suez. Nevertheless, that was the century and those were the years when the prestige of the Ottoman Empire was at its apex, and the sheer presence of Turks on the shores of the Indian Ocean inspired local Muslims to appeal to the sultan to send his ships to deliver them from the ruthless Portuguese. He tried twice. The first response was the above-mentioned siege of Diu in 1538, the second was the sending of a fleet to the Sumatran sultanate of Acheh in 1568. Only two units actually completed the latter voyage, for the rest stayed in the Red Sea because they had received orders to help the Ottoman governor quell a rebellion that had erupted in Yemen. Yet the revival of the spice trade route via the Arab Near East, which since the conquests of Egypt-Syria in 1517 and of Iraq in 1535 had been entirely integrated into the Ottoman Empire, is a well documented fact. The Arab, Persian, Gujerati. and Indonesian shippers had been used to peaceful trade, and their governments lacked war fleets strong enough to break the Portuguese maritime dominance. This was why the intruders succeeded, during the first few decades after their arrival, in capturing the spice trade traffic and re-routing it to Lisbon. The recovery of the Near Eastern route coincided with the Ottoman entry into the Indian Ocean. No wonder then if this entry has routinely been linked, by modern historiography, with the recovery of the spice trade route via the Near East. If, however, it was not the Turkish warships that thwarted the Portuguese, how can we explain this recovery? Here is what I would suggest. After the initial shock, local governments and shippers, unable to defeat the heavily armed Portuguese carracks, learned how to evade them and thus broke the blockade; and the Portuguese themselves were too few to fully control the vast expanse of the ocean. This alone, however, might not have sufficed to fully redress the situation, for had the intruders seized the critical transit ports on the Arabian littoral of the Indian Ocean and its Red Sea and Persian Gulf ramifications - such as Suez, Jeddah, Aden, and Basra - they could have dictated their own terms, whether to block the flow of trade through them, or to be the principal beneficiaries of the customs yield (as happened, for example, at Hormuz). Without the Turkish presence, the Portuguese would most probably have seized some, or perhaps even most of these ports. This is how far the merit of the Ottoman Empire in the recovery of the Near Eastern route of the spice trade went, and it was a great one.

28

N A V A L H I S T O R Y AND M A R I T I M H G E O G R A P H Y The absence of Turkish sea power in the Indian Ocean beyond the Red

Sea thus presents a sharp contrast to its sometimes massive presence in the Mediterranean. The e m p i r e ' s possession of the Arab littoral, however, did play a vital role in the recover) of the spice trade route through the Ottoman N e a r East, and its e f f e c t has caused it to be c o n f u s c d , in modern historiography, with a presumed Ottoman naval presence on the Indian Ocean itself. Besides the factual aspects of this cause-and-effect process, one may also ponder over its wider or deeper implications. Why d i d n ' t the Turks really challenge the Portuguese? Why did not the great Siileyman the Magnificent, at the peak of his power and prestige, include imperial c a m p a i g n s that would d o that, that would not only re-route the spice trade to O t t o m a n territories but also establish Ottoman outposts in the Orient, besides or instead of those of the Portuguese and designed to substitute Turkish trade and maritime d o m i n a n c e for that of the Europeans? Again, historiography has been offering various and s o m e t i m e s contradictory answers. O n e is the simple assertion, against all evidence to the contrary, that there was such a policy, that O t t o m a n fleets did challenge the Portuguese across the whole expanse of the Indian Ocean f r o m east Africa to Indonesia, and that that was why the defeated Portuguese had to give up and watch the spice trade revert to the Near East. A n o t h e r is an assertion that there would have been such a policy, if the Turks had used the different type of ships needed on the oceans - not the Mediterranean oarpropelled galleys, their standard war vessels, but the o c e a n i c sail-driven carracks used by the Portuguese. Carracks, however, had first been developed by the G e n o e s e in the Mediterranean, and their use there as well as on the o c e a n s was primarily utilitarian - they were long-distance freighters able to transport bulk loads and to carry, as an important fringe benefit, a d e q u a t e ordnance to defend themselves. The G e n o e s e and the Portuguese were not so much conquerors as seafaring traders, and the need created the tool; the T u r k s were first and foremost conquerors, supreme on land but less sure at sea, and never quite at home on the oceans.

Conclusion T h e role played by sea p o w e r in the O t t o m a n E m p i r e w a s t h u s restricted to the Mediterranean and Black Seas. While the main direction of the Turkish expansion w a s land-focused, geo-political, e c o n o m i c and religious factors often gave it a maritime thrust. T h e y also fashioned the curve of naval c o n f l i c t s in a m a n n e r thai reflected the O t t o m a n E m p i r e ' s rise in the 15 lh century, apogee in the 16" . and decline in the 17th and

18 lh . In terms of

INTRODUCTION

29

importance which naval wars during this period had for the destinies of the Ottoman Empire, wars with V e n i c e and Russia o v e r s h a d o w e d those waged with o t h e r p o w e r s , i n c l u d i n g the H a b s b u r g S p a n i s h E m p i r e . T h i s w a s reflected even in their frequency. If we take into account only those conflicts that pitted the adversaries against one another at sea with no or marginal participation of allies, there were five with Venice ( 1 4 1 5 - 1 4 1 6 , 1463-1479, 1499-1502, 1645-1669, and 1715-1716), and two with R u s s i a ( 1 7 6 8 - 1 7 7 4 , 1787-1792). In contrast, there w a s only one with a n o t h e r m a j o r p o w e r : Habsburg Spain (the Battle of Djerba, 1560). Other c o n f r o n t a t i o n s in which the ships of the t w o empires faced each other did take place, but none had a m a j o r impact on the life or goals of either empire, both of which saw their principal interests elsewhere. This presents a sharp contrast to the long and c o m p l e x relations of Turkey with V e n i c e , as well as to the shorter but increasingly critical relations with Russia.

1 PIRI REIS AND SÜLEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT 1

When in 1517 the Ottoman sultan Selim I was in Cairo at the conclusion of his conquest of Egypt, one of the Turkish fleet's captains, Piri Reis, presented him with a map of the world he had made. Only the "western" half of that map has survived; fortunately, for us, it is on this half that the author revealed his identity and recorded where and when he made the map: at Gallipoli, in March/April 1513. We do not know what happened to the other, "eastern" portion of the map, nor do we know the subsequent fortunes of the extant part until 1929 when it attracted the attention of two scholars, a Turk (Halil Edhem, director of the Topkapi Palace museum) and a German, Paul Kahle. The map quickly became an international sensation for several reasons: it turned out to be one of the earliest cartographic representations of the New World; it had been made by a Muslim; and above all, people were told that it probably reflected the earliest but then lost map made by Columbus. Internal evidence, comparative examinations, and three explicit statements by Piri Reis led scholars to this conclusion. 2 Two of these statements are on the map itself: 1) " The coasts and islands on this map have been copied from a map made by Columbus." 2) "...[This world map] was produced on the basis of several maps by bringing them to one scale: one of these maps had been made by Columbus..." The third statement is in the introduction Piri Reis wrote to his Kitabi bahriye, a book of sailing directions and charts for the Mediterranean which he completed in 1526 in order to present it to Sultan Siileyman:

^In Siileyman the Second and His Time-, ed. Halil Inalcik and Cemal Kafadar. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993, pp. 343-52. ^ Half-a-century of interest in the subject has produced a sizeable body of literature, but Paul Kahle's Die verschollene Columhus-Karte von 1498 in einer türkischen Weltkarte von 1513 (Berlin, 1933) still remains the most thorough and reliable analysis. The excellent facsimile edition issued by the Türk Tarih Kurumu is accompanied by a separate pamphlet (Yusuf Ak?ura, Piri Reis Haritast, Ankara, 1935) containing a description in Turkish, German, French, English and Italian. The map has also generated a fair amount of eccentric interpretation, such as the theory that it goes back to an advanced civilization of the Ice Age; the most salient example is Charles Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Philadelphia, 1966).

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3) |facs. ed.: Piri Reis, Kitabi bahriye (Ankara, 1935), p. 82 line 5 : | "A map of the West Indies made by Columbus fell into our hands..." M o r e o v e r , in another place of the m a p Piri Reis states that he benefited from the oral testimony of a Spaniard who had participated in the first three of Columbus' four voyages: 4) " T h e late Kemal Reis had a Spanish slave who told him: 7 have sailed three times with Columbus in those regions...'." All these statements are plausible, for Piri Reis early career as one of the Turkish corsairs w h o had capturing Spanish ships at sea or prisoners and booty in Western Mediterranean. T h e r e are many instances of bahriye, such as the follow ing:

spent much of his the opportunity of the coastal areas of this in the Kitabi

5) |facs. ed., p. 596 lines 12-14:] "At one point the late Kemal and / captured seven ships off the coast of Valencia..."

Reis

As for the map itself, the more correct term would be sea-chart, and one of the late medieval, "portolan" type: a m a p made to serve the needs of seamen, for it shows primarily the coastlines and islands, and is marked by vvindroses, rhumb lines and distance scales in order to facilitate navigation. 1 At the same time it belongs to the "presentation" category of these maps - those made less for practical use at sea than as works of the graphic arts produced to please wealthy or important customers. This is demonstrated by the esthetic qualities and amusing digressions on the map: pictures of various types of ships, animals, plants, and people, as well as stories such as that about St. Brendan, the curiosities of Brazil, or allusions to the voyages of discovery. It may be worthwhile to e x a m i n e Piri R e i s ' s importance in the context of Siileyman the Magnificent and his time. Both the cartographer and the sultan lived in an age when prodigious geographical as well as scientific discoveries were beginning to change the course of history. T h e Turkish captain possessed the qualities characteristic of the men w h o were the architects of this revolution: An open, receptive mind and curiosity unencumbered by the bonds of conventional tradition, and an urge to formulate his own version of the exciting new knowledge - in short, the mind of a Renaissance man 2 . The map under discussion is revealing: Piri Reis tells us how he had been collecting maps made by Westerners and Easterners alike -

1 Michel Mollat, Sea Charts of tin- Early Explorers: 13,h to 17'h Century 218-19. T h e v o l u m e includes a good reproduction on plate 28.

(New York, 1984), p.

^ T h e term " r e n a i s s a n c e " has two s o m e w h a t opposite connotations: o n e m e a n s a resurrection of v a l u e s a n d arts g o i n g back to the G r a e c o - R o m a n c l a s s i c a l , e s s e n t i a l l y p r e - C h r i s t i a n c i v i l i z a t i o n (in w h i c h s e n s e the t e r m s o m e w h a t o v e r l a p s w i t h t h e m o r e literary a n d philosophical h u m a n i s m ) , and thus looks b a c k w a r d ; the other m e a n s the creative, innovative, g r o u n d - b r e a k i n g discoveries, both geographical and scientific, that in the 15 th 16 l h centuries ushered in the m o d e r n age. It is this latter category that provides a fitting f r a m e w o r k f o r Piri Reis.

P I R I REIS

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33

and how he had used all this Information in order to produce a world m a p that was unique: 1 This is a unique map such as no one else has ever produced, and / am its author. I have used twenty [regional] maps and world maps - the latter derive from a prototype that goes back to Zulkarneyn's time and that comprises the entire inhabited world - Arabs call such maps "ca'feriye"2 - I have used eight such "ca'feriyes"; then I have used an Arab map of [the] indiafn oceanJ,3 as well as maps made by four Portuguese who applied mathematical methods to represent India and China;4 finally, I have also used a map of the Western regions drawn by Columbus. I have brought all these sources to one scale and this is the result: In other words, just as the sailors of the Mediterranean have reliable and well-tested charts at their disposal, this [new] map of the world oceans [lit. "Seven Seas"] too is reliable and worthy of recognition. Piri R e i s ' s c o m p l e t e world m a p may thus have been a synthesis of both Renaissance Western and indigenous Eastern cartography, and thus truly unique. 5 With this imaginative and lucid work he took an honorable but also

' T e x t located in the south-western corner of the map (no. VI in the above-mentioned pamphlet ublished with the facsimile reproduction of 1935). Piri Reis may be referring here to world m a p s m a d e by the Arab geographers of the classical Islamic period (9 t h to 10th c e n t u r i e s ) which w e r e partly inspired by P t o l e m y . Z u l k a r n e y n , mentioned in the Koran (sura 18), c a m e to represent a mythical personage credited with many w o n d r o u s feats; M u s l i m c o m m e n t a t o r s identified him with A l e x a n d e r the Great, w h o too, as I s k a n d a r , a c q u i r e d l e g e n d a r y power!, in I s l a m i c lore. " C a ' f e r i y e " has so f a r b a f f l e d c o m m e n t a t o r s ; s o m e have suggested that it is a distortion of the word "juglirdfiya," A r a b i c for " g e o g r a p h y " not in our sense but in that of " s u r a l al-ard", "depiction of the w o r l d " also in s the cartographic sense. See J.H. Kramers, " D j u g h r a f i y a " , Encyclopedia of Islam, I ' ed., suppl. .62. R a t h e r than representing India itself, this m a p was m o r e probably a sea chart of the Indian O c e a n made by such A r a b mariners as Ibn Majid and S u l a y m a n a l - M a h r i (D. Sourdel, "Ibn M a d j i d , " Encyclopedia of Islam, 2 n d ed., v. 3, p. 858; G.R. Tibbets, Arab navigation in the Indian ocean before the coming of the Portuguese (London, 1971). ^ T h e c o m m e n t in note 5 applies here as well: the m a p s made by the Portuguese must have been of the portolan chart type, and contours of continents with their ports were the extent of their interest in depicting land. T h e existence of such m a p s f r o m the years 1498-1513 can be only inferred, o n the basis of those believed incorporated in the world m a p s that have c o m e d o w n to us. T h e earliest k n o w n Portuguese s p e c i m e n is the so-called Cantino planisphere dated 1502; see f o r e x a m p l e Bois P e n r o s e , Travel and discovery in the Renaissance: 1420-1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 245; Mollat, op. cit., #25. It is its uniqueness that makes this m a p so precious - alas, only if w e take the cartographer's word f o r it, since the eastern portion has not survived. A s a map of the New World, it is neither the earliest nor the most a d v a n c e d type f o r its time, although it m a y be the most appealing o n e esthetically. Several earlier m a p s m a d e by the Spaniards, Portuguese or Italians have an edge there. T h e oldest k n o w n extant specimen is the world m a p by the Spaniard J u a n de la Cosa, C o l u m b u s ' s erstwhile pilot, dated 1500 (Penrose, op. cit., p. 244; Mollat, op. cit., #22). While all of these are " m a n u s c r i p t " maps, by 1508 the first specimen s h o w i n g also the new world was included in an edition of P t o l e m y ' s Geography printed in R o m e (on fols. 125-26). Despite its later date, Piri R e i s ' s m a p is more archaic; this aspect, f a r f r o m being a d r a w b a c k , can be v i e w e d as an asset - reflecting as it probably does C o l u m b u s ' s first trial, w h i c h in turn m a y have o w e d as m u c h to B e h a i m ' s g l o b e as to direct observations. O n l y later voyages revealed the true nature of the new discoveries, hence the m o r e " c o r r e c t " m a p of J u a n de la Cosa. O n e f r e q u e n t m i s c o n c e p t i o n is that Piri Reis drew the m a p according to a projection w h i c h took a c c o u n t of the curvature of the earth. This belief is d u e to the c o n f u s i o n of w i n d r o s e s and rhumb lines with genuine projections.

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special place in the ranks of his Western fellow-mapmakers. Nor was the world map the only example of his modern and original vision. The long versified introduction to the Kitabi Bahriye also tells about the progress of the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery; this account is presented in a remarkably lucid way, within a structure that informs the reader about the sphericity of the earth and chief navigational methods and challenges in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. In Europe, princes, merchants and publishers were competing for such maps and reports that would enable their fleets and traders to accede to overseas sources and consequently increase their own wealth and power, or that would give their printing presses materials they knew would sell well. The ferment of interest in the new discoveries was gaining momentum at a prodigious rate, and it would be difficult to decide who or what played the most catalytic role: whether it was monarchs and governments from Estevao of Portugal and Elizabeth of England to the popes themselves; or merchant interests in Venice, Lisbon, London, or Amsterdam; or religious milieus such as the Jesuits eager to enter new areas for proselytizing; or editors-publishers like Ramusio in Venice or Hakluyt in London or Plantin in Antwerp, or again cartographers-publishers like Ortelius or Mercator. The medium of printing gave this spread of new knowledge an unprecedented dimension whose importance could hardly be overemphasized. In Turkey, Piri Reis must have been hoping that his works, which he had been so devotedly presenting to his two sovereigns, would be recognized as important and worthy of recompense; he may also have expected to be encouraged to produce still more of the fascinating new body of information, perhaps even to head a whole workshop of experts employed by a government bent on challenging the Europeans in this new area.1 It appears, however, that nothing of the sort happened. Piri Reis remained an isolated case in the Ottoman empire and, indeed, in the Islamic world. Exception could be made - up to a point - for Seydi Ali Reis who wrote a quarter of a centur\ later, 2 and for the unknown author of the Tarih-i Hind-i Garb? who compiled his work yet another generation later, or again ' Suffice it to mention the case of l u r k e y ' s principal maritime adversary in the Mediterranean, Spain, and the Casa de Contratación (a sort of Board of T r a d e ) in Seville, one of w h o s e duties w a s continuous updating of the " p a d r ó n real', the set of classified master sea-charts kept there. 2

His Muhit ("The Encompassing Sea'') is a v o l u m e of sailing directions for the Indian O c e a n , translated into Turkish f r o m Arabic texts w h i c h Seydi Ali collected while in c h a r g e of the O t t o m a n fleet in those waters, ' t h e text includes a brief mention of M a g e l l a n ' s v o y a g e around the world in 1519-22. See M. Bittner, Die topographischen Capitel des indischen Seespiegels Mohit (Wien, 1897), pp. 75-76. T h e entire text has now been published by Fuad Sezgin as Kitab al-Muhit, ta'lif Sayyidi 'Ali ibn Husayn\ n a s h r F u ' á d Sizgin. Frankfurt 1997. ^ A c o m p o s i t e volume of both original passages and translations chiefly f r o m S p a n i s h and Italian publications made in 1580. See the facsimile edition of MS. Revan 1488 of the T o p k a p i Library: Tarih-i Hind i Garbi i v y a Hadis-i Nev, Istanbul, 1987; and the translation enriched with a thorough analysis, c o m m e n t a r y , and inclusion of marginalia, by T h o m a s D. G o o d r i c h , The Ottoman Turks and the Nev, World: a study of Tarih-i Hind i Garbi and sixteenth-century Ottoman Americana, Wiesbaden 1990.

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MAGNIFICENT

35

for the occasional mappamundi appearing in a few Turkish portolan atlases of the Mediterranean; 1 none of these, however, approach Piri Reis's work in importance, nor do they even remotely match the constantly improving body of geographical information proliferating in Europe. Perhaps nothing could illustrate more dramatically the disparity between the Ottoman and European views of the world in Siileyman's time than a comparison of the respective sums total of contemporary literature, published and unpublished, on the subject - whether in quality, quantity, or variety. Moreover, even the little the Ottomans noticed and wrote down remained barred from wider circulation and thus possible ignition of greater interest by the persistent refusal to admit the printing medium. Meanwhile in Europe, editions upon editions, and not only in the original languages but also in manifold translations, kept fuelling official as well as private curiosity and thereby generating further energy to conceive ever more imaginative and daring projects. The new vistas Piri Reis and the other two authors tried to open of course do not exhaust the list of sixteenth century Ottoman geographers. Their maps and books only stand apart from a steady stream of geographical and cosmographical works whose type and scope range from the traditional Islamic to the locally innovative. The former was the more standard feature, and it was based on the time-honored and famous names and methods of Arabo-Persian geography: The names of Istakhri (fl. beg. 10th century) and Abulfida (fl. early I4,h century) bracket, chronologically as well as intrinsically, a roster familiar to all students of Islamic civilization. Turkish authors simply translated them, or wrote adaptations and compilations. Three aspects are characteristic of this school of 16lh century Ottoman geography: One is a belief that information supplied by Islamic authors of several centuries back still retained its validity; another, a consequential one, that there was no need for further investigation; and the third, a corollary of the second but compounded by religious considerations, was a total neglect of contemporary European sources and discoveries. 2 Two names can serve as examples. Mustafa Ali of Gallipoli included in the first part of his great historical work, Kiinhti l-ahbar, which he wrote in the 1580's, a geography based chiefly on Istakhri and Abulfida. Ali's younger contemporary Mehmet A§ik of Trabzon, who compiled his world geography Menaziru'l-avalim by 1598, acted similarly, but he enriched his book by expanding its topographical parts that deal with the Ottoman provinces. In order to gather information, he traveled a great deal and especially in the Balkan provinces less familiar to him. This was a praiseworthy innovation, but its limitations too are significant: he made no effort to explore Europe beyond the limits of the Ottoman empire, or at least to use contemporary written - or oral, for that matter - European sources. 1

Thomas D. Goodrich, "Ottoman portolans," The Portolan, 7 (September 1986), pp. 6-11. Franz Taeschner, "Die geographische Literatur der Osmanen," ZDMG 77/2 (1923), pp. 3180; and its Turkish version: "Osmanlilarda cografya," Turkiyat Mecmuasi, 2 (1928), pp. 2712

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The contrast is especially striking when we remember that a century earlier the intellectual climate had been different and potentially promising. To begin with, Turkish geographers did use a type of source that also inspired the Europeans of the Renaissance: the works of classical antiquity, in particular Ptolemy's Geography. On the Turkish side, it was through the filter of classical Arabo-Persian science, in particular Khwarizmi's (fl. 9* century) Kitab surat al-ard, and its post-classical adaptors such as Qazvini (fl. 13lh century). In Hurope, both the Islamic channel and, with the coming of the Renaissance, the direct Graeco-Roman channel were utilized. The Byzantine scholar E. Chrysoloras brought a (¡reek copy of the Geography to Italy in the very first years of the 15lh century, whereupon the Florentine Jacopo Angiolo made a Latin translation and dedicated it to Pope Gregory XII in 1409. This Latin version had an immediate and universal impact: there are some fifty known manuscripts, and in the 15lh century alone - between 1475 and 1500 it appeared in seven printed editions. Its popularity continued well into the 16"1 century, but the original became ever more transformed into hybrid c o s m o g r a p h i e s where the Ptolemaic maps were supplemented by contemporary ones showing the world as it was being discovered - and thus partly contradicting the older maps, as for example the above-mentioned edition of 1508. This popularity of Ptolemy-inspired cosmographies was both a stimulus and a symptom of the tremendous appeal the geographical discoveries had in Hurope. and by the time this genre began to cede the scene, in the last decades of the 16th century, to the still far more advanced achievements of the northern school - at first represented by the atlases and cosmographies of Ortelius and Mercator - it had fulfilled a historical role. It is this case of the resurrected Ptolemy that reminds us of a brief period at the dawn of the Renaissance, when Ottoman Turkey stood close to taking a decisive step in the same direction - the reign of Mehmet II Fatih. The conqueror of Constantinople had on various occasions demonstrated his unconventional spirit and scientific curiosity, and surrounded himself with scholars some of whom were Greeks such as the Amirutzes (father and son) from Trebizond. In 1465 the sultan ordered them to make an Arabic translation of the Greek original of Ptolemy's Geography. It took two centuries before another Turkish sultan issued a similar order - Mehmet IV who in 1675 ordered a Turkish translation of Blaeu's Atlas major} As for mathematical and astronomical geography, and the exact sciences in general, there, too, Ottoman scholars of the Suleymanic age preferred the traditional to the innovative, the Arabo-Persian heritage to what Renaissance Europe was discovering and creating. The already familiar Seydi Ali wrote in 1554 an astronomical treatise, and the type of encouragement he

' Adrian A d i v a r , Osmanli Tiirklerinde ilim (Istanbul, 197), p. 137. T h e atlas was printed at A m s t e r d a m in 1662; in 1668 the Dutch a m b a s s a d o r Justin Collier presented a copy to the sultan.

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had received f r o m a teacher in A l e p p o is characteristic: " T h e r e are m a n y b o o k s o n a s t r o n o m y and m a t h e m a t i c s in A r a b i c a n d P e r s i a n , s o w h y s h o u l d n ' t t h e r e be any in T u r k i s h ? Ali K u d u ' s w o r k is o n e of the best, y o u should t r a n s l a t e it." S o S e y d i Ali d i d , w h i l e in E u r o p e C o p e r n i c u s ' s t r e a t i s e w a s a l r e a d y s p r e a d i n g in printed f o r m . A s in the c a s e of O t t o m a n g e o g r a p h y , t h e c o n t r a s t b e t w e e n t h e 15lh and 16 th centuries in the field of t h e e x a c t s c i e n c e s is striking. A l i K u d u ' s Fethiye

as well as o t h e r w o r k s r e m i n d us of t h e a r e a w h e r e

I s l a m i c s c i e n c e w a s at its best in t h e classical p e r i o d , a n d w h e r e it c o n t i n u e d to maintain a level of e x c e l l e n c e even in the later M i d d l e A g e s - m a t h e m a t i c s and a s t r o n o m y . W e c a n a l m o s t s p e a k of an I n d i a n s u m m e r of I s l a m i c a s t r o n o m y that m a r k e d t h e 15 lh c e n t u r y , w h e n U l u g B e g and his e n t o u r a g e built t h e f a m o u s observatory at S a m a r k a n d and taught and studied at the m e d r e s e the enlightened T i m u r i d prince had f o u n d e d . H i s c o u r t attracted s o m e of t h e best m i n d s of the I s l a m i c world s u c h as K a d i z a d e R u m i , a T u r k f r o m B u r s a . Ali Ku§£u in turn w a s o n e of t h e p r o d u c t s of that milieu. H e l e f t S a m a r k a n d a f t e r U l u g B e g ' s assassination,

settling at f i r s t in T a b r i z . C h a r a c t e r i s t i c a l l y , M e h m e t

the

C o n q u e r o r m a d e a g r e a t a n d u l t i m a t e l y s u c c e s s f u l e f f o r t to a t t r a c t h i m to I s t a n b u l . In M e h m e t ' s t i m e , T u r c o - I s l a m i c a s t r o n o m y as r e p r e s e n t e d by Ali K u § f u and e v e n m o r e by o t h e r disciples of U l u g B e g m a y still h a v e been s u p e r i o r to that of c o n t e m p o r a r y E u r o p e , e s p e c i a l l y in the field of the t h e o r y of p l a n e t a r y m o t i o n s . H o w e v e r , by K a n u n i ' s t i m e , the H i g h R e n a i s s a n c e in E u r o p e w a s a l s o m a r k e d by t h e s t i r r i n g s of m o d e r n s c i e n c e -

including

m a t h e m a t i c s a n d a s t r o n o m y - that with t h e 17lh century u s h e r e d in the m o d e r n era; in a s t r o n o m y , G a l i l e o , K e p l e r a n d N e w t o n c a m e to r e v o l u t i o n i z e t h e view of t h e w o r l d a n d e s t a b l i s h e d the o n e that is still valid t o d a y . M e a n w h i l e in T u r k e y , the clinging to t h e traditional a s s u m p t i o n s - such as t h e geocentricity of the u n i v e r s e - a n d t h e c o n c o m i t a n t n e g l e c t of the n e w i d e a s f e r m e n t i n g in E u r o p e l o c k e d t h e s c i e n t i f i c elite in a h o p e l e s s l y l o s i n g p o s i t i o n . I n d e e d , S u l e y m a n ' s reign l o o m e d in the i n t e r v e n i n g period as the a p o g e e of O t t o m a n p o w e r , a n d t h e v e r y a w e s o m e n e s s of K a n u n i ' s m i g h t a n d p r e s t i g e t e n d s t o o b s c u r e t h e f a c t that t h e e m p i r e w a s giving u p the race w h e r e it w o u l d matter the m o s t - s c i e n t i f i c a n d t e c h n o l o g i c a l p r o g r e s s , a n d c o m m e r c i a l - c o l o n i a l expansion. T o r e t u r n t o t h e m a i n t h e m e of m y e s s a y : Piri R e i s ' s l i f e w a s i n t i m a t e l y i n t e r t w i n e d with O t t o m a n historiy u n d e r three s u l t a n s - B e y a z i t II, S e l i m I, a n d S i i l e y m a n t h e M a g n i f i c e n t - a n d it is t h e p o i g n a n t s t o r y of a m a n w h o m a d e r e p e a t e d e f f o r t s to c a t c h t h e e a r and e y e of t h e m i g h t y in t h e h o p e of s h o w i n g t h e m t h e u s e f u l n e s s of his w o r k . W h a t , f o r e x a m p l e , w a s his r e w a r d w h e n he p r e s e n t e d t h e w o r l d m a p to S e l i m in C a i r o ? W e ' l l n e v e r k n o w , b u t w e h a v e n o e v i d e n c e of an a c t i o n t h a t w o u l d h a v e led to t h e e s t a b l i s h m e n t of an O t t o m a n c a r t o g r a p h i c o f f i c e in view of e n t e r i n g the r a c e with t h e E u r o p e a n s ; y e t the t i m e w a s right, t h e O t t o m a n state a n d society

had

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m e a n s , 1 and Piri R e i s w a s the ideal m a n t o h e a d s u c h an o f f i c e , a

c o u n t e r p a r t to similar institutions in Lisbon and S e v i l l e for e x a m p l e . O r w h a t w a s Piri R e i s ' s r e c o m p e n s e w h e n he tried t o p r e s e n t S i i l e y m a n with t h e longer version of the Kitabi

bahriye

in 1526 - a t i m e that c o i n c i d e s with t h e

c o m m i s s i o n placed in V e n i c e by the sultan f o r the e x p e n s i v e "triple c r o w n " ? 2 A g a i n , w e d o not k n o w h o w - or if - it w a s r e c e i v e d by t h e s o v e r e i g n , b u t o n c e m o r e t h e r e is n o e v i d e n c e of an a p p r e c i a t i o n that w o u l d h a v e f o s t e r e d a "Piri Reis school of O t t o m a n o c e a n o g r a p h y and c a r t o g r a p h y . " T r u e , the O t t o m a n g o v e r n m e n t did not leave him idle as a c a p t a i n , f o r he received t h e c o m m a n d of t h e S u e z fleet in the late 1 5 4 0 ' s and early 1 5 5 0 ' s . But in that f u n c t i o n his t a l e n t s a n d k n o w l e d g e w e r e w a s t e d ; n o l u c k i e r t h a n H a d i m S i i l e y m a n Pa§a a n d Seydi Ali Reis, he w a s m o r e u n f o r t u n a t e than t h e y . H i s P e r s i a n Gulf c a m p a i g n of 1552 with a m i s s i o n to c o n q u e r P o r t u g u e s e - h e l d H o r m u z c a m p a i g n e n d e d in f a i l u r e - in a m a n n e r that p r e s e n t s s t r i k i n g a n a l o g i e s with H a d i m S i i l e y m a n Pa§a's f a i l u r e b e f o r e Diu in 1538 - a n d he returned to Cairo. The O t t o m a n g o v e r n m e n t then issued an order that Piri Reis be e x e c u t e d , and the verdict w a s carried out s o m e t i m e in 1554. 3 If we c h o o s e to a s s e s s the legacy of K a n u n i ' s rule t h r o u g h the p r i s m of t h e m a n n e r in w h i c h Piri R e i s ' s w o r k w a s r e c e i v e d a n d h o w this c a r t o g r a p h e r h i m s e l f w a s treated, o u r verdict m i g h t thus be severe. M o r e o v e r , this v e r d i c t w o u l d a l s o h a v e to b e a r on t h e O t t o m a n e l i t e f r o m the s u l t a n ' s

viziers

d o w n to such gadflies as Ali, all of w h o m d i s p l a y e d a s i m i l a r d e g r e e

of

' T h e story that the "eastern" halt of Piri Reis's m a p has not survived because the sultan tore it in the middle in order to use that portion for a possible campaign in the East may be apocryphal, but it c o r r e c t l y suggests the direction in which the O t t o m a n E m p i r e stood a c h a n c e of s u c c e s s f u l l y c o m p e t i n g with the E u r o p e a n s - the I n d i a n o c e a n , its spice trade, a n d its predominantly Muslim shipping. Selim I died soon a f t e r w a r d , however, and Siileyman left no doubt in a n y b o d y ' s mind where his priorities lay - the gaza in the Balkans, and war against the Safavids. ^ See the article by Giilrü N e c i p o g l u - K a f a d a r in Sulevman the Second and his lime, ed. H. Inalcik and C. Kafadar, Istanbul 1993. pp. 163-94. ^ T h e contrast b e t w e e n the harshness with w h i c h the authorities treated Piri Reis and the leniency shown toward Hadim Siileyman Pa§a and Seydi Ali Reis is indeed striking, especially if we r e m e m b e r how the f o r m e r handled the c a m p a i g n of 1538: H a d i m Siileyman bungled it to a degree that assaults c o m m o n sense, for he ordered the ruler of A d e n , w h o had c o m e aboard of his o w n accord to pay him a visit, to be hanged on the s h i p ' s mast - a m e a s u r e that guaranteed the s u b s e q u e n t u n c o o p e r a t i v e n e s s of the ruler of G u j e r a t and the resulting f a i l u r e of the expedition. Meanwhile the execution of Piri Reis was the final and most dramatic demonstration of the waste of his talent that had trailed much of his life. A perhaps not irrelevant coincidence is the f a c t that this tragedy f o l l o w e d by a f e w m o n t h s the strangling of M u s t a f a , Sultan Siileyman's eldest and ablest son but. alas, also the son of an aging mother unable to c o m p e t e with the c h a r m s of R o x o l a n a and thus with the a d v a n t a g e of her p r o g e n y - a m e a s u r e that f u r t h e r e d t h e s u c c e s s i o n of m e d i o c r e s o v e r e i g n s a n d o n e a l r e a d y d e p l o r e d by the contemporary historian Mustafa Ali: se C. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: the historian Mustafa Ali h a v e d r a w n their m a p s on the basis of their o w n e x p e r i e n c e or o n the t e s t i m o n y of their c o m p a t r i o t s . T h e T u r k i s h c a r t o g r a p h e r s u r e l y g r a s p e d both t h e s c i e n t i f i c i m p o r t a n c e of this n e w d o c u m e n t a t i o n a n d t h e s t r a t e g i c and e c o n o m i c c o n s e q u e n c e s of P o r t u g u e s e p e n e t r a t i o n i n t o t h e P e r s i a n G u l f . H o r m u z w a s a h u b of n a v i g a t i o n and t r a d e in t h e G u l f , a n d w h i l e Piri Reis w a s p r e p a r i n g this s e g m e n t of t h e m a p , he m a y h a v e heard of t h e first c o n q u e s t of this island by A f o n s o d e A l b u q u e r q u e . A m a n of k e e n intellectual c u r i o s i t y . Piri Reis n o d o u b t r e l i s h e d e x a m i n i n g t h e e v i d e n c e a b o u t C o l u m b u s ' s v o y a g e s and c o n v e r t i n g it i n t o his o w n c a r t o g r a p h i c and narrative w o r k , but w e can s u r m i s e that to h i m a n d to his c o m p a t r i o t s , n e w s f r o m the Indian O c e a n and the Persian Gulf w a s m o r e i m p o r t a n t . T h e r e w e r e n o M u s l i m s in A m e r i c a , and the O t t o m a n sultan did not h a v e to w o r r y t o o m u c h a b o u t w h a t the Infidels of E u r o p e would d o to the heathen o v e r there. In c o n t r a s t , H o r m u z , t h e c e n t e r of a local M u s l i m k i n g d o m t h r e a t e n e d

by

P o r t u g a l , s e e m e d to cry for help, and t h e o n l y p o w e r c a p a b l e of p r o v i d i n g it w a s t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e . T h e s e m a y h a v e been t h e t h o u g h t s of Piri R e i s w h e n he w r o t e the f o l l o w i n g lines in t h e v e r s i f i e d i n t r o d u c t i o n to the

Kitab-i

Bahriye: "Know that Hormuz is an island. Many merchants visit it,...But now, o friend, the Portuguese have come there and built a stronghold on its cape. They control the place and collect the customs - you see into what condition that province has sunk! The Portuguese have vanquished the natives, and their own merchants crowd the warehouses there. Whatever the season, trading cannot now happen without the Portuguese." Piri R e i s w r o t e t h e s e lines in 1526, thirteen y e a r s a f t e r the c r e a t i o n of his world m a p . D u r i n g this p e r i o d he h e a r d a b o u t t w o m a j o r e v e n t s , w h i c h a l a r m e d him a n d m o v e d him to w r i t e w h a t a m o u n t e d to an i m p l i c i t a p p e a l to t h e O t t o m a n sultan. T h e first w a s the d e f i n i t i v e o c c u p a t i o n of H o r m u z by the

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Portuguese in 1515, the second was a Portuguese attack on J e d d a two years later. T h e latter event, although it took place in the Red Sea, w a s conceived by the Portuguese as part of their efforts to block the flow of the spice trade towards the Mediterranean. Moreover, it had the additional goal of striking a blow at the sacred center of the Islamic c o m m u n i t y , M e c c a . This time the d e f e n d e r s withstood the assault, but the fact alone that the Infidels had been allowed to m o u n t it appalled Piri Reis, as he so emphatically stated in his portolan: "... Ships round this cape [sc. the Cape of Good Hope] and come [this way]. At one point 30 [Portuguese] barijas even came and rode before Jedda! They also had five galleys with them - their coming was a disgrace for us. Had they seized [Jedda] just once, we would have tossed its ashes skyward [in despair]. Now that they have come to Jedda, people constantly talk [about the incident]." T h e Portuguese attempt to seize Jedda occurred in April 1517, and thus almost exactly coincided with Sultan S e l i m ' s conquest of Egypt. It w a s a remarkable coincidence. A Turkish captain of proven merit, S e l m a n Reis, directed the successful defense of this port of Mecca. Meanwhile a squadron of the imperial fleet, s u m m o n e d by the sultan, arrived in Cairo, with Piri Reis and his map aboard. It was there that our cartographer and hydrographer availed himself of the opportunity to present his priceless work to the sultan. W e d o not k n o w what response or perhaps reward the author received; nor d o we know when the m a p w a s torn into t w o parts, and by w h o m . It may have happened right then and there, the sultan or his aides d e e m i n g the elongated sheet too unwieldy and the segment showing a hitherto u n k n o w n and distant land less relevant. A f t e r the Egyptian campaign, Piri Reis probably returned to Gallipoli, where he may have had his cartographic and hydrographic workshop (unless he had been transferred by the admiralty to the newly f o u n d e d naval arsenal at Kasimpa§a). T h e r e , he must have been preparing his other masterpiece, the Kitab-i

Bahriye,

w h i c h he f i n i s h e d by the time Sultan Siileyman the

Magnificent ascended the throne in 1520. A s he wrote in the preface, "The reason for compiling this book is that a number of master craftsmen have now brought forward offerings from their various trades to the auspicious threshold and felicitous gate of His Majesty the Worldprotecting Emperor, so as to gain high status in society and attain name and renown through the matchless favor of that well-favored sovereign. Harboring the same hope, I...have also compiled...a memorable book on the science of navigation and the profession of the mariner, so as to present it to the sublime abode of the Emperor. Until now, nobody has produced a useful manual of this type dealing with the above-mentioned science."

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The book must have earned Piri Reis recognition at the admiralty and among his fellow mariners (the large number of extant copies is proof of that), but it failed to reach the highest quarters. We can deduce both the success and the disappointment from the fact that in 1524 the admiralty chose him as the pilot of the ship that was to convey the grand vizier Ibrahim Pa§a from Istanbul to Alexandria; and that Piri Reis, taking advantage of the interest the vizier showed in the Kilab-i Bahriye, asked him to present it to the sultan. Ibrahim Pa§a agreed, but suggested that the mariner produce a more polished volume for the occasion. T his was a fortunate suggestion, for it led to another priceless gift to cultural history, the celebrated second version of this unique portolan. Piri Reis presented the new edition to the sultan two years later, or at least that is the date - 932/1526 - of its completion recorded in the colophon. 1526 was another milestone in Ottoman history, for with his Mohacs campaign Siileyman the Magnificent added the greater part of Hungary to his empire. We can surmise that in that year or soon afterwards he did see the map and perhaps even received the author, but there is no evidence as to what kind of appreciation or comprehension - if any - of the work's value, or of the author himself, he showed. After 1526 and until 1547, Piri Reis's life lapsed into the anonymity of the rank and file, broken by the worthy attempt to produce another world map (dated to 1528, only a fragment - one sixth - is extant: it may of course be that it too was mutilated, resulting in the loss of the greater part). Then in 1547 he was appointed to the naval base at Suez as admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet. The three decades. 1517-1546, witnessed the Ottoman E m p i r e ' s phenomenal expansion on land, and its acquisition of direct access to the Indian Ocean. The conquest of Hgypt in 1517 placed the Turks on one of the two doorsteps of the Orieni. with Suez on the Red Sea as the principal naval base. The conquest of Basra on the Persian Gulf in 1546 opened the other door. The next two steps should have aimed at recovering Aden and conquering Hormuz - and they did. In both cases, Piri Reis was to command the expeditions charged with this task. A sixty units strong fleet sailed from Suez in April 1548 and captured Aden in January/February 1549 from a local Arab chieftain. The governmenl showed its appreciation by rewarding Piri Reis with a zeamet worth an annual yield of 100,000 akges.1 Three years later, in April 1552, another expedition under his command left Suez with Hormuz as the principal target ' T h i s is the only known record of a reward received by Piri Reis for a meritorious act, which is revealing. Here the mariner f u n c t i o n e d within the established bureaucratic pattern of O t t o m a n values and practices. His cartography and hydrography w e r e outside this system, and thus w e r e ignored by the establishment.

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The fleet of some thirty units arrived at this island port and fortress in October 1552. The Portuguese had received sufficient advance notice from their scouts about the approaching danger to prepare for the siege on land, but not early enough to confront the enemy at sea. The harbor was crowded with merchant vessels, which the Portuguese governor immediately impounded but could not use for combat. The Turks quickly overran the island and started bombarding the inner fortress, into which the Portuguese garrison had withdrawn. The resistance, tougher than Piri Reis may have expected, did not show any signs of slackening, and his own supply of gunpowder and other equipment dwindled at an alarming rate. Worse still, he received reports that a Portuguese war fleet from Goa was coming. He thus decided to raise the siege and proceed to the safety of Ottoman Basra. Kubad Pa§a was the beylerbeyi of this recently created eyalet and acted as a representative of central authority. There seems to have been growing hostility between him and the kapudan of the fleet, possibly because Piri Reis blamed Kubad Pa§a for not sending him the necessary supplies during the siege. This hostility may have been at the root of two unfortunate acts - the commander's resolve to return to Egypt without delay, and an accusatory report the Pa§a probably sent to Istanbul. Piri Reis's haste was so great that he left the bulk of his fleet in Basra and sailed back with three swift galleys. He arrived in Suez some time in late 1553, and hurried overland to Cairo. The governor, Davud Pa§a, did not receive him kindly either. Piri Reis, already burdened with his failure to conquer Hormuz and to justify the siege's abortion, also failed to explain his precipitous return without the fleet of which he was in charge. This at least must have been the gist of the report that Davud Pa§a wrote to Istanbul. The sultan sent back his verdict: Death. The sentence was carried out forthwith, and all the possessions of the condemned were sealed and sent to the imperial capital. Such was the sad and inglorious end of the great cartographer and hydrographer's life. Did he deserve the punishment? Did the sultan act justly and wisely by passing this death sentence? No known extant records document the deliberation - if there was any - that ultimately led to this verdict. We possess only a few passages included by Ottoman and Portuguese chroniclers in their works. Here is a composite picture drawn from them: 1) Piri Reis found Portuguese resistance tougher than he had expected (in contrast, for example, to Arab resistance in Aden three years earlier); he had begun to run out of gunpowder etc.; and he believed reports about an approaching enemy relief fleet. This prompted him to raise the siege and proceed to Basra.

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2) Certain O t t o m a n historians, h o w e v e r , m a k e t w o additional a n d m o r e d a m n i n g a c c u s a t i o n s . Piri Reis w o u l d h a v e raided the n e i g h b o r i n g island of Q i s h m a n d d e s p o i l e d its i n h a b i t a n t s , e s p e c i a l l y t h e w e a l t h y c i t i z e n s of H o r m u z w h o had taken r e f u g e there at the b e g i n n i n g of the siege. W o r s e still, s o m e c l a i m that Piri Reis raised the siege b e c a u s e the P o r t u g u e s e c o m m a n d e r had bribed him. 3) T h e decision to leave the fleet in B a s r a and return with only t h r e e ships to S u e z , and f r o m there overland to C a i r o , n e e d s an e x p l a n a t i o n . W h a t should w e m a k e of these reports and a c c u s a t i o n s ? In the a b s e n c e of p r o p e r d o c u m e n t a t i o n , first and f o r e m o s t of that of a trial which w o u l d h a v e given the a c c u s e d a c h a n c e to plead his case, s u m m o n witnesses, a n d q u e s t i o n his a c c u s e r s , any c o n c l u s i o n in this p a r t i c u l a r c a s e c a n n o t but b e tentative. T h i s is then w h a t I w o u l d suggest. Piri R e i s ' s decision to raise the siege and w i t h d r a w to B a s r a w a s based on s o u n d j u d g m e n t . T h e viceroy of P o r t u g u e s e India, D. A f f o n s o d e N o r o n h a , w a s c o m i n g with a large fleet f r o m G o a ( s o m e reports m e n t i o n eighty s h i p s ) , and it w a s only a f t e r he had received reports that the siege had been raised that he turned back to G o a . Had Piri Reis persisted in besieging H o r m u z , his fleet, e x h a u s t e d a n d l o w o n g u n p o w d e r , c o u l d h a v e b e e n a n n i h i l a t e d by t h e Portuguese. His decision to leave the bulk of the f l e e t in B a s r a and hurry back with three galleys s e e m s m o r e pu/./.ling. but not necessarily u n r e a s o n a b l e . Piri Reis may h a v e been unsure w h e t h e r the e n e m y had f u l l y w i t h d r a w n , and had he run into h i m with his w e a k e n e d fleet, t h e result m i g h t h a v e been d i s a s t r o u s . H e had a better c h a n c e of slipping t h r o u g h with three s w i f t galleys. But w h y w a s he in such a hurry to get b a c k to Hgypt? P e r h a p s b e c a u s e he k n e w that K u b a d Pa§a w a s s e n d i n g d a m n i n g reports to I s t a n b u l , p o s s i b l y t o c o v e r his o w n i n e f f i c i e n c y in p r o v i d i n g logistical s u p p o r t ( e s p e c i a l l y n e g l e c t i n g to p r o v i s i o n the f l e e t with g u n p o w d e r ) d u r i n g the s i e g e , a n d b l o c k i n g Piri R e i s ' s a t t e m p t s to s e n d his o w n r e p o r t . T h e o n l y w a y t h e c o m m a n d e r c o u l d c o u n t e r t h e s e reports w a s to reach C a i r o , w h e r e , he m a y h a v e h o p e d , D a v u d Pa§a w o u l d g i v e h i m a c h a n c e to p r e s e n t to t h e sultan his v e r s i o n of t h e siege a n d its a f t e r m a t h . O b v i o u s l y h e had m i s c a l c u l a t e d : t h e g o v e r n o r did n o t h i n g of the sort, but set in m o t i o n a p r o c e s s t h a t led t o t h e death sentence. Based on these considerations, the verdict was unjust and unfair. But w h a t s h o u l d w e m a k e of the t w o a d d i t i o n a l a c c u s a t i o n s : that Piri R e i s h a d d e s p o i l e d the M u s l i m s of H o r m u z a n d Q i s h m , a n d that t h e Infidel had b r i b e d him t o raise the s i e g e ? Both w e r e r u m o r s w h i c h a n y f a i r trial w o u l d

have

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required to be documented. It is not unlikely that the Turks, frustrated in their effort to conquer Hormuz, were eager to come out with at least something to take home, and the well -known wealth of the local merchants must have been tempting. Piri Reis himself may have set an example here: greed is an all too common human failing, and the great cartographer should not be expected to have been too different on that score; he may indeed have brought back a handsome share of the booty. A delegation of Hormuzis later came to Istanbul to demand compensation, and this offers adequate, if indirect, proof. However, the fact that the government rejected the demand on the grounds that there was no proof also suggests that no effort had been made to probe the defendant's case before passing the verdict. As for the rumor that Piri Reis had accepted a bribe and therefore raised the siege, this is very unlikely . Throughout his long life the mariner, cartographer and hydrographer had demonstrated his fervent devotion to Islam and his unflinching loyalty to the Ottoman sultan. Let me quote the Ottoman historian Ibrahim Pe$evi: "Concernirle the reason for the killing the Eevptian Fleet Piri Bee.

and execution

of the Captain

of

The above-mentioned came to the shores of Hormuz and, having raided several places and acquired plentiful booty, laid siege to Hormuz, pounding it with artillery for a prolonged period. When its fall was, with God's grace, imminent, the accursed obstinate besieged one - although people who were well informed about the enemy consider this well-nigh impossible and improbable - bribed Piri Reis. who thus left Hormuz and proceeded to Basra where [the fleet] could stay and find respite. Then he selected three swift galleys, and, leaving the rest of the fleet in Basra, he hurried with these three ships back to Suez. When this case came to the knowledge of the sovereign - although the bribe charee was implausible - the fsultanl deigned to believe it and issued an order of execution. [Piri Reis] was then beheaded at the governor's office in Cairo."'

So far, I have tried to discuss the sentence passed on the accused the way lawyers might do before a judge and a jury. There is, however, another way of judging Piri Reis and the verdict that brought about his death. Piri Reis never claimed to be a great naval commander, but endeavored to be valued as a cartographer and hydrographer. The appointments of 1548 and 1552 were to perform tasks that others might have done better, while his real talents and endeavors were left to wither. The life story of Piri Reis thus reveals an incomprehension on the part of the empire's elite of his real stature and potential. Had Selim I made an effort to grasp the val ue of the map presented to him, the cartographic

1

Ibrahim Pe$evi, Tarih, Istanbul 1281, p. 351-52.

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m a s t e r p i e c e w o u l d not h a v e b e e n m u t i l a t e d but c a r e f u l l y d e p o s i t e d at t h e imperial p a l a c e , a n d better still, the s o v e r e i g n w o u l d h a v e given o r d e r s that c o p i e s be m a d e of it. T h a t w a s h o w t h e g o v e r n m e n t s of P o r t u g a l , S p a i n , F r a n c e , a n d E n g l a n d acted in t h o s e h e a d y d a y s of o v e r s e a s d i s c o v e r y a n d c o m p e t i t i o n . T h e y a l s o c o m p e t e d f o r t h e t a l e n t s of s u c h m a p m a k e r s a n d n a v i g a t o r s , instead of neglecting t h e m or e x e c u t i n g t h e m . H a d S u l e y m a n the M a g i f i c c n t e x a m i n e d c a r e f u l l y the Kitab-i

Bahriye

p r e s e n t e d to h i m by Piri Reis, he m i g h t h a v e u n d e r s t o o d that the a u t h o r s t a n d i n g b e f o r e him w a s a m a n of e x t r a o r d i n a r y value and w o r t h y of a d e q u a t e r e c o m p e n s e a n d s u p p o r t ; in particular, the sultan o u g h t to h a v e e n c o u r a g e d h i m to f o r m a school of c a r t o g r a p h e r s , n a v i g a t o r s and c o s m o g r a p h e r s . I n d e e d , w a s Piri Reis given the h o n o r of p r e s e n t i n g t h e Kitab-i

Bahriye

to the sultan

in p e r s o n ? If so, h o w w e r e he and his book r e c e i v e d ? Did he h a v e a c h a n c e to m e n t i o n his 1513 m a p to the s u l t a n ? W e c a n i m a g i n e S u l e y m a n " L e t ' s h a v e a look at it! f a v u s , find the m a p and bring it!" "Ba§ustiinel"

saying, The

m a p is b r o u g h t , but to Piri R e i s ' s d i s m a y it is not the w h o l e m a s t e r p i e c e he has v a u n t e d but o n l y the mutilated s p e c i m e n with t w o - t h i r d s m i s s i n g . E v e n so, he h o p e s his s o v e r e i g n will a p p r e c i a t e the r e m a i n i n g part. S o d o e s S u l e y m a n the M a g n i f i c e n t e x p r e s s interest and ask q u e s t i o n s ? D o e s he say: " A pity the m a j o r part is m i s s i n g , e s p e c i a l l y s i n c e y o u tell m e that it s h o w s Sind and Hind and f i n ! C o u l d y o u m a k e a n o t h e r s u c h m a p ? " Piri Reis, d e l i g h t e d : "Bcqiistiine

Sultanim!

I h a v e c o n t i n u e d to collect m o r e

material f r o m c a p t u r e d inlidel ships and I ' v e been i n t e r r o g a t i n g their sailors. T h e m a p I'll m a k e n o w will be e v e n b e t t e r ! " T h e sultan: " V e r y g o o d . Y o u p r o b a b l y need m o n e y and e x p a n d e d facilities for y o u r o f f i c e and w o r k s h o p . In f a c t , l e t ' s e s t a b l i s h a c e n t c r and put y o u in c h a r g e of t r a i n i n g a staff f o r i n t e l l i g e n c e - g a t h e r i n g and m a p p i n g of that part of t h e w o r l d , s o that w e c a n c o n f r o n t the P o r t u g u e s e there and wrest the s p i c e trade f r o m t h e m ! A n d then there are t h o s e M u s l i m s of G u j e r a t and A c h e h w h o k e e p s e n d i n g m e a p p e a l s f o r p r o t e c t i o n a g a i n s t the I n f i d e l s ; w e s h o u l d d o s o m e t h i n g a b o u t that. . . . N o w the s u r v i v i n g part of >our m a p is so pretty a n d c u r i o u s , w h a t is this n e w land and w h o are those strange p e o p l e ? W h o are t h e F r a n k s w h o n o w sail there a n d b r i n g b a c k gold and silver? D o you think w e c o u l d try it t o o ? O n s e c o n d t h o u g h t , no. T h a t r o u t e to the Indies is all r i g h t f o r t h o s e F r a n k s w h o sit o n t h e e d g e of the W e s t e r n O c e a n , but not f o r us w h o a r e t o o f a r a w a y . B u t w e h a v e an a d v a n t a g e o v e r t h e m by o w n i n g t h e t h r e s h o l d of the E a s t e r n R o u t e . S o get d o w n to w o r k , tell us w h a t y o u n e e d , a n d I'll m a k e sure to p r o v i d e it a n d to r e c o m p e n s e y o u f o r y o u r e f f o r t s , f o r this h a n d s o m e a n d i n t e r e s t i n g b o o k in t h e f i r s t p l a c e . Y o u say I can read in t h e l o n g i n t r o d u c t i o n a b o u t the w h o l e w o r l d and find a n s w e r s to the q u e s t i o n s I h a v e j u s t a s k e d -

many

P I R I

R E I S

A N D

T H E

P E R S I A N

G U L F

65

thanks! And I'll want to see how you and your work are doing. D o n ' t hesitate to ask for an audience every time you have something serious to report or to request! And of course we'll call on you whenever w e need you. Good luck!"

"Ba§ustiine Sultamml" N o t only did no such meeting of minds h a p p e n , but Piri Reis w a s dismissed f r o m Siileyman the M a g n i f i c e n t ' s mind for over two decades, until he o n c e again c a m e to the attention of the sovereign, w h o " c h o s e to believe the implausible a c c u s a t i o n " and had him killed. By then, to quote another renowned Ottoman author, Katip f e l e b i , "This Piri Reis wrote a book

called

Bahriye, in which he described the Mediterranean Sea; Muslims have no other book on this subject, and most navigators consult it continually" T h e Persian Gulf has been stated as the theme, in conjunction with Piri Reis, of my talk. In conclusion, I would also like to stress the special role of C a i r o . T h e lost part of the m a p w h i c h Piri Reis m a d e in 1513 a l m o s t certainly included the Persian G u l f , and he presented this c a r t o g r a p h i c masterpiece to Sultan Selim in 1517 in the Egyptian capital. Little reward or support ensued. Thirty-seven years later, in 1554, Piri Reis returned to Cairo f r o m the Persian Gulf, only to face a death sentence issued by or in the n a m e of S e l i m ' s son Siileyman, which was summarily carried out. By neglecting and ultimately executing Piri Reis, the sultans and the rest of the O t t o m a n elite 2 also passed a death sentence on the great potential that he represented the Ottoman Empire as a participant in the new world of discovery and true competition spearheaded by Europe. It is gratifying that one of the greatest statesmen of all time, Kemal Atatiirk, gave Piri Reis - albeit posthumously - his d u e by lavishing praise on him and ordering a study and reproduction of his work, both cartographic and hydrographic. Atatiirk did so while searching for highlights of Turkish history that the T u r k s could be proud of; and this legitimate pride is as alive today as it was in M u s t a f a K e m a l ' s time.

' Katip Celebi, Tuhfetul kibarfi

esfaril bihar, Istanbul 1322, p. 61.

^ T o cite just o n e e x a m p l e : M u s t a f a C e l a l z a d e , Siileyman the M a g n i f i c e n t ' s senior chancellor (and thus also referred to as K o c a Ni§anci) in his f a m o u s historical w o r k k n o w n as Tabakat tilmemalik devotes ten terse lines to the siege of H o r m u z and its consequences, mentioning "Hind kapudani olan Piri Beg" with a mixture of c e n s u r e a n d i g n o r a n c e , r e p e a t i n g the charge of bribery and concluding with the cartographer's execution (Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi kiitiiphanesi, Bagdat 2 9 8 , fol. 392a-b). He then proceeds to present a long and f l o w e r y a c c o u n t , embellished with poetry, of Seydi Ali £ e l e b i ' s sailing with the fleet f r o m Basra to Suez. In fact, the fleet never reached the R e d Sea but was driven by the Portuguese and s t o r m s out into the Indian Ocean, the remnant ultimately reaching the Indian coast. Seydi Ali then traveled overland back to the Ottoman empire. C e l a l z a d e ' s account, fifty-three lines long, is virtually devoid of these realities but instead presents a. verbose, imaginary epic of the O t t o m a n ships' soundly defeating the Portuguese (ibid., fol. 392b-393b). Seydi Ali Reis was a man of merit, s o m e of it akin to that of Piri Reis; but he w a s also a man of the establishment and a poet, unlike the s e l f - m a d e and self-taught mariner w h o was our cartographer, a n d as such he r e c e i v e d a markedly d i f f e r e n t treatment f r o m Kanuni Siileyman to Koca Ni§anci all the way to the cultural salons of Istanbul.

4 THE RISE OF THE BARBAROSSAS IN NORTH AFRICA 1

The manner in which the Ottoman conquest of North Africa began is well known: initiated by the Barbarossa brothers in the early part of the 16 th century, it remained for some years their private enterprise; the allegiance of their own accord to the Ottoman sultan toward the end of the second decade of that century was the moment when the conquest began to take on a more official form. As the conquest became official, it began to be better recorded in Ottoman chronicles and documents, it is the first years, those of the corsairs' private enterprise, which are veiled in doubt and about which only a few contradictory reports, mostly Christian, exist. One of the unsettled questions is the date of the first appearance of the Barbarossas in the waters off North Africa and its harbors; another question is why they came and what was the ethnic origin of these corsairs. Their

Arrival 1504 (or even 1500) is usually quoted in scholarly literature as the year

of their arrival. Oruç and his brother Hayreddin would have acquired a base at Goletta in that year and launched their piratical raids in the Central and Western Mediterranean. We read in the Encyclopaedia

of Islam, 2 n d ed., v. 2,

p. 678: "It is fairly certain that from 1504 onwards, or soon afterwards, 'Arudj and his brothers made their base at Goletta..." (article ' " A r u d j " by R. Le Tourneau), and in Charles-André Julien's Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord: "On ne sait pas... pour quelle raison Aroudj quitta l'archipel, avec ses frères, et transporta son théâtre d'action en Méditerranée occidentale. De 1504 à 1510, il gagna grand prestige parmi les Musulmans, en courant sus aux bateaux chrétiens, surtout espagnols, et en passant des milliers de Morisques en Berbérie..." 2 In Godfrey Fisher's The Barbary Legend3 we read the following: "In the year of 1500 King Frederick of Naples turned to the sultan [of Turkey | for assistance. In the same year Sicilian forces were withdrawn from Jerba. hnArchivum Ottomanicum, Paris 1966, v. 2, p. 254. 3 Oxford 1958, p. 46.

2

3 (1971), pp. 238-250.

68

N A V A L

H I S T O R Y

AND

M A R I T I M E

G E O G R A P H Y

T h e suggestion that at about the s a m e time A r u j was installed there under the authority of the King of Tunis would fit in with the description of his age, which might then be twenty-six. He presumably came to Tunis with a ship or ships of Turkish o r i g i n . . . His capture of a Sicilian ship with 360 Spanish soldiers off Lipari at s o m e vague dale is said to have led to his official recognition as bey by the sultan. S. Lane-Poole places the action in 1505, the very year at which Zurita records the unexpected a p p e a r a n c e of T u r k s in Sicilian waters and the (otherwise u n m e n t i o n e d ) destruction of their total force.'' A host of writers, ranging from Lane-Poole 1 to H. Bradford 2 follow the same line. If we try to determine the source of this information, we discover that it is the Epitome

de los Reyes de Argel

by the Spanish m o n k Diego de

H a e d o (fl. late 16 th - early 17 th century). Haedo, w h o had spent several years in Sicily as an aide of his more important uncle and namesake, the archbishop of Palermo, wrote the Topographia

e historia

general

de Argel (the Epitome

is

the second of its five parts)-' after the return to his native north-western Spain. In the dedicatory chapter, the Benedictine monk explains how and on the basis of what information the book was written. He does not breathe a word about his u n c l e ' s or his own presence at Algiers, although he does take pains to defend the veracity of the Topographia

by stressing that its sources were his

u n c l e ' s notes collected f r o m the testimonies of f o r m e r captives in North A f r i c a . 4 A c c o r d i n g to Haedo, a w h o l e epic of exploits by the legendary brothers would have taken place f r o m 1504 on in the Central and Western Mediterranean, until the siege of Bougie (Bijaya) which supposedly occurred in 1512; a little later in the s a m e year, while Oru^ was convalescing in T u n i s , H a y r e d d i n would have been attacked at Goletta by a G e n o e s e fleet led by A n d r e a Doria and defeated, so that he had to flee from his brother's ire to

1

The Barbary

Corsairs,

London 1893, pp. 32-35.

2

The Sultan's

Admiral,

New York 1968, pp. 24-25.

^ Topographia e historia general Je Argel, repartida en cinco tratados, Valladolid 1612. T h e w h o l e w o r k has been published m a modern edition by the Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, Madrid 1927-1929, 3 vols.(as vols. 3. 5-6 of its Secunda Época). 4

His " C a r t a Dedicatoria" in Topographia, v. 1, pp. 10-11 (Madrid edition). O n e thus c a n n o t help w o n d e r i n g if the c o m m o n h accepted belief that H a ë d o had spent s o m e time in A l g i e r s should not be r e - e x a m i n e d . T h i s a s s u m p t i o n s e e m s to be based on Father Pierre D a n ' s Les Illustres Captifs (Bibliothèque Mazarine, ms. No. 1919, Livre II, ch. XII), quoted by H.-D. de G r a m m o n t in his translation of the Epitome (Revue Africaine 14 (1880), p. 38, n. 2). Father Dan based his account on the hearsay that had reached him in the 1630's.

THE

RISE

OF

IHK

69

BARBAROSSAS

D j e r b a . 1 T h e s e were at least the stories the archbishop of Palermo heard and recorded in Sicily two generations later, in the 1570's and I 5 8 0 ' s , and wrote down in notes f r o m which his nephew c o m p o s e d the Topographia

e

historia

back at his h o m e abbey in Palencia. His book b e c a m e the c o r n e r s t o n e of F r e n c h and E n g l i s h h i s t o r i o g r a p h y of the s u b j e c t , c h i e f l y t h r o u g h t w o channels: J. M o r g a n ' s A Complete

Historiy

of Algiers

(London 1731), and the

F r e n c h translation by H. d e G r a m m o n t of the Epitome "Histoire des Rois d ' A l g e r " in Revue Africaine, Besides the Epitome,

there is another early history of the Barbarossas

written by a Christian: the Crónica Barbarrojas

u n d e r the title

2 4 (1880).

de los muy nombrados

Omiche y

Haradin

by the Spanish priest Francisco López de G o m a r a (1512-1557),

better known for his history of the conquest of M e x i c o . 2 T h e Crónica

was

3

completed in 1545, thus still in H a y r e d d i n ' s lifetime. Although it w a s not p u b l i s h e d until the 19 t h c e n t u r y , G ó m a r a ' s book b e c a m e , t h r o u g h

the

intermediary of another work, the chief source on the subject used by Spanish scholars. 4 Just as Haèdo, G o m a r a deserves being re-examined as a source. He does not seem to have been in North A f r i c a (except perhaps in 1541 as a chaplain of Hernán Cortés, who was participating in Charles V ' s expedition against Algiers). Although H a é d o ' s senior, G o m a r a w a s still writing about events which had taken place a generation earlier, and he wrote chiefly, like him, f r o m hearsay. Unlike Haèdo, G o m a r a does not indicate the date of the arrival of the B a r b a r o s s a s in the western M e d i t e r r a n e a n . H e is s p e c i f i c , however, about the origin of the two brothers and about the reasons why Oru§ c a m e to North Africa. It is this account which I propose to discuss later in my article. ^ Epitome, pp. 220-21. The punitive expedition of the Genoese led by Doria would thus have taken place in 1512. In that year, however, the republic needed all the efforts of its newly appointed naval commander for expelling the French from her territory (see E. Petit, André Doria, Paris 1887, pp. 36-38). After his success, Doria was dismissed as a result of intrigue by the Adorni faction, but was re-appointed in the following year (1513). He then clashed with Turkish corsairs off the western coast of Italy (a certain Godoli = Kurtoglu?), but there is no known record of his descent on Goletta in that year; on the other hand, there may have been such an attack in 1514, after the first siege of Bougie; see Gómara's Crònica (discussed below), p. 362: "La Señoría.. .proveyó luego diez y siete galeras y dos galeones que fuesen en busca de Barbarroja. Fueron capitanes desta armada Gabriel Martino, arcobispo de Bari, que después fue cardinal y obispo de Jaén, de donde era natural, y Andrea de Oria, los quales como estuvieron despachados, salieron de Genova, y con buena navigación que ovieron, llegaron en poco espacio a la Goleta, y llegando la tomaron. Hallaron allí su galera que pocos dias antes, como está dicho, fue tomada: hicieron el daño que pudieron, y cargaron lo que hallaron, y volvieron a Genova." 2

Historia General de las Indias hasta el año de 1551 (Zaragoza 1552-53), and a number of subsequent editions. 3 The first and only edition came out in vol. 6 of Memorial Histórico Español (Madrid 1853), pp. 327-439, under the title Crónica de los Barbarrojas. 4 The manuscript was used by Fray Prudencio de Sandoval (1560-1620) for his Historia de la vida y Hechos del Emperador Carlos /, and through this work it became the main source of Spanish historiography on the subject, including the Armada Española desde la Unión de los Reinos de Castilla y de Aragón (Madrid 1890-1905) by Cesáreo Fernandez Duro.

70

NAVAL HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

Besides the widely used Haédo and less commonly noticed Gomara, there exists no other know n early history, on the Christian side, specifically devoted to the Barbarossas. It is worthwhile, however, to glance at those contemporary or nearly contemporary sources which bear on the events connected with their coming or initial activity. T he principal among these are Andrés Bernáldez, Marino Sanuto, Marmol del Carvajal, and Gerónimo Zurita. All are 16 lh century authors, contemporary or nearly contemporary with the events under examination. The Castilian Andres Bernáldez (d. 1513?), in his Memorias reinado

de los reyes Católicoscovered

del

the period 1454-1513; the book is

one of the prime sources lor, a m o n g other things, the Spanish conquests along the coast of North Africa until the year 1513; yet there is not a word about the Barbarossas, which would be strange if the Turks had really come face to face with the Spaniards in those very years and even laid siege to Spanish-held Bougie in 1512. T he Diarii

of the Venetian Marino Sanuto (1466-1535) 2 cover the

years 1496-1533. One could expect that they would report the actions of the Barbarossas, just as they do the exploits of their predecessor Kemal Reis. 3 And so they do, but only from the year 1515 o n . 4 Another Christian author w h o offers his version about the Barbarossas is Luys del Marmol y Carvajal, a native of Granada. The dates of his birth and death are not known, bul as a young man he participated in the expedition of Charles V against Tunis in 1535, and then resided in North Africa, perhaps intermittently, until 1557. Partly on the basis of his experience, he wrote the Descripción fundación

general

de Affrica,

del mahometismo

sus guerras

y vicissitudes,

desde

la

hasta el ario 1571, one of the basic sources for

16 th century North Africa. I he first two of its three volumes were published at Granada in 1573, the third at Málaga in 1599. 5 According to Marmol, Oru? and Hayreddin arrived in North Africa for the first time in the reign of Sultan Süleyman, an error explicable by the Spaniard's unfamiliarity with Ottoman

Published as Historia de los Reyes Católicos D. Fernando y Doña Isabel (Seville 1870) and again as Memorias del reinadt< de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid 1962). Before the two modern e d i t i o n s , B e r n á l d e z ' s work in m a n u s c r i p t w a s used by s u c h authors as Fray P r u d e n c i o de Sandoval. 2

Venice 1879-1902. 5 8 volumes.

3

For i n s t a n c e . S a n u t o records the sailings of K e m a l R e i s to the Central and W e s t e r n Mediterranean in the years 1501 (Diarii, IV, pp. 71. 2 4 2 ) and 1505-1506 ( D i a r i i , VI, pp. 218, 230. I l l , 300). 4

Diarii, XX, p. 309: "Dubita si di Barbarossa, era in g o l f o di Tunis con 15 f u s t e et do galie, non vegni a questi contorni. Idio rcsiore i perdenti!" (Report f r o m P a l e r m o received at V e n i c e in J u n e 1515). ^ R e f e r e n c e s in this article are to the second v o l u m e of the first edition: Primera Parte de la Descripción General de Affrica.... hasta el año del Señor 1571... por el V e e d o r Luys del Marmol Caravaial, andante en corte de su M a g e s t a d . . . G r a n a d a 1573.

THE

RISE

OF

THE

BARBAROSSAS

71

affairs; he unwittingly corrects himself by stating, on the same page, that it happened during the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic, thus at the latest in 1516. 1 T h e first specific date in M a r m o l ' s account is that of the siege of Bougie: 1514. 2 The Spanish historian Geronimo Zurita y Castro (1512-1580) in his Anales de la Corona de Aragon3

mentions the Barbarossas for the first time

for the year 1514. 4 Yet he was one of the most scrupulously documented historians of his time, and when he was charged by Philip II to write the history, he traveled to Italy and Sicily gathering documents and other sources. His activity contributed to the f a m e of the newly f o u n d e d archives of Simancas. The main support for dating the arrival of the Barbarossas several years later, however, are two Turkish sources: the Kitab-i bahriye by Piri Reis, and the Gazavat-i

Hayreddin

Pa§a, a semi-autobiography by the younger of the

two brothers. Like Bernaldez, Sanuto, Marmol, Gomara, Zurita, or Haedo, these sources have been known and used, but with insufficient attention to certain basic facts reported in them. The Kitabi

bahriye

is the earlier source: it was compiled in two

versions, the first before 1521, the second by 1526. 5 The author, Piri Reis, was an old hand in the Central and Western Mediterranean, where he had sailed with his uncle Kemal Reis intermittently f r o m 1487 o n 6 until shortly before K e m a l ' s death, and then again with Hayreddin Barbarossa. 7 Piri Reis's last journey to North Africa with his uncle was in 1510. 8 In his description of North Africa, Piri Reis frequently mentions political and military events, as for instance Spanish successes and failures in capturing various points on the

1

Fol. 179b. Fol. 180a. 3 There are a number of editions, beginning with that of 1562 and two more from the l ó " 1 century, all published in Zaragoza. A modern edition has recently appeared in the same city (Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 1967). 2

4

1580 edition, fols. 398b-400b. Thus not for 1505, as G. Fisher suggests in his Barbary (p. 46).

Legend

5

Only the second version has been published in its entirety: Piri Reis, Kitabi Bahriye, Istanbul 1935. It is a facsimile edition of one of the manuscripts, and will be referred to in this article as Facs. ed. ^ Kemal Reis sailed to Spain with a mission of token help from Bayezid to the hard-pressed Muslims. See Hans von Burski, Kemal Re'is' Beitrag zur Geschichte der türkischen Flotte Bonn 1928, pp. 21-23. 7

At an unspecified date, but probably in 1515, Hayreddin sent presents to Sultan Selim in Istanbul with a fleet of six galleys led by Piri Reis (Gazavat-i Hayreddin Pa¡a, Istanbul University Library, ms. TY no. 2639, fols. 63a-69b). ® In the chapter on Tripoli, Piri Reis tells how the citizens gave Kemal Reis a letter for the Ottoman sultan asking for a governor; while Kemal was on the way to Istanbul, the Spaniards came and took the city. Facs. ed., p. 672. The Spaniards took Tripoli on 25 July 1510; see Bernáldez, Memorias, ed. Madrid 1962, p. 564.

72

NAVAL HISTORY AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

coast, such as Algiers, Bougie, Djerba, or Tripoli; 1 or the role of his uncle as a kind of advisor to the sultan of Tunis; 2 or again the fact that Kemal Reis and his companions used the anchorage off Goletta for selling the booty they captured in their raids in the western Mediterranean. 3 Let me emphasize that these events took place in the first decade of the 16 th century, thus in the years when Oru^ and Hayreddin. if we accept the common notion, were doing the same thing in the same area. Yet Piri Reis never mentions their presence before 1510; he does, however, report their activity after his uncle's final departure. 4 At first sight, the Gazavat-i

Hayreddin

Pa^a does not specify any

dates |There are two Turkish versions - one in prose and one in verse - in a number of manuscripts in Istanbul and abroad; see A.S. Levend, nameler

Gazavat-

(Ankara 1956). pp. 70-74, and A l d o Gallotta, " L e Gazavat di

Hayreddin Barbarossa", Studi

Magrebini,

3 (1970), pp. 79-160. Gallotta

subsequently published a facsimile edition of Ms. Escurial 1663, with variants from four other manuscripts, of the prose version in Studi

Magrebini,

13

(1981), with critical material in Italian. In 1991 the Turkish scholar Mustafa Yildiz published a Romanized transliteration of one of the manuscripts of the prose version (Universite 2639) with a German summary and a commentary (Gazavat-i

Hayreddin

Pa.^a, Gottingen 1991). According to GAL ii, p. 606,

an Arabic translation was made as early as 9 5 0 / 1 5 4 3 - 4 4 , thus still in Hayreddin's lifetime. Brockelmann, however, does not indicate how he arrived

' Algiers: 1 s t version, ras. Topkapi Sarayi, Bagdat 337, fol. 115b; facs. ed. pp. 636-37; Bougie: Bagdat 337, fol. 115b; facs. ed. pp. 636-37; Djerba: Bagdat 337, fol. 115b; facs. ed. pp. 663-64; Tripoli: Bagdat 337,fol. 118: fd< ed. p. 667. In the case of Tripoli, Piri Reis gives a s o m e w h a t d i f f e r e n t a c c o u n t in the first version: the citizens would have asked Kemal Reis to be their ruler. T h e two accounts are not necessarily mutually exclusive; the second, written specifically for the sultan, is more diplomatic 2

hor e x a m p l e , in reference to I.a Callc ( M a r s a a l - K h a r a z ; facs. ed., p. 6 4 5 ) w e read that Kemal Reis advised the sultan of Tunis to demolish the G e n o e s e fort at that place, lest the Spaniards, w h o were in the process of extending their rule over the coast, take it and use it against Muslims. 3 4

Facs. ed. p. 578.

Here is how Piri Reis mentions the seizure of Algiers by the Barbarossas in the first version of used to belong to Bougie. When the infidel the Kilabi bahriye (Bagdat 337, fol. 104a): "...Algiers took Bougie, the people of Algiers delivered the city without a struggle to him; the infidel killed a number of them and built a strong fortification on the island [in front of the city, i.e., the Penon], There was an Arab fort on that island; the infidel repaired it and equipped it with many cannons. After some time in these conditions, the people of Algiers began to suffer under the infidel; and since Orug Reis was active in that area with his ships, they sent him a message offering Algiers to him. He entered the city, killed the infidels he found there, and took complete possession of the place, while the island remained unaffected. At present, 1 am told, there is intermittent warfare between the city and the island fortification." T h e second version is briefer but revealing (facs. ed. p. 654): " H a y r e d d i n , brother of a captain named Oruf, originally from Rum [i.e. the Ottoman Empire], is holding the above-mentioned fortress [of Algiers], At a bow-shot in front of that fortress is an island. At the time when I was in that part of the world, the Arabs had a guardtower on the islet; then the Spanish infidel seized the tower and rebuilt it into a real fortress; he placed a garrison there and equipped it with many cannons. At present there is daily warfare between Algiers and the island."

T H E

RIS H

OF

T H E

73

B A R B A R O S S A S

at this date, which must be wrong, for according to Gallotta, "Le Gazaval...", p. 10, n. 46, the text mentions the erection of a fort dated to 1545. An Arabic version - in fact a summary - of the Turkish original was published in 1934 by K. Noureddine (Khalil Nür al-Dïn) in Algiers (Kitâb ghazawât Khayr

al-Dln),

'Arüj wa

and is based on a manuscript in the Bibliothèque-Musée of

Algiers (no. 942/1622); in its colophon, the copyist states that the translation was made by a hoca of Sidi M u h a m m a d b. 'Ali al-Kuloghlu al-Jazâ'irï, a Hanafite mufti musulmans

of Algiers; this mufti, according to R. Basset

sur le siège d'Alger

(Documents

en 1541 (Paris 1890), pp. 6-7), lived in the

first half of the 18 t h century. It is probable, though not certain, that this manuscript was used in 1788-90 by the French orientalist Venture de Paradis for his French paraphrase of the Gazavat,

which in turn became widely

known through the work of Sander-Rang and F. Denis ( F o n d a t i o n de la Régence

d'Alger;

siècle, publiée

histoire

des Barberousse,

sur un manuscrit

Chronique

de la Bibliothèque

arabe

Royale,

(!) du

XVIe

Paris 1837). The

"manuscrit" in question is Venture de Paradis' translation, but the reader would not know it f r o m the title-page - it is explained in the introduction. T h e Arabic abridgement and its French paraphrase, however, are not the only translations; there is also a Spanish one, made as early as 1578 by Luis Aiçamora, secretary of Philip II, with the help of an Ottoman slave; this translation, located in the Biblioteca Communale, Palermo, has the title La Vida y Historia turquesca

de Hayreddin

en español

llamado

castellano.

Barbaroxa,

traduzida

de

lengua,

This Spanish translation was in turn

translated into Italian by E. Pelaez and published in the Archivio Storico Siciliano between 1880 and 1887, and as a monograph in Palermo in 1887, under the title La Vita e la Storia di Ariadeno

Barbarossa.

A. Gallotta, who

presented in the above-mentioned article an authoritative and definitive survey of the extant manuscripts of the Gazavat,

states on p. 108 that the Spanish

translation was made from a manuscript which is now in the Escurial, Madrid (o. 1663; see H. Derenbourg and E. Lévi-Provençal, Les Manuscrits de l'Escurial

Arabes

iii (Paris 1928), pp. 194-95). According to Gallotta, the Escurial

manuscript is the best extant copy of the Turkish original (p.

134)];

indirectly, however, it clearly states that Oruç arrived at Djerba for the first time in the spring of 1513 and in the Gulf of Tunis later that year. Oruç, and in a sense Hayreddin too, sailed westward fleeing from possible persecution by the new sultan Selim; for Oruç had been a protégé of Korkut and saw the writing on the wall when in 1512 relations between his benefactor and the new sultan worsened; later that year, he left the Aegean and wintered in Alexandria; 1 in the spring of 1513 he sailed westward. Adopting the island of 1

Algiers ed., pp. 12-13; Üniversite TY 2639, fol. 27a-b; Revan 1291 fol. 19a.

74

NAVAL HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

OROGRAPHY

Djerba as a base, Oru then a t h i n g of t h e past. A s f o r t h e O t t o m a n s u b j e c t s , a l o n g s i d e M u s l i m s , an a c t i v e role w a s a l s o p l a y e d by A r m e n i a n s , J e w s and G r e e k s . W h i l e I z m i r w a s the principal i n t e r n a t i o n a l p o r t of O t t o m a n T u r k e y , Istanbul as a port f u n c t i o n e d mainly as the r e c e i v i n g e n d of a t r a f f i c d e s i g n e d to sustain t h e imperial capital. This a l o n e s u f f i c e d to m a k e its h a r b o r , situated

M ï NÀ

207

along both sides of the Golden Horn, a busy place. The northern side, whose main part in fact extended along the Bosporus, served international shipping; the southern side with its many iskeles was reserved for Ottoman ships. Further west toward the end of the Golden Horn, on its northern side, was the imperial arsenal of Kasimpa§a (a description of these features can be found in Eremya Çelebi Kömürciiyan, Istanbul tarihi, Turkish tr. H. Andreasyan, Istanbul 1952, pp. 15-19,37-39). 7. The ports of the Caspian Sea. The ports of the land-locked Caspian Sea played a naturally restricted role, without the magnitude of maritime trade, naval warfare, or piracy affecting other seas. Nevertheless, there was a lively local traffic since the early centuries of Islam (Mas'üdi, Murüj, 2: 25 = #463). Thus Abaskün, situated in the south-eastern corner of the Caspian (near the location of Bandar Shäh, which in turn has been renamed by the current régime as Bandar-e Turkman), the northern terminus of the Trans-Iranian railway), functioned as an outlet (furda) for the towns and regions of Astarabad and Gurgan, with ships leaving from it for Khazaria and Bäb alA b w ä b (Isfakhri, 213-14). The prosperity of Abaskün in the 3 r d /9 t h and 4 t h / 1 0 t h centuries made it the target of piratical raids of the still heathen Russians (or, more exactly, Rüs); two such raids, between 25-70/864-84 and in 297/909, are reported in Ibn Isfandiyär's Tärikh-e Tabaristän (ed. A. Eghbal, p. 266; tr. E.G. Browne, p. 199; see also Mas'üdi, Murüj, 2: 19-25 = # 458-61, and B. Dorn, Caspia. Uber die Einfälle der alten Russen in Tabaristan, St. Petersbug, 1875 = Académie Impériale des Sciences, Mémoires, xxiii/1). Another Caspian port, raided in 301/913-4 by Russian pirates, was Baku (Mas'üdi, Murüj, 2: 21 = # 460); Baku was also one of the earliest oil-exporting ports, a role which it conserved throughout the subsequent centuries. Thus 'Abd al-Rashid Sälih al-Bäküwi (fl. 806/1402) reports how the inhabitants made seal-skin bags from seals (kiläb al-mä') which they hunted on a nearby island; they filled these bags with oil, and had them exported by ships to various other ports of the Caspian (Kitäb Talkhïs al-äthär wa-'ajä'ib al-malik al-qahhär, ed. and tr. Z.M. Bunyatov, Moscow 1971, Arabic text p. 122, Russian translation p. 89). Finally, Derbend, called in Classical Arabic texts Bäb al-Abwäb, had a harbor similar to those of the Mediterranean with seaside walls and an entrance gate protected by two guardtowers and a chain (Istakhri, 184-85; Hudüd al'âlam, tr. p. 145). 8. Ports of the Islamic Orient. Two groups of ports ruled or used by Muslims can be distinguished here: those of the Indian subcontinent, and those of Malaysia and Indonesia. From among the former, Daybul, Sürat, and Kalikut can serve as characteristic examples. Daybul, situated in the delta of the Indus not far from modern Karachi, was won for Islam by conquest in

208

NAVAL

HISTORY

AND

MARITIME

GEOGRAPHY

92/711-12; the other ports received their Muslim populations chiefly through emigration and proselytization that traveled along the sea-trade routes. Daybul combined the industry of trade and piracy both in the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, and its merchants were an example of those Indians who reciprocated the enterprising spirit of the Arabs and Persians by sailing to the ports of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa. Surat, located on the eastern side of the entry into the Gulf of Cambay (Khambayat), added to its commercial role that of a favorite gateway of Mecca-bound pilgrims. Kalikut (Calicut) owed its eminence in part to a strategic position in the southern part of the Malabar coast, where it functioned not only as an Indian port but also as a relay post and exchange mart for trade with Indonesia and China. It rose to prominence in the later Middle Ages and surpassed Quilon (Kulam Malay), a port still closer to the southern tip of India, which had a similar function in early 'Abbasid times (Sauvaget, Akhbdr,

8, 42-3). Ma Huan, the chronicler of Chinese

expeditions of the early ] 5 t h century, mentions Kalikut as the usual goal of Chinese fleets arriving from the east, and as a point of departure on their further sailings to such ports as Aden, Zafar or Hurmuz (Ma Huan, sheng-lan,

'The overall

survey

of the ocean's

shores"

(1433),

Ying-yai tr. Feng

Ch'en-chun, Cambridge 1970 (Hakluyt Society, Extra series, xlii, 151-71). Ibn Battuta sailed in April-May 1347 from Kalikut to Zafar (iv, 310-11); and it was at Kalikut that Vasco Da Gama, reportedly guided by the Arab pilot Ibn Majid, arrived in 1498, after having crossed the Indian Ocean from the Hast African port of Malindi. The final group of important harbors of the Islamic world begins with Atjeh of Northern Sumatra and extends through the archipelago all the way to Sulawesi (Celebes). Their lslamization had begun by the time Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta sailed through these waters in the 13th and 14 th centuries, and was well-nigh complete when European penetration and colonization started gaining momentum in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. In northern Sumatra, the ports of Pedir, Lamuri (I.ambri), Pasei and Perlak were among the earliest exporters of spices and rcceptors of Islam. They were by the 16 th century eclipsed by Atjeh (Acheh >, the chief port and capital (also known in the latter capacity as Kutaraja, a name that reveals the older pre-Islamic influence) of a sultanate whose prosperity and might rested on spice - mainly pepper exports and piracy. Atjeh lay at the northern tip of Sumatra; across the narrowing strait further south, the port of Malacca (Melaka) became the seat of a sultanate on the Malay peninsula. Like the ports of Sumatra, Malacca was useful as a relay station along the strategic passage through the strait of Malaysia on the route to other Indonesian ports such as the pepper-exporting port of Bantam at the western tip of Java, and to China. In early Abbasid times, a role similar to thai of Malacca had been played by Kalah further north near the narrow neck of the peninsula (Sauvaget, Akhbar, 8, 43).

MINA

209

Once converted, Indonesians and Malays became fervent Muslims; such ports as Atjeh served as the principal gateways on their pilgrimage to Mecca, and in general as the points of communication with the centers of Islam further west. The rise of Atjeh in the 16th century coincided with two dramatic developments in the Indian Ocean: the arrival of Europeans, and the attempts of the Ottomans to stave off the consequences of that event. One quaint result of this clash was an embassy sent by the third sultan of Atjeh, 'Ala' al-Din Ri'ayat Shah al-Qahhar (1537-71) to Istanbul in 973/1563, requesting military aid from Siileyman the Magnificent. Eventually, a fleet of 19 vessels left the Ottoman naval base at Suez, but most remained in Yemen. Two ships did reach Atjeh, however, and delivered cannon and other ammunition as well as gunnery experts (Saffet, "Bir Osmanli filosunun Sumatra seferi", TOEM, 10 (October 1911), pp. 604-14; 11 (Dec. 1911), pp. 678-83). 9. Khanfu and Zaytiin. These two ports, identified with Canton and Ch'iian-chou (the latter located at the level of Taiwan), never came within the Ddr al-Islam, but their special role as the Oriental termini of Muslim seafarers and traders should allow us to include them in this discussion. Ibn Khurradadhbih, 69, mentions Khanfu as the greatest marfa' (port of call) [of China]. Mas'udi ( M u r u j , I, 302-3 = #329) states that Khanfu lay on a river which was the destination of ships coming from Basra, Siraf, 'Uman, India and other countries, and adds that there lived in Khanfu colonies of Muslims, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. One of Mas'udi's sources was the abovementioned Akhbar al-Sin wa 'l-Hind, dated 236/851, which refers to Khanfu as a port of call of ships and a market place of Arabs and Chinese (ed. & tr. Sauvaget, Akhbar, 6-7). Moreover, the interior of T'ang China was open to Muslim merchants if provided with a passport issued by Chinese authorities; there was also a Muslim colony in the T'ang capital of Changan (the modern Xian), the eastern terminus of the transcontinental Silk Road. The simultaneous presence of Muslim and other Near Eastern traders in both Changan and Canton may then have resulted in some linkage between the overland Silk Road and the maritime Spice Route (Rita Rose de Meglio, "II commercio arabo cori la Cina della G a h i l i y y a al X secolo," Annali dell'Istituto Orientate di Napoli, n.s., xiv [1964], pp. 523-52). Disturbances that accompanied the final decades of T'ang rule also proved fatal to the Muslim colony in Khanfu: the death blow was dealt by a rebellion in 879, when the entire colony was reported destroyed or driven out; some merchants then adopted the above-mentioned Kalah in Malaysia as their base of operations. The long-range effect of this upheaval, however, cannot have been absolute, for western visitors such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta speak of Yuan Zaytun in terms not unlike the way the Akhbar and Mas'udi did about

210

NAVAL

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GEOGRAPHY

T ' a n g K h a n f u ; Ibn B a t t u t a f o u n d there a t h r i v i n g A r a b o - P e r s i a n m e r c h a n t c o l o n y , u p to a point s e l l - g o v e r n i n g , and he even states that Z a y t u n w a s o n e of the largest, if not the largest ports in the world (iv, 269).

Bibliography: From among the primary sources, the standard Islamic historians, geographers, cartographers and travelers such as Tabari, Y a ' q ü b i , M u q a d d a s i , M a s ' ü d i , Ibn Havvqal, IdrTsi. Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battüta, Piri Reis, and Evliya Çelebi lead the roster. For the Mediterranean: A. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte der romanischen Völker des Mittelmeergebiets bis zum Ende der Kreuzzüge, Munich-Berlin 1906, esp. pp. 122-222; W. H e ) d . Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen-âge, Leipzig 1885-86, 2 vols.; S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean society, Berkeley 197084, 4 vols., esp. vols. 2; S. Labib, Handelsgeschichte Ägyptens im Spätmittelalter, 1171-1517, Wiesbaden 1965; H.R. Idris, La Berbe'rie orientale sous les Zirides, Xe-Xlle siècles, Paris 1962; R. Brunschvig, La Berbe'rie orientale sous les Hafsides, Paris 1940-47, 2 vols.; E. Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l'Espagne musulmane, Paris-Leiden 1950; Ch.-E. Dufourcq, L'Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XlIIe et XlVe siècles. Paris 1966; F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, Paris 1966, 2 vols.; Cl. Cahen, "Ports et chantiers navals dans le monde méditerranéen musulman jusqu'aux Croisades", in La navigazione mediterranea nell'alto medioevo, Centro Italiano di Studi sull'alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio, xxv, 14-20 aprile 1977, Spoleto 1978, pp. 299319; idem, "Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l'Egypte médiévale d'après le Minhadj d ' a l - M a k h z ü m i " , in JESHO, vii (1964), pp. 218314; K. Kretschmer, Die italienischen Portolane des Mittelalters, Berlin 1909; A. Delatte, Les portulans grecs, Liège-Paris 1947; Piri Reis, Kitabi Bahriye, Ankara 1935 (facs. ed., with an introduction and index); a new edition of ibid., with facsimile of the original accompanied by transliteration, modern Turkish translation and English translation on facing pages, Istanbul 1988, 4 vols.; S. Soucek, "À propos du Livre d'Instructions Nautiques de Piri Re'ïs", in Revue des Études Islamiques, v. 41 (1973), pp. 241-55; idem, Piri Reis and Turkish mapmaking after Columbus. London 1996; Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, Istanbul 1314-1938, 10 vols. For the Persian Gull and the Indian Ocean: G. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, Cambridge 1905; G. Ferrand, instructions nautiques et routiers arabes et portugais des XIV et XVIe siècles, Paris 1921-23, 3 vols.; G. Tibbetts, Arab navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese, London 1971; A. Kammerer, La nier Rouge, l'Abyssinie et l'Arabie depuis l'Antiquité, Cairo 1929-50; G.F. Hourani, Arab seafaring in the Indian Ocean in ancient and early Islamic times, Princeton, 2 n d ed. 1995; A. Sprenger, Die Post- und Reiserouten des Orients, Leipzig 1864, esp. pp. 79-91; O. Löfgren, Arabische Texte zur Kenntnis der Stadl Aden im Mittelalter, Uppsala 1936-50, 2 vols., esp.

M Î NÄ

211

v. 1, pp. 56-57; J. Aubin, "La ruine de Siraf et les routes du Golfe Persique aux Xle et Xlle siècles", in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, ii/3 (1959), pp. 295-301; idem, "La survie de Shilau et la route du Khunj-o-fäl", in Iran, vii (1969), pp. 2137; idem, "Le royaume d ' O r m u z au début du XVIe siècle", in Mare Luso-Indicum, ii (1972), pp. 7 7 - 1 7 9 ; P. S c h w a r z , Iran im Mittelalter nach den arabischen Geographen, Leipzig 1910-1929; W. Barthold, An historical geography of Iran, Princeton 1984; A. Iqtidäri Lâristâni, Àsâr-e shahrhä-ye bästäni-ye savähil va jazäyir-e khalïj-e Fürs va daryä-ye 'Umän, Tehran 1348/1969-70; M u h a m m a d Ibrahim Käzarüni, Tärikh-e banädir va jazäyir-e Khalïj-e Fürs, ed. Manöchihr S u t ü d a h , Tehran 1368/1989-90; W. Floor, The Persian Gulf: a political and economic history of five port cities, 1500-1700, Washington DC 2006.

MILAHA1

Please note: the article " M i l a h a " in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2 n t ' e d i t i o n , consists of four segments, divided chronologically and thematically: 1. In the preIslamic and early mediaeval periods, by V. Christides; 2. In the later medieval and early modern periods, by S. Soucek; 3. In the Indian Ocean, by G.R. Tibbetts; and 4. In modern times, by G. Oman. They are introduced by a brief discussion of the term by S. Soucek. Included here is this discussion and segment 2.

The term: Like its English and French counterparts, navigation,

the

Arabic term milaha has both a narrower and a broader connotation. The former refers to the mariner's art of determining the ship's position, charting her course and assuring that her progress and ultimate arrival is performed efficiently and safely; the latter, to seafaring in general. The term is attested in its fa "al form, mallah, at least since the Abbasid period (Lane, vii, 2733); it appears to go back to Akkadian malahu, "sailor, boatman", which in turn may ultimately go back to Sumerian (Chicago Part

Akkadian

dictionary.

I, Chicago 1977, pp. 149-52; R. Labat, Manuel

akkadienne-2,

Paris 1976, p. 93; ma "'boat", ma.lah

Letter

M,

d'e'pigraphie

["boatman"]); the term

entered Arabic probably via Hebrew (mallah) or Aramaic. Association of the term with milh, "salt |water|", already proposed by early Arabic lexicographers (Lane, citing the Tahdhib of al-Azharl, the Sihah and the Qamus), as also by the Hebrew Bible commentators, would thus be a case of popular etymology. Segment 2: Milaha in the later medieval and early modern periods. This section will deal with both aspects of milaha,

the mariner's art

and seafaring in general, as they developed, chiefly among the Muslims of the Mediterranean, in the later Middle Ages and the early modern period; the treatment will also endeavor to reflect two stages, the earlier Arab one and the later Turkish one: although partly overlapping, they were distinctive in emphasis and intrinsic achievement. The decline of Arab seafaring in the Mediterranean, which began in the Fatimid and Ayyubid periods, became pronounced under the Mamluks, and encompassed its three main aspects: military-naval, merchant shipping, and corsair. It was contemporary with and partly due to the dramatic rise of European shipping in the Mediterranean that gained momentum in the 11 th century.

1

Encyclopaedia

of Islam, 2 n d e d „ v. 7 (1993), pp. 4 0 , 4 6 - 5 0 .

214

NAVAL

HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

An eventual resuli of the decline of Arab merchant shipping was the lack of Muslim participation in the new stage of improved navigational methods from the 13th century onwards. Three interrelated innovations marked these methods: the mariner's compass, the portolan chart, and an improved and expanded type of sailing directions. The mariner's compass is first attested for 1187, and its perfection and widespread use became the domain of the Europeans. The term, of Latin derivation, only marginally appeared in Arabic (kunbas: as in Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima,

ed. Mustafa Muhammad, Cairo n.d., p. 54; tr. Rosenthal, i,

117), and then only with an additional shift in the meaning characteristic also of contemporary Italian, where it referred not to the instrument but to the portolan chart. The name of the instrument itself was replaced in the Mediterranean lingua franca

by the Italian word bussola

('small box', on

account of this improvement on the older unprotected magnetic needle; a "compass card", a windrose indicating 4, 8, 16, or 32 points of compass, attached to the needle and revolving with it, further characterized this improvement). This term does not appear to have been current in pre-modern Arabic, a symptom of the little use which the instrument received on the part of seafaring Arabs in the Mediterranean; on the other hand, it later became the standard term in Turkish, where its form pusul or pusla is attested from 1513 onwards (R. Kahane-A. I ietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: nautical

terms

of Italian

and Greek

origin,

Turkish

Urbana 1957, no. 133, in

reference to the world map made by Piri Reis in 1513). The portolan chart - also called compass chart - was a map of the Mediterranean, or of one part of it, produced specifically for use by mariners. It differed from contemporary land maps in several respects, the most prominent being a network of rhumb lines (lines indicating the points of compass) emanating from one or more centers, usually emphasized by a more or less elaborate windrose. The portolan chart, drawn with the help of the compass, reached a higher degree of accuracy than contemporary land maps, a fact of obvious importance to sailors; the rhumb lines had the additional function of facilitating the seaman's task of charting the ship's course. The earliest know portolan charts date from the 13 th century; by the 15 th they proliferated, and dominated the Mediterranean scene until the 17 th . Most were produced by Italians and Catalans. Arabic portolan charts are known to have existed, but the small number of the extant ones, as well as the fact that they appear to be visual copies and lexical adaptations of the European ones, once more reflect the domination of Mediterranean seafaring, in the later Middle Ages, by the Christian half of that sea. The oldest known specimen dates from the 14th century and covers the western half of the Mediterranean (J. Vernet-

M I LAHA Gines, "The Maghreb chart in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana", in Imago

215 Mundi,

v. 16 |1962|, pp. 1-16). A case apart is a group of atlases produced during the 16 th and 17 th ecnturies at the Tunisian workshop of the Safaqusi family. They are a hybrid between the Italian portolan chart type and the world maps by Idrisi. Here, the non-functional (as far as use by mariners was concerned), mainly intellectual and esthetical purpose, was carried to the extreme. In addition to the portolan chart, there appeared the portolan proper: a text of sailing directions for a smaller or larger portion of the Mediterranean, as a verbal reflection and development in detail of the chart. Like the portolan chart, the portolan text became possible only in the 13 th century with the spread of the magnetic needle, for its essential feature was the indication of respective positions according to the points of compass. Here, the imbalance between the Christian and Arab Muslim halves of the Mediterranean is even more striking: in contrast to the great number of Christian portolans - again, chiefly Italian and Catalan - that have come down to us, not a single Arab one is known to have existed. The often mentioned "rutters", sailing directions included in the works of B a k r i (ed. de Slane, 81-86) and Idrisi geographicum,

(Opus

pp. 257-309 = 3 r d climate, sections 1-3) belong to an earlier,

pre-compass method of navigation that went back all the way back to classical antiquity. Aside from using the above-mentioned three types of tools - mariner's compass, portolan chart and portolan text - Mediterranean seamen of the later Middle Ages continued to avoid availing themselves of the more sophisticated instruments of celestial navigation such as the astrolabe (usturlab in Arabic), characteristic of Muslim seafaring in the Indian Ocean. This was due, on the part of the Christians, not only to unfamiliarity with the methods of a different tradition, language and culture, but also to the reduced size of the Mediterranean where, unlike on the oceans, coasts and landmarks were never too far away; relative position according to the points of compass rather than latitude and longitude was the chief determining factor. When viewed from a broader perspective, Muslim mildha, seafaring, in these final centuries of the Middle Ages lacked the growth features characteristic of the Christian one. A rapid evolution in ship-building technology was one of them. Enriched by elements introduced from the Atlantic, this technology developed newer and larger types of sailing ships driven by square sails and later by a combination of lateen and square sails; it remained the domain of the Christians and further contributed to the domination of long-distance Mediterranean shipping by them. The large Genoese and other Frankish (sailing) ships, called in the lingua franca simply that - navi, ships (derived from the Latin navis) - or given more specific

216

NAVAL

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GEOGRAPHY

names such as adaptations of the Germanic cog or the etymologically intriguing carrack became the great freighters of east-west trade, and their arrivals and departures were among the memorable events in the economic life of such ports as Alexandria. Venetian galleys, however, for a long time tenaciously endured the competition, partly by pushing their volume capacity to the limit, at which they became the gallere grosse d't mercato,

the great

merchant galleys of the Republic's convoys. We see nothing of the sort on the Muslim side. Although Arab coastal shipping must have retained its local vigor and importance, the galley - shitii Kindermann,

"Schiff"

im Arabischen,

or qit'a

in Arabic (cf. H.

Zwickau 1934, s.vv.) - did not

develop into a large commercial vessel but remained essentially the traditional warship. Arab long-distance shipping between Egypt and the Syro-Palestinian coast on one hand and the Maghrib and Spain on the other, still vigorous in the Fatimid period, appears to have receded under the Ayyubids and Mamluks. Characteristic of this are the voyages of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battüta. Ibn Jubayr, the pious Muslim from Granada whose principal purpose was the hajj, nevertheless crossed the entire length of the Mediterranean on Christian ships (in 1183, Ceuta-Alexandria: in 1184-85, 'Akká-Cartagena; cf. Rihla, ed. Wright and de Goeje. Leiden 1907, pp. 35, 312); Ibn Battüta sailed in the 1330s from Latakya to Alanya on a large Genoese qurqüra

(probably a

carrack), and from Sinope to Caffa (Kefe in Turkish) on a Greek (Rüm) ship {Rihla, ii, 254, 354). The naval imbalance was up to a point compensated by the activities of Muslim corsairs (kursan in Arabic), especially in the western Mediterranean. There, Muslim refugees from Spain swelled the ranks of local corsairs, making especially the harbors of Algeria bases for efficient pirate fleets that were using small and fast types of galleys. Even their activities, however, lacked the magnitude of "Sarasin" corsair fleets of the early centuries of Islam, and did not match the grand scale of the contemporary semi-official Christian, especially Catalan, piracy. The later Middle Ages were thus marked in the Mediterranean by a relative Arab passivity on all maritime fronts: navigational techniques, shipbuilding technology, merchant shipping, military-naval enterprises. This situation changed up to a point with the expansion of the Ottoman Turks in the course of the 15th century. Like the Arabs of the first decades of Islamic expansion, the preOttoman Turks who spread over Anatolia in the last decades of the 11 th century were nomads unfamiliar with the sea. Again like the Arabs, some of these Turks proceeded forthwith (perhaps - as in the case of the Arabs - due to a predisposition derived from the nomad's mobility and reliance on

his

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217

markab) to learn the seafarer' art: the gaza of the Turkish horsemen quickly changed into a maritime gaza. It was led by the Seljukid prince Çaka Bey and his followers in the bay of Izmir: the conquests of the islands of Lesbos (Midilli) and Chios (Sakiz) during the 1080s and 1090s were examples of their signal, though only ephemeral, achievements (see Akdes Nimet Kural, Çaka Bey, Ankara 1966). After a few years the Turks withdrew from the coast, but filtered back in the course of the 13th and 14 th centuries when they formed the coastal principalities of Karasi, Saruhan, Aydin and Mente§e. Some of them especially those of Aydm - launched a maritime gaza that rivaled in scope and energy the Umayyad and Cretan Arabs' campaigns against Byzantium. The exploits of Umur Beg of Aydm (r. 1328-48) became legendary to the point of being evoked, a century later, by the epic of Enveri (see Irène Mélikoff-Sayar, d'Aydin, Le Destan d'Umur Pacha, Paris 1953; Paul Lemerle, L'Émirat Byzance et l'Occident. Recherches sur "La Geste d'Umur Pacha", Paris 1957). The Anatolian coasts and nearby islands of the Aegean were the principal area of the Turks' contact with the sea. It was there that they first learned the mariner's trade, and their teachers were the indigenous Greeks who had been practicing this art since antiquity. Conversion to Islam, intermarriage, turkicization, all converged to produce a special seafaring population whose maritime vocation reflected this fusion in many ways. Turkish maritime terminology is one eloquent example. Thus the most characteristic type of the Mediterranean ships, the galley, became known in Turkish by its Greek loanword, kadirga (Kahane and Tietze, The Lingua Franca, no. 785). Vigorous though it was, pre-Ottoman Turkish seafaring remained confined to the Aegean part of the Mediterranean. Turkish expansion over the rest of that sea took place only under the Ottomans, and became one of the most dramatic and noteworthy features of the late 15 th and 16 th century Mediterranean history. Commensurably, Turkish maritime terminology further grew and absorbed much of the special professional vocabulary of Mediterranean seamen - the lingua franca that was based mainly on Italian but also included components from Greek to Albanian and Arabic; this Turkish dimension of the Mediterranean lingua franca has been subject of an outstanding scholarly study, the above-mentioned work by Kahane and Tietze. The Ottoman Turkish milàha thus eclipsed the earlier achievements of the Mediterranean Arabs, but it retained some of the basic aspects of their seafaring that distinguished it from the Christian one. Thus in addition to its above-mentioned initial derivativeness from pre-Islamic elements, a characteristic feature of the Turkish milàha was its being based on the intimate

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relationship between the military-naval and corsair dimensions of seafaring; Ottoman merchant shipping, especially long-distance merchant shipping that crossed the boundaries between the Muslim and Christian halves of the Mediterranean, remained as restricted as it had been in the case of the Arabs. The Ottoman Turks caught up with the Christians in those aspects of milâha where the Arabs had slipped behind since the Mamluk period: in the art of navigation itself, in using and producing the principal types of nautical instruments, and in familiarizing themselves with some of the newer types of ships and shipbuilding technology. The Italian portolan chart and portolan text found their Turkish counterpart in the Kitabi Bahriye, a book where the two principles became combined so as to produce a unique type of navigational tool that also asserted the Turkish individuality with the framework of Mediterranean seafaring. Its author, Piri Reis, (see Paul Kahle, Piri Re'is, Bahrije,

Berlin 1926; Svat Soucek, "A propos du Livre d'Instructions

Nautiques de Piri Re'is," in Revue des Études Islamiques,

v. 41 (1973), pp.

241-55), compiled it in two versions (926/1520 and 932/1526 respectively), producing a navigational description of the entire Mediterranean; the book is divided into a number of chapters of text, each of which is accompanied by a chart of the respective segment. Moreover, the second and longer version (one of whose manuscripts has been published in facsimile by the Turk Tarih Kurumu, Piri Rcis, Kitabi

Bahriye,

1935; the same manuscript was again

published in facsimile, with a transliteration, modern Turkish translation, and an English translation, in parallel columns on facing pages, by the Historical Research Foundation, Istanbul Research Center, 1988, 4 vols.) is preceded by a versified introduction where the author expounds in considerable detail the art of navigation besides describing in broad terms the world's oceans and the ongoing voyages of Great Discoveries. As a book of sailing directions encompassing the entire Mediterranean and an atlas of enlarged charts of smaller segments of thai sea, the Kitabi

Bahriye

is unique in portolan

literature; and as a text that includes, in the second version, the latest information about the discovery of America and other great voyages, it stands out in contemporary Islamic literature. Piri Reis is also characteristic of the Ottoman milâha in another sense. His early training and vocation was that of a maritime gazi, whose trade combined piracy in quest of booty with the conviction of performing the gaza, Holy War for Islam, whenever the target was the Christian element of the Mediterranean; intermittently, and especially in his later years, he also served the Ottoman sultan by joining the fleet on its naval campaigns. This double nature of the Ottoman milâha, sc. the individual, private one as an assortment of Turkish corsairs in constant struggle with the Christians, and the organized,

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governmental one as the campaigns waged by the donanmayi hiimayun, the imperial fleet, represented two faces of the same coin, and carried to its extreme a phenomenon that was universal (ef. for example the role - not devoid of a religious hue whenever Catholic Spain was the target - of Sir Frances Drake in Queen Elizabeth's time). It was its degree and exclusiveness that set the Ottoman case apart from the rest. Another and steadily revitalizing and growing source of strength for contemporary and early modern navies of the Christian powers, sc. the merchant marine, remained negligible in the Ottoman empire. Corsair participation thus played an often decisive role in most of the naval campaigns of the Turkish fleet, in the extension of the Ottoman maritime frontier all the way to the western Mediterranean, and in the occupation of the post of chief admiral (kaptanpa^a). The case of Hayreddin Barbarossa (Barbaras in Turkish) illustrates and combines all these three elements. In 1518, he presented Algiers to the Ottoman sultan as the nucleus of a new eyalet; in 1533 he was appointed to the upgraded post of kaptanpa§a; in 1538 he led the Turkish fleet to victory at Preveza that gave the Ottoman Empire its reputation of naval superiority which lasted until the battle of Lepanto( 1571). Although the Ottoman fleet was rebuilt remarkably rapidly after Lepanto, the decline - of which that battle was an incipient symptom became accentuated in the course of the 17th century. The chief cause was the overall decline of the empire's earlier vigor, but among the contributing factors was the loss of ability to keep in step with the Christian powers' continuing modernization of nautical sciences and naval architecture. Thus the shift from oar-propelled galleys to sail-driven ships as the linchpin of early modern European war fleets only belatedly occurred in the Ottoman navy, and then again due to the efforts of a former pirate and governor of Algiers, Mezemorta Huseyin Pa§a. Summoned to service in 1689, he expanded this aspect of modernization that had spread among the Algerians corsairs since 1605. The improvement bore fruit in two naval victories over the Venetians a few years later (1695). The inability to keep modernizing on a par with European navies subsequently reasserted itself, however, and contributed to the destruction of the Ottoman fleet by a Russian one at the battle of Ce§me in 1770, and the naval domination of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean by the Russians until the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish with the peace treaty of Kiiftik Kaynarca of 1774. The Turkish polymath Katip (,'elebi (1609-57) wrote a history of the Ottoman naval campaigns ( T u h f e t u l kitab f i esfaril bihar; 1 s t printing, Ibrahim Miiteferrika Press, Istanbul 1141/1729; a yeni yazi modernized

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version by Orhan §ait Gokyay, Istanbul 1973), where he also recorded the organization and structure of the Ottoman navy. The time of this compilation, mid- 17th century, coincided with the first low ebb of the Ottoman sea power, exemplified by the recurrent Venetian blockade of the Dardanelles during the protracted conquest of Crete (1645-69), and the difficulties of the Ottoman fleet to break through it. This naval intrusion of a Christian war fleet into the Ottoman home waters was paralleled by a growing dependence on Christian merchant shipping. If in the Middle Ages and early modern period Christian shipping dominated only that part of the traffic that crossed the boundaries between Islam and Christendom, by the 18th century it began to assume an ever greater share of the Ottoman carrying trade as well, when European, especially French, vessels circulated along the entire stretch between Istanbul, Izmir and Alexandria (Daniel Panzac, "Les échanges maritimes dans l'Empire Ottoman au XVIile siècle", Revue Méditerranée,

Musulman

et de la

no. 39 (1985), pp. 7 - 3 4 ; Edhem Eldem,

de l'Occident

"Kontrolii

kaybetmek: 18 yiizyilin ikinci yarisinda Dogu Akdeniz'de Osmanli varligi", in Ôzlem Kumrular, éd., Tiirkler ve Deniz, Istanbul 2007, pp. 63-78). In the final decades of the 18th century there began efforts to embark on a fundamental modernization of the Ottoman navy that included the unprecedented novelty of theoretical training in naval schools established with the help of French and other European experts (Ismail Hakki Uzunçar§ili, Osmanh devletinin

merkez. ve bahriye teçkilâti, Ankara 1948, pp. 507-511;

Stanford Jay Shaw, Between old and new: the Ottoman Empire under Selim 111, 1789-1807,

Sultan

Cambridge, Mass., 1971, pp. 160-166). It was at this

point that a counterpart to the term "navigation" in the narrow sense appeared, probably for the first time, in an Islamic language: sayr-i sufun or sayr-i safa'in,

as in a report of 1211/1797 to the sultan (Uzunçarçili, op. cit., 535).

These efforts heralded a growing awareness at the center of the state that adoption of European scientific methods was a prerequisite for the empire's survival; a realization of Turkey's potential, based on her strategic maritimeeconomic position, to develop a strong merchant marine, however, occurred more gradually. As for navigation in the Indian Ocean and its Persian Gulf and Red Sea ramifications during the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, the radical and all-embracing difference between the Muslim milàhas

of the

Mediterranean and of the Indian Ocean could hardly be over-emphasized, and is one of the intriguing aspects of Islamic history. An almost total absence of military navies and naval warfare, in contrast to their importance in the Mediterranean, marked the oriental dimension until the arrival of the Europeans in 1498. Another difference was the complete mutuality of Muslim

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and non-Muslim merchant shipping in the Indian Ocean, in contrast to its increasing one-sidedness in the Mediterranean; this mutuality was compounded and in a sense caused by remarkably peaceful relations, in fact, the coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims in India. The western coast of the Indian subcontinent could be compared in the maritime sense to that of southern Europe; but whereas the Arabs and Turks of the Mediterranean rarely and reluctantly crossed the religious boundary as merchant shippers, their Arab and Persian coreligionists of the Indian Ocean kept sailing to India and East Africa just as their ancestors had done before Islam. This activity had two significant results. One was the "maritime" spread of Islam to the Malabar region of India, East Africa and, eventually also Indonesia; the other, more directly relevant to our subject, was a certain "Islamization" of seafaring in the Indian Ocean. If in the early Abbasid period Arab or Persian shippers calling at such ports as Khambayat (anglicized as Cambay) were Muslims, the Indians sailing to Aden or other Near Eastern ports were not; by the time the Mamluks ruled Egypt, K h a m b a y a t had become the most important port of Muslim-ruled north-western India (a good example of the two stages are the accounts of Mas'udi (Muruj, v. 1, pp. 253-54 = #269) and of Ibn Battuta (Rihla, v. 4, p. 53), who visited K h a m b a y a t in the 4 t h / 1 0 t h and 8 t h / 1 4 t h

centuries

respectively); its Gujarati sailors and merchants became the third group of Muslim seafarers, after the Arabs and Persians, characteristic of the Indian Ocean milaha. The Arabs and Persians retained primacy as the seafarers of the western Indian Ocean; in its eastern half and beyond to Indonesia, on the other hand, Gujarati Muslims appear to have played the principal role, especially when the Chinese of the post-Yung-lo (ruled 1403-1424) period and after the final expedition of 1433 withdrew from those waters and chose Malacca (Melaka), instead of such south Indian ports as Kulam (Quilon) and Kalikat (Calicut), as the western terminus of their voyages. Alongside the Gujaratis, the Mappilas of Malabar deserve mention as a prominent Muslim seafaring people of the Indian Ocean from the later Middle Ages onwards. In a sense relevant to our subject, the Mappilas stand out among all others, for they were formed as a distinct human group directly through the effect of Arab and Persian sailors and merchants visiting this part of the Indian coast, often settling there and intermarrying with certain castes of the Hindu population. This integration of Muslim seafaring and maritime trade with the non-Muslim ones in the Indian Ocean, in contrast to the rigid separation in the Mediterranean, is further exemplified by the fact that the Gujaratis pursued their maritime enterprise alongside the Hindu Vanyas (or Banyas), while both groups were subjects of an Indian Muslim sultanate (and eventually, of the Mughal empire), and that the Mappilas never rose to the position of the ruling

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class, but in this early period lived peacefully alongside the dominant Brahmi, Nayar and other Hindu groups (as well as the Christians of Malabar), and were well treated and in fact favored by the Hindu ruler of Kalikat, the "Zamorin" (al-Samari, in Ibn Battuta. Rihla. v. 4, p. 88, who gives an excellent account of this situation). One of the significant results of this purely commercial nature of seafaring (except for the often bothersome piracy, endemic on most seas) in the Indian Ocean was the above-mentioned lack of a military-naval tradition. No doubt beneficial for centuries, this circumstance had near-catastrophic consequences when the Europeans made their entry on the scene once Vasco da Gama, guided by an Arab mu'allim (possibly the famous Ibn Majid), crossed the Indian Ocean from Malindi to Calicut in 1498. The Portuguese immediately began to suppress native seafaring between India and the ports of the Near East both for economic reasons - re-routing the Spice Route trade around the Cape of Good Hope to Lisbon was the goal - and religious ones, especially when the target of their attack was Muslim ships or those whose destination was the Islamic Near East. Eventually, native seafaring recovered from the initial shock and by the 1540's, through its sheer volume and resilience, broke the Portuguese blockade; it was this vitality of the chiefly Muslim merchant seafarers of the Indian Ocean, rather than the sometimes over-emphasized effect of the entry of the Ottoman naval power on the scene, that caused the recovery of the Spice Route traffic through the Near Eastern ports (although the successful Turkish defense of the Red Sea from the Portuguese did play an important role). On the other hand, the natives never managed to create navies that could seriously challenge those of the Europeans; after the failure of the Mamluks and Ottomans to defeat the Portuguese in the western Indian Ocean (roughly between 1508 and 1552), and of the Javanese to wrest Malacca from the Portuguese in 1541, all the major naval battles were fought among the Europeans themselves once the British, Dutch and French joined the fray in the 17th century . This inability appears to have been caused by the absence of a native naval tradition rather than by a lack of the appropriate shipbuilding technology: for the natives, especially Indian shipwrights, had both the skill and resources to build large and sturdy sailing ships in no way inferior to European ones like the Portuguese carracks. Finally, mention must be made of an aspect of commercial seafaring in the Indian Ocean whose effect was powerful and lasting: the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. Despite the perils of sea voyages, the maritime route was the only really feasible way for most Muslims of peninsular India, Malaysia, Indonesia and East Africa, and the large numbers of pilgrims from such ports as Surat or Atjeh contributed to the economic vigor and resilience of Muslim milaha in the Indian Ocean.

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223

T h e A r a b - P e r s i a n inspiration of M u s l i m navigation in t h e Indian O c e a n a l s o l e f t its p e r m a n e n t s t a m p o n t h e m a r i t i m e v o c a b u l a r y of t h e s e a f a r i n g p e o p l e s all the w a y t o I n d o n e s i a . T h u s mu'allim

( w h o s e principal c o n n o t a t i o n

is " t e a c h e r " ) , t h e s t a n d a r d A r a b i c w o r d f o r s h i p ' s c a p t a i n or pilot, s p r e a d in this c o n n o t a t i o n o v e r t h e e n t i r e s p a n of t h e I n d i a n O c e a n ; s i m i l a r l y , t h e Persian w o r d nâkhudâ,

" s h i p ' s m a s t e r , o w n e r " (G. F e r r a n d , " L ' é l é m e n t persan

d a n s les t e x t e s n a u t i q u e s a r a b e s d e s X V e et X V I e s i è c l e s " , in asiatique

Journal

( 1 9 2 4 ) , pp. 2 3 8 - 3 9 ) , also f o u n d universal a p p l i c a t i o n all the w a y t o

Indonesia. Bibliography: In addition to the works mentioned in the article, see Svat Soucek, "Certain types of ships in Ottoman-Turkish terminology", in Turcica,

v. 7 (1975), pp. 233-49:

Colin Imber, "The navy of Siileyman the Magnificent", in Archivum

Ottomanicum,

v. 6 (1980), pp. 211-82; J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, "Soutien logistique et présence navale ottomane en Méditerranée en 1517", in Revue de l'Occident la

Méditerranée,

Musulman

et de

v. 39 (1985), pp. 7-34; Robert Mantran, " L a navigation

vénitienne et ses concurrents en Méditerranée orientale aux X V I I e et XVIII e siècles", in Colloque

International

Mehmet Çiikru, Esfar-i

bahriye-i

Tiirklerin

deniz muharebeleri,

deniz tarihi,

d'Histoire

Osmaniye,

Maritime,

1962, pp. 375-91;

Istanbul 1306/1888; Fevzi Kurtoglu,

Istanbul 1932; Hayati Tezel, Anadolu

Turklerinin

deniz harp tarihi,

Istanbul

1970, 2 vols.; idem, "Kanunî Sultan Siileyman ve toplu strateji", in

Kanunî

Armagani, Belleten yiizydda

Istanbul 1973; A. Buyiiktugrul, Osmanli

Ankara 1970; idem, "Preveze deniz muharebesine iliçkin gerçekler", 37 (1973), pp. 51-85; ¡dris Bostan, Osmanli tersâne-i

bahriye

kurulu§u (1534)", Tarih

Dergisi,

XVII.

no. 38 (2003), pp. 61-77; D. A. Zakythinos,

Corsaires et pirates dans ¡es mers greques au temps de la domination 1939.

teçkilâti:

âmire. Ankara 1992; idem, "Cezayir-i Bahr-i Sefid eyaletinin turque, Athens

OTTOMAN CARTOGRAPHY 1

Cartography can be conceived of as pertaining to two categories: land maps and sea charts. This division was established since the Middle Ages, when Mediterranean portolan charts came into being; it became generally adopted with the expansion of oceanic voyages in the age of the great discoveries, and still persists today (a special subsection was that of world maps, in which the two categories converged up to a point during the 16"' century). The division was especially pronounced in the Ottoman Empire. The relevant period is that of the fifteenth - eighteenth centuries, after which Turkish cartography aligned itself with modern Western techniques. The Turkish term. The novelty and exceptional occurrence of the land map in Ottoman Turkish explains the lack of a specific term other than the Arabic loanword surat, depiction. The first known record of the term kharti dates from 1513 (the Piri Reis world map), which then became common for the sea chart; significantly, this was an import from the Mediterranean maritime lingua franca, where its earliest record (13lh century) traces it back to the Catalan carta (originally of Egyptian provenance via Greek); the Turkish form reveals later Greek influence. In modern Turkish, harlta means land map, deniz haritasi, sea chart. Land Maps. Maps can also be classified according to certain criteria of execution and purpose. 1) As illustrative elements in books dealing with a variety of subjects. 2) As sketches of grounds containing elements of public utility, such as water supply systems, or other features such as river courses. 3) As sketches of routes for military campaigns or sieges of fortresses or cities; pilgrims' routes and itineraries were their close parallels or overlapped with military campaign accounts. 4) As the principal element of atlases and geography books or dictionaries. Another aspect, which can also be applied to sea charts, is whether these maps were originals, derivations, or translations. Although it represents a unique and exceptional case, the Arabic version of Ptolemy's Geografike

ifigesis is routinely mentioned as an early

hallmark of cartography and of geography and cosmography in the Ottoman Empire. In 1465 Sultan Mehmet II Fatih was shown a copy of the Greek original, and ordered that an Arabic translation be made of it. Earlier Arabic

'(original text of an article whose abbreviated version is forthcoming in the Dictionnaire l'Empire Ottoman).

de

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translations are on record from the heyday of classical Islamic geography (9'h~ 10'h centuries), but they are now lost and probably already were so in the Conqueror's time. The Byzantine scholar Amirutzes (originally from Trapezunt) and his son. who were active among the retinue of scholars surrounding the sultan, carried out this project. The translation has been preserved in two manuscripts, of which one, Ayasofya 2610, contains 26 double-page and 24 single-page color maps. A facsimile edition was published in 1929 by Youssouf Kamal as a supplement to vol. 2 of his Cartographica

Monumento

Africae el Aegypli, and reprinted in black-and-white by Fuat

Sezgin (Klaudios Ptoiemaios. Geography,

Arabic

Translation,

Frankfurt

1987). No other copies arc known to have been made, and interest in geography and cartography as specific subjects slackened after Mehmet II's death. This is suggested by the absence of any known maps or atlases made independently of other purposes, in sharp contrast to the explosion of cartographic and geographic work going on in Europe. World maps or regional maps were included in Turkish manuscripts produced at this time, but they invariably appeared in such books as chronicles, itineraries or celebrations of memorable events. Most were adaptations of maps pertaining to the classical Islamic tradition, such as the world map in a genealogical scroll titled Ziibdetu't-tevarih

by Se\id Lokman. This author became the official court

historiographer in 977/1569, and several manuscripts of the same work, also known as Silsilename.

were produced in the next two decades. The world map

in a manuscript made between 1583 and 1588 is based on that of the 15'" century the Arab author Ibn al-Wardi. Some manuscripts, however, also included world maps made after European models, as for example a 1003/1595 copy of the same Ziibdetu't-tevarih.

These were few, however, and the

conservative Islamic style remained dominant until the appearance of Kátip Celebi's work in the middle of the 17,h century. The reason for the absence of independent cartography and geography certainly was not a lack of able and eager Turks and Arabs - most of the latter by then also Ottoman subjects but the reluctance of the ruling elite, ever more Islamic after Mehmet II, to permit what it considered impermissible innovations. This is illustrated by two sets of characteristic circumstances. In 1577, an observatory (rasathane) was founded in Istanbul; for a short time it flourished as a promising scientific workshop poised to participate in the exciting progress going on in Europe, and a miniature contained in volume 1 of the §ahan§ahname

(for example the

manuscript in Istanbul (iniverstesi Kütüphanesi, FY. 1404, fol. 57a), shows among other instruments and objects a globe of either European origin or inspiration. In 1588, however, the sultan, persuaded by the §eyhülislam

that

the observatory was incompatible with Islamic values, ordered it closed and

OTTOMAN

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227

demolished. Another illustration is the absence of printing in the Ottoman Empire, proscribed until the 1720s by the same religious authorities as contrary to Islam. T h i s proscription was not without adverse e f f e c t s on cartography. Printed copies meant greater availability and reduced costs; printing facilitated uniformity and accuracy, and stimulated professional communication and progress toward constant improvement and widening of horizons. Moreover, printing also had an important e c o n o m i c dimension. Publishing became an ever more lucrative and stimulating business in Europe, and this in turn further stimulated cartography and compilation of atlases. We would search in vain for anything comparable in the Ottoman Empire. What did flourish in the Ottoman Empire, however, was the art of manuscript book illustration, especially miniature painting. This included landscape and city views, which in some cases approached cartography, and the genre is thus included in the currently published History of Cartography.

The

best and sometimes spectacular examples can be found in narratives of imperial campaigns. This genre reached its peak with M a t r a k f i Nasuh (d. 1564), the author of two such works, the Beyan i Menazil-i also called Mecmua-i ve

Menazil,

Sefer-i

and the Tarih-i Feth-i Saklavun

ve

Irakeyn, Usturgun

Ustunibelgrad. The first work, the Beyan

i Menazil,

is on one level a narrative of

Sultan Siileyman's 1533-35 campaign through Anatolia to Iran and Iraq, which culminated in the conquest of Baghdad. On another level, it is a "shrine book", like many other Islamic itineraries. The manuscript includes a number of beautifully executed color miniatures of the stages f r o m Istanbul to Baghdad, with emphasis on cities, religious buildings, shrines, and "paysages" which often resemble maps but are not maps in the cartographic sense: scale, orientation, and distances have often been either disregarded or treated in an arbitrary manner. The author's goal was not to guide a traveler but to offer the reader different kinds of information - f r o m memorializing the campaign to o f f e r i n g esthetic e n j o y m e n t and c o n v e y i n g an idea of what a particular mosque, tomb, or city looked like. Matrak§i N a s u h ' s second work, the Tarih-i

Feth-i

Siklos...,

is an

account of two other campaigns: the imperial campaign of Sultan Süleyman in 949-50/1542-43 which completed the Ottoman conquest of Hungary, and the naval campaign of admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa in 950-51/1543-44 against the Habsburg Empire. In the manuscript, the latter account comes first. It includes several beautifully executed color miniatures of Mediterranean views, mostly port cities, from a vantage point at sea; drawn on the spot by a trained draftsman, they also show the Ottoman fleet consisting of galleys and galleons off Genoa, Nice and Toulon. In other words, they are neither maps

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nor charts but again view s playing a role today performed by reporters and photographers. The account of the sultan's land campaign too is enlivened by town views in a style widespread in early 16"1 century Europe. This type of view persisted in Ottoman illustration until the early 17"1 century, becoming increasingly stylized in the chronicles of Mehmet III (1595-1603), Ahmet I (1603-1617), and Osman II (1617-1622). In other words, if in the case of Matrak^i Nasuh's and his collaborators' work efforts at representational realism, an indispensable element of cartography, were sometimes present, they altogether disappeared after him. The inclusion of these and other less famous manuscript books in histories of cartography brings into even bolder relief what could be called the absence of non-Islamic terrestrial cartography and geography in the Ottoman Empire before its introduction by Kátip Celebi with his two works of geography, the Cihanniima

and the Levami un-nur, toward the middle of the

17"1 century. This is indirectly emphasized by the fame gained by one preKátip Qelebi book, the Tarih-i

Hind i Garbi,

by a rather mysterious

personage, Emir Mehmet bin Emir Hasan es-Suudi, whose name appears in the colophon of the earliest known manuscript, dated 991/1583-84. This book, also known as Hadisi

Nev. is an amalgam of translations from several

Western sources about the New World, and has been preserved in 19 known manuscripts, besides being immortalized by an even more famous 1730 printed edition. Some manuscripts include world maps, such as the two in the Beyazit copy. One shows the world within a Ptolemaic set of circles; the other is an oval world map resembling the above-mentioned map in Lokman's Ziibdet

ut-tevarih.

The Tarih-i

Hind i Garbi thus conveys an ambiguous

message. Its very creation and existence in a number of manuscript copies and then as one of the Ottoman brand of incunabula bears witness to the interest among Ottoman Turks in the world at large. Its uniqueness, semi-anonymity, and derivativeness, however, also bring out the dearth of genuine participation in the exponentially growing cartographic, geographic and other scientific discoveries and activities going on in the Western world. Some Ottoman Turks were becoming acutely aware of this disparity, and the author of this work was one of them, to judge from a passage where he narrates Portuguese penetration into the Indian Ocean and deplores the T urkish withdrawal from there. It may thus have been part of his purpose to awaken the Ottoman elite to this state of affairs; his semi-anonymity, however, also may be a sign of caution or marginality. The awakening arrived with Kátip £elebi (1609-1657), whose many works include the two above-mentioned titles pertaining to geography and cartography. The Cihanniima, a title best translated as "Cosmorama", is a

OTTOMAN

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CARTOGRAPHY

geography of the world, and the autograph is provided with 44 maps. T h e work exists in a n u m b e r of manuscript copies as well as in a printed edition published by Ibrahim Miiteferrika in 1732. T h e f a m o u s p r i n t e r - p u b l i s h e r expanded both the text and the m a p s with new material, so that his edition includes 4 9 m a p s . Kàtip Q'elebi writes in the p r e f a c e that he has used European as well as Islamic sources, and that he undertook the project twice; the first a t t e m p t c a m e to a halt when he c a m e across the " A t l a s m a j o r ' u n muhtasari olan Atlas m i n o r ' u " - an abridgement of [ B l a e u ' s | Atlas major (in fact, a M e r c a t o r - H o n d i u s 1621 Latin edition of the Atlas

Minor).

He thus

resolved to first undertake a translation of this work into Turkish; the project was m a d e possible by the lucky chance of meeting one " § e y h M e h m e t Efendi, a convert w h o had c o m e f r o m France; expert in the Latin language, he quickly learnt T u r k i s h , " and it was f r o m his dictation that Kàtip C^elebi wrote the Turkish version which he titled Levami then restarted work on the Cihannuma,

un-nur fi zulumat-i

Atlas minur.

He

listing s o m e of the sources, both

Western and Islamic, which he had used. The Ottoman scholar emphasizes that Islamic works, in contrast to Western ones, consist chiefly of texts and words and have little cartographic material. This second, definitive version of the Cihannuma

was thus chiefly of European and thus, for its time, m o d e r n

inspiration, the first such work in Ottoman literature. T h e r e are a n u m b e r of extant copies of both versions, in both Turkish and foreign libraries and in private collections, besides the printed edition of 1732. T h e c a r t o g r a p h i c material appears to have gone through inevitable vicissitudes, with in s o m e cases a palpable influence of other European maps, more recently received. For Kàtip £ e l e b i ' s contemporaries, the value of the Cihannuma

was

that it g a v e them access to hitherto neglected k n o w l e d g e of the world; its printed edition almost a century later also s h o w s that it had not generated a school

of

indigenous

cartography,

despite

a lively

intellectual

and

c o s m o p o l i t a n a t m o s p h e r e spreading t h r o u g h 17"'century Istanbul. In this climate, s o m e w h a t reminiscent of that under the conqueror of Constantinople two centuries earlier, his descendant M e h m e t IV commissioned the translation of an atlas of the world, this t i m e not g r o u n d e d in antiquity but in the renaissance world of discoveries, and not into A r a b i c but into Turkish. In 1668 the D u t c h ambassador Justinus Coljer presented the sultan with a copy of the Atlas

Major,

a niultivolume world atlas produced by the A m s t e r d a m

cartographer and publisher Joan Blaeu. T h e sultan entrusted the execution of this m o n u m e n t a l project to E b u Bekir Dimi§ki, a muderris

at a medrese

in

Istanbul. T h e work seems to have taken a decade, f r o m 1675 to 1685, and the result was a splendid nine-volume Turkish version titled Nusret surur fi terceme-i

Atlas

mayor.

ul-Islam

Several copies exist in Istanbul

ve'l-

libraries,

230

NAVAL

HISTORY

AND

MARITIME

GEOGRAPHY

some one or two-volume abridgments. The Dutch original consists of 11 sumptuously executed volumes; vol. 1 is in the Topkapi Sarayi library (Hazine 2723), vol. 10 is in the Deniz Miizesi (Naval Museum), and vols. 2-9 and 11 are in the AskerT Miize (Military Museum). After two centurics of withdrawal, the Ottoman Turks thus began to pay attention to non-Islamic, chiefly European cartography and geography. While remarkable for the sheer sake of being an awakening, it also displays the inherent weakness plaguing the Ottoman position in relation to the Christian West. First of all, it remained passive and derivative: no original cartographic or geographic inventiveness is detectable. The magnitude of the chasm can be realized especially if we compare the cartographic production in Europe during the two centuries under discussion, namely the 16,h and 17'\ Moreover, we are again reminded of the absence of the business dimension of cartography. In Europe, printed maps and atlases had become a major commercial venture of several famous publishing houses; in Turkey, printing was still forbidden on religious grounds, besides additional pressure against its introduction made by the vested interests of the caligraphers' guild. Turkish cartographers thus remained deprived of this important economic opportunity. In sum, the Ottoman version of cartography and geography blossomed during the 16'\ 17", and 18"' centuries. The Miiteferrika press closed down soon after the founder's death in 1745. After it had resumed its activities in 1198/1784, the first cartographic work, published in 1804, was a translation of the English atlas of Faden. This edition showed that the production of cartographic literature would henceforth squarely follow European methods, while still remaining derivative. Eventually original work along modern patterns did take hold, though. An example of this is Ali Cevat's Memalik-i osmaniyenin tarih va cografiya liigati, published in 1313-1317/1895-1899. It is a 1200-page work in four parts, provided with systematically arranged maps and city plans. Sea Charts. Sea or nautical charts have always formed a special category of mapmaking. While textual description could provide guidance for land travel, seafaring had to rely also on the additional, and in some respects principal, guidance provided graphically. This made the sea chart not only a vital tool, but also more realistic and ultimately more accurate for obvious reasons - the success of the voyage and even the survival of the seafarers depended on its accuracy. The nautical charts of the Mediterranean represent a further special category in this genre, that of the portolan charts. This was a result of both the exceptional nature of this sea and of the type of human presence and activity that have made it unique from antiquity to the dawn of the modern era.

OTTOMAN

CARTOGRAPHY

231

The charts made for use in this almost completely enclosed body of water surpassed in accuracy and volume of production all other known earlier or contemporary maritime maps; they also stood out in that most of their creators and producers were Italians or Catalans, hence their special name, portolani (sg. portolano, "port [finding & describing) chart", owing to the principal feature recorded on them). The heyday of the portolan charts stretched from the 13"' to the 17"' century. This period witnessed an exponential growth of commercial sailing in the Mediterranean, and the introduction of the compass needle that made the creation and use of the portolan chart possible. Most extant portolan charts depict the entire Mediterranean; there were also those that depicted smaller segments of this sea, and may originally have been more numerous but have not survived. The reason for this is that those charts that have been preserved usually were of the special artifactual kind, which were made not for use at sea but as objects of esthetic enjoyment by the economic and social elite. There thus are in many libraries and private collections beautifully executed colored specimens of these charts and atlases, on vellum or on expensi ve paper, products of workshops at several centers in Italy and Catalonia. The typical portolan chart represented the contours of the Mediterranean to a previously unprecedented degree of accuracy, and was marked by two features that were largely responsible for this quality: a scale, and the network of rhumb or compass lines, which indicated the directions of the compass emanating from a fixed point. Four, eight, sixteen or thirty-two such points were arranged concentrically on such a chart, while smaller segments could only have one such point. One feature of prime importance in modern nautical charts was missing from the portolans: parallels and meridians. This was because of the relatively small size of the Mediterranean in its north-south dimension, which made parallels or lines of latitude unnecessary; for the same reason, problems of projection played no role in the case of portolan charts. Longitude might have been more useful, but the technology of determining it had to wait until the 18"' century. Another characteristic feature of the functional portolan chart was its often minute recording of coastal features, the most important and salient of which were ports and anchorages. In contrast, the hinterland was either absent or only sketchily recorded. At the same time, besides the portolan chart, there also was the portolan text, a precursor of modern sailing directions. It served the same purpose and, although its descriptive roots reached back to antiquity, it was based on the same innovation introduced by the magnetic needle - the possibility of directing the pilot according to the points of the compass. The terminology can be confusing, because in the languages of the genre's origin,

232

NAVAL HISTORY

portolano

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

could mean cither: chart or text. This ambiguity has spilled over

into other languages; in Hnglish, modern scholarship endeavors to distinguish between the two forms, and we follow this distinction by using the terms portolan chart and portolan text; where both are referred to at the same time, we simply say portolan. An important modification and expansion began to appear in the 15lh century with the advent of oceanic voyages. Although the principal actors in these ventures were increasingly the mariners of the Atlantic seaboard, the popularity of the portolan chart genre influenced the early charts of the oceans as well, before the portolan gave way to modern nautical charts based on latitude and longitude. Here too, as in the case of the Mediterranean portolan chart, the presentation copy for a wealthy or important customer made its a p p e a r a n c e . T h e P t o l e m a i c world m a p m e a n w h i l e evolved mappamundi,

into

the

the world map now also showing the globe in near totality after

the discovery of the New World and circumnavigation of the world, and initially some of these also bore an indelible trace of portolan chart style. At the same time, the usefulness of oceanic nautical charts in the race a m o n g Atlantic nations for access to precious commodities overseas generated official sponsorship of their production, often in government-controlled workshops, and the classification of such tools as secret and inaccessible to rivals. The Italians and Iberians were not the only Mediterraneans to make portolan charts. For example, there are a certain number of Arabic and Greek charts; but the main category is that of the Turkish portolans. This category, in turn, is dominated by the unique personality of Piri Reis (ca. 1480-1554). Piri R e i s ' s cartographic production can be dated as extending from 1513 to 1528. A mariner by profession - first a corsair, later a seaman in the sultan's navy and eventually a commander - he must of course have been engaged in this activity well before the earlier date, and may have continued even after 1528. T h e genesis of his work can be sought in the experience he gained as a young man at the side of his uncle Kemal Reis, when for some two decades, the 1490's and 1500's. they crisscrossed the M e d i t e r r a n e a n f r o m the Dardanelles to the Strait of Gibraltar, initially as corsairs engaged in maritime gaza against Christian shipping. He thus gained intimate knowledge of this sea while also collecting portolan charts and texts made by his Christian counterparts. Most probably conversant in the Mediterranean "lingua franca" - the language of Mediterranean mariners, anchored in Romance idioms but with accretions from Greek, Arabic, Slavic, and Turkish - he had access to the texts as well as the maps. Moreover, the Turkish mariner benefited f r o m an advantage over his Christian peers in that he was a Muslim and thus had access, both linguistically and culturally, to the Arab side of the maritime

OTTOMAN

CARTOGRAPHY

233

profession. Above all, Piri Reis was a unique case of a Turkish and Muslim renaissance man - brimming with curiosity about the ongoing discoveries, eager to absorb this news and convey it to his compatriots. It was in this spirit that he produced his first major work, which is also the best known: a map of the world. Made in 1513, it is today usually referred to as "The 1513 map" (Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi Kiitiiphanesi, Istanbul, R. 1633 miikerrer). In structure and style, it is a portolan chart, and in this it resembles most other contemporary world maps; in other respects, however, it displays remarkable original features. First of all, the author identifies himself and explains the circumstances of the map's creation to a far more detailed and explicit degree than was customary on maps and charts. A three-line Arabic colophon reads: "Composed by the poor Pir son of Haci Mehmed, known as paternal nephew of Kemal Reis, may God pardon them both, in the city of Gallipoli, in the month of Muharrem the sacred, year nine hundred and nineteen [March/April 1513 f .

Then there are a number of commentaries elsewhere on the map in Turkish. The longest, on the area of Brazil, describes the exploration of the "Western Sea" and Central America, focusing on the Columbus voyages. In a passage just below it, Piri Reis recounts how he went about drawing the map (,kharti): "This section explains how the present map was composed. No one has ever possessed such a map. This poor man [=Piri ReisJ has constructed it with his own hands. Specifically, twenty maps and world maps - [the latter/ are maps made at the time of Alexander the Great; they show the inhabited parts of the world, and the Arabs call them ca'feriye - eight such ca'feriyes, one Arab map of India, four maps recently made by the Portuguese that show Sind, Hind, and Sin [= Pakistan, India, and China] drawn by means of mathematical projection, as well as a map of the Western Parts drawn by Columbus: [all these sources] have been brought to one scale, and the result is this map (bir kiyas uzerine istihra^ edip bu §ekil hasil olduj."

The map thus must have been a unique cartographic document in its synthesis of Christian-European and Muslim-Oriental cartography; this should have been especially valuable with respect to the eastern hemisphere, but that part of the 1513 chart - in fact, about two-thirds of the original as suggested by internal evidence - has not survived. The extant, western third has an originality of a different kind, one that caused a sensation at its identification by a Turkish and a German scholar in 1929, and a surge of pride in Turkey, on account of its supposed connection with an earlier map that Columbus made

234

NAVAL

HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

d u r i n g his third v o y a g e 10 the N e w W o r l d a n d sent to S p a i n in 1498. T h e S p a n i s h o r i g i n a l is lost, but an i n s c r i p t i o n o n Piri R e i s ' s m a p states that " T h e c o a s t s a n d i s l a n d s [of the N e w W o r l d ] on this m a p a r e t a k e n f r o m C o l o m b o ' s m a p . " Spanish ships a n d booty w e r e a m o n g t h e c o v e t e d prizes of T u r k i s h c o r s a i r s in t h o s e very y e a r s of t h e late 1 4 9 0 s , a n d Piri

Reis's

statement is entirely credible. In a n o t h e r w o r k of his, Kltabi

Bahriye

(see b e l o w ) , Piri R e i s p r o v i d e s

a significant detail a b o u t the subsequent fate of his cartographic masterpiece: "This poor man had previously constructed a map that displayed more details of different kinds than maps hitherto in existence and included recent maps of the Chinese and Indian seas that were until unknown in the Ottoman Empire; and he presented this map to the Sultan Selim Khan in Cairo, who graciously accepted it."

many even then late

T h e top border of the m a p , at which t h e d r a w i n g stops short of the e d g e of the v e l l u m , s e e m s t o h a v e been d e s i g n e d to fit into a northern sheet, a n d the c u r v i n g s h a p e of t h e s o u t h w e s t e r n p a r t f o l l o w s t h e natural n e c k a n d s h o u l d e r of the original d e e r s k i n or gazelle h i d e it w a s d r a w n on. T h e m a p has been torn longitudinally on its eastern edge. T h e line of separation runs a l o n g t h e eastern c o a s t of S p a i n through west A f r i c a a n d on t h r o u g h the s o u t h e r n A t l a n t i c ; there is even a c o m m e n t a r y in t h e Gulf of G u i n e a that has b e e n c u t s h o r t by this s e p a r a t i o n ,

l'his h a p p e n e d in 1517, and w h a t b e c a m e of t h e

v a n i s h e d , larger s e g m e n t of the m a p is not k n o w n . It m a y h a v e b e e n t h e sultan himself w h o tore the chart, too large f o r c o m f o r t a b l e use, a s u n d e r s o as to u s e t h e p o r t i o n m o r e i n t e r e s t i n g to h i m , w h i l e g i v i n g t h e t r u n c a t e d s e g m e n t to his aides to put a w a y . S e l i m I quite u n d e r s t a n d a b l y m a y h a v e paid g r e a t e r attention to the eastern portion, but he g a v e no sign of f u r t h e r interest, and his successor even less. T h e r e is little e v i d e n c e of w h a t r e w a r d o r e n c o u r a g e m e n t Piri Reis received f o r his c a r t o g r a p h i c present, but he m u s t h a v e r e s u m e d m a k i n g charts at his w o r k s h o p in Gallipoli at least until 1528, t h e date of the s e c o n d k n o w n e x t a n t m a p signed by h i m It bears no indication of mutilation, a n d m a y h a v e been intended t o be the first sheet of a world m a p that r e m a i n e d u n f i n i s h e d . It t o o is q u i t e d e c o r a t i v e and c o n t a i n s an e l a b o r a t e b o r d e r , c o m p a s s roses, a n d t w o large scales, the graduation of which is e x p l a i n e d in a n o t e as ten m i l e s t o e a c h small division and firty miles to e a c h large d i v i s i o n . T h e r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of the A z o r e s , the c o a s t s of G r e e n l a n d , L a b r a d o r , N e w f o u n d l a n d , F l o r i d a , Y u c a t a n , the W e s t Indies, and the coastline b e t w e e n H o n d u r a s and V e n e z u e l a h a v e traits p r e s e n t in the W e s t e r n p l a n i s p h e r e s of the s a m e p e r i o d , a n d t h u s t e s t i f y t o Piri R e i s ' s c o n t i n u i n g a c c e s s t o t h e w o r k of his colleagues.

European

OrrOMAN

CARTOGRAPHY

235

If the map of 1513 has been the source, since the 1930s, of a lasting interest abroad and of national pride in Turkey, Piri Reis's other major work, Kitabi Bahriye,

is less spectacular but no less original and important. It is a

book of portolan charts and texts covering the entire Mediterranean. T h e mariner-cartographer produced t w o versions, the first dated 927/1521, the second 932/1526. T h e subject matter is divided into chapters (130 in the first version, 2 1 0 in the second), and each chapter consists of a text and a chart. The chart of each chapter is far more detailed than the standard portolan charts, which either depict the entire Mediterranean on one sheet or still segments such as the Aegean, the Adriatic, the Central Mediterranean, or the Western Mediterranean. Detailed "close-ups" of the Kitabi

Bahriye

type must have

been routinely sketched by mariners for practical use without having c o m e down to us, but Piri Reis's work is the only known case where a synthesis was carried out by gathering such detailed segments in a single volume and further and most originally - where each segment is accompanied by an appropriately detailed text of sailing directions, with the purpose of creating a comprehensive and reliable handbook for the entire Mediterranean. A s in the case of the 1513 map, the creation and subsequent fate of the Kitabi

Bahriye

was closely bound up with the author's relations with the sultan, this time Selim I ' s son Siileyman the Magnificent. T h e story is also more complex. While the 1513 m a p ' s genesis and purpose must have been intellectual curiosity and desire to stir the Turkish elite's interest in the o n g o i n g discoveries, the portolan book of 1521 had a primarily utilitarian goal - to provide Turkish sailors with a useful manual in their c h a l l e n g i n g and dangerous trade. At the same time, Piri Reis quite naturally wished to receive a reward or at least a recognition from Sultan Siileyman, and this hope may have been an additional stimulus for the unquestionably laborious compilation of the first version. T h e mariner admits as much in the preface, where he writes that he has produced the book as one of the offerings presented by the subjects of the new sultan on the occasion of his accession to the throne. This version never reached the sultan, but the large n u m b e r of extant copies suggests that Piri Reis did attain his other, and indeed more basic, goal - that of providing a manual of sailing directions for Turkish sailors. Still, his name must have gained some renown among the Ottoman naval elite, for in 1524 the mariner-cartographer was given the task of piloting the ship carrying the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasa from Istanbul to Egypt. The vizier showed interest in the Kitabi Bahriye

which Piri Reis was consulting during this voyage, and

suggested that he make a more polished copy which could then be presented t o the sultan. This was the genesis of the 2nd version, drawn and written far more carefully and elaborately; moreover, Piri Reis - or a ghost writer by the name

236

NAVAI

HISTORY

AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

of M u r a d i - w r o t e a l o n g versified introduction d e s c r i b i n g the w o r l d ' s o c e a n s a n d t h e o n g o i n g v o y a g e s of d i s c o v e r y . A u t o g r a p h s of either v e r s i o n are not k n o w n to be extant, but s u b s e q u e n t c o p i e s f o l l o w their p r i n c i p a l o r i g i n a l f o r m s : m a n u a l s f o r sailors in t h e c a s e of the I s ' v e r s i o n , p r e s e n t a t i o n

or

" c o f f e e - t a b l e " c o p i e s in that of the 2 M v e r s i o n . T h e t w o c a t e g o r i e s c o n t i n u e d to b e p r o d u c e d d u r i n g the 16"' and 17"' c e n t u r i e s , e a c h s e r v i n g its b a s i c f u n c t i o n . S o m e m o d i f i c a t i o n s o c c u r r e d in both, but in general their s t r u c t u r e a n d c o n t e n t s r e m a i n e d the s a m e . O n e s p e c i a l c h a n g e o c c u r r e d in several m a n u s c r i p t s w h i c h c o n t a i n o n l y the c h a r t s ; s o m e of t h e s e a r e c a m o u f l a g e d under a d i f f e r e n t n a m e and claimed a d i f f e r e n t , s e m i - p s e u d o n y m o u s a u t h o r s h i p (such as the Deniz Kitabi

by Seyyid N u h , B i b l i o t e c a U n i v e r s i t a r i a di B o l o g n a ,

no. 3 6 0 9 ) . W h i l e it w a s Piri R e i s ' s o w n o r i g i n a l i d e a t o p r o d u c e a b o o k of p o r t o l a n charts a n d texts as a m a n u a l f o r T u r k i s h sailors, t h e r e w a s a partial p r e c e d e n t : the isolario,

a genre p o p u l a r in 15" a n d 16"1 c e n t u r y M e d i t e r r a n e a n

c a r t o g r a p h y . T h e isolario

w a s a b o o k d e s c r i b i n g g r o u p s of M e d i t e r r a n e a n

islands both c a r t o g r a p h i c a l l y and textually. T h e texts d i f f e r f r o m t h o s e in the Kitabi

Bahriye

in that they lack nautical i n s t r u c t i o n s , a n d the m a p s d o not

e m p h a s i z e coastal f e a t u r e s useful to sailors s u c h as h a r b o r s , a n c h o r a g e s , o r s o u r c e s of sweet water. W h a t they d o h a v e in c o m m o n is the large scale of the maps, and a c c o m p a n y i n g commentaries which also include historical or a n e c d o t a l narratives. P r o b a b l y i n s p i r e d by s u c h e x a m p l e s , Piri R e i s p a s s e d b e y o n d the utilitarian s c o p e of the typical portolan chart a n d text by p r o d u c i n g a m a n u a l that also includes a m u s i n g and topical reading a n d , in the c a s e of the s e c o n d v e r s i o n , one of esthetical e n j o y m e n t . C o p y i n g this v e r s i o n a n d its c h a r t s entered the realm of O t t o m a n calligraphy and m i n i a t u r e - p a i n t i n g , s o m e lavishly colored and d r a w n , e n h a n c i n g e s p e c i a l l y the portraits of port cities. A s in the c a s e of t o p o g r a p h i c a l illustrations in t h e w o r k s of Mutrakci N a s u h , t h e p o r t r a y a l s of port cities in s e v e r a l c o p i e s of the Kitabi

Bahriye

pass

b e y o n d t h e f r a m e w o r k of c a r t o g r a p h y and pertain to the art of l a n d s c a p e and city view portraiture. S o m e are of u n q u e s t i o n a b l e d o c u m e n t a r y value, w h e r e a s m a n y o t h e r s a r e c o n s i d e r a b l y stylized in a s t e r e o t y p e d a n d r a t h e r i m a g i n a r y m a n n e r . A m o n g the m o s t interesting, h a n d s o m e , and at t h e s a m e t i m e q u i t e realistic e x a m p l e s can be cited Cairo, A l a n y a , V e n i c e , and G e n o a , w h i l e a f e w a l s o i n c l u d e Istanbul itself. O t h e r m a n u s c r i p t s a r e interesting f o r t h e n o t e s of topical r e m a r k s or r e m i n i s c e n c e s a d d e d to m a n y of the c h a r t s by the p r i m a r y users, i.e. t h e sailors t h e m s e l v e s ; this is t h e c a s e a l m o s t e x c l u s i v e l y with t h e first-version manuscripts.

OTTOMAN

CARTOGRAPHY

237

Aside from the relatively large number of second-version copies of the Kitabi

Bahriye,

the imperial or other Ottoman workshops also produced

exquisitely executed atlases analogous to those made in 16"' and 17" century Italy and Catalonia. Three such specimens are known: the "Ali Macar Reis atlas", dated 975/1567 (Topkapi Sarayi Miizesi Kutiiphanesi, Istanbul, H. 644); the "Atlas-i Humayun", conjecturally dated as ca. 987/1570 and given this name by the scholar who identified it, Thomas Goodrich (Arkeoloji Mtizesi Kitapligi, Istanbul, no. 1621); and the "Deniz Atlasi", whose earliest proposed date is 968/1560 (likewise identified and named by T. Goodrich; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Ms. W. 660). All three follow the cartographic style of the Italian school, especially the small atlases of Ottomano Freducci and Battista Agnese. Finally there is the Aegean sea chart by Mehmet Reis of Menemen, dated 999/1590-91. Its less sumptuous workmanship, as well as the significant independence of its toponymic content, suggests a rare case of the preservation of a portolan chart that was produced for practical use and may in fact have been completed in the course of that use. While the Kitabi Bahriye must have been an invaluable manual used by Turkish mariners of Piri Reis's time and even for several generations after him, today its value is that of a historical and cultural document. First of all, both its cartographic and, even more, its textual components are valuable primary historical sources. Secondly, the Kitabi Bahriye, together with other cartographic work of Piri Reis, is a testimony of the potential and energy that Ottoman society had for participating in the vertiginous expansion of geographical exploration and knowledge. It was a time of the apogee of Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean, and the Kitabi Bahriye was both a symptom and a tool of this expansion. Piri Reis's workshop at Gallipoli and later at the navy yard at Kasimpaja must have been burgeoning with incoming news about maritime events near and far, from the inland sea to the world oceans. It was also a time when the Turks became established on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and mariners like Piri Reis must have been eager to compete there with the also recently arrived Europeans for their share of knowledge and riches of the Orient. One could thus have expected that the sultan and his viziers and in general the political and commercial elite of the empire would have encouraged Piri Reis to pursue and expand his cartographic and geographic work, providing him with the means to train disciples who would further develop and expand the Ottoman side of discovery and oceanic expansion. None of this happened, however, and the giant leap forward made by Piri Reis ran into a dead end. The exponential and unceasing progress of maritime cartography and geography taking place in Europe had no counterpart

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AND M A R I T I M E

GEOGRAPHY

in the O t t o m a n Hmpire al ter Piri Reis, and in the last a n a l y s i s t h e n e g l e c t of his c o n t r i b u t i o n s c o r r e s p o n d e d to t h e gradual stagnation of the O t t o m a n state a n d s o c i e t y . T h e c a u s e s of this s t a g n a t i o n a r e c o m p l e x ; p e r h a p s t h e m o s t salient o n e w a s the p e r s i s t e n t a s s e r t i o n of t h e E m p i r e ' s I s l a m i c c h a r a c t e r , w h i c h f r o w n e d upon such i n n o v a t i o n s ; the very success of O t t o m a n a r m s on the battlefield and the excellence of the s t a t e ' s bureaucratic i n f r a s t r u c t u r e m u s t h a v e f u r t h e r e n h a n c e d a c o n v i c t i o n of superiority and s e l f - s u f f i c i e n c y . T h e a f o r e m e n t i o n e d fate of the o b s e r v a t o r y in Istanbul as well as t h e u n r e l e n t i n g ban on printing illustrate this attitude. T h i s d o e s not mean that a f t e r Piri Reis there w a s n o O t t o m a n m a r i t i m e or o t h e r c a r t o g r a p h y . First of all, s c o r e s of c a r t o g r a p h i c s k e t c h e s , w h e t h e r based on s e g m e n t s of the Kitabi

Bahriye

or i n d e p e n d e n t of it, m u s t h a v e been

m a d e by T u r k i s h mariners or professional c r a f t s m e n f o r practical use a n d later d i s c a r d e d . A c c o r d i n g to Hvliya £ e l e b i , t h e r e w a s in t h e f a r ^ i of Istanbul a w o r k s h o p and store s p e c i a l i z i n g in t h e p r o d u c t i o n a n d sale of sea c h a r t s t o intrepid captains " w h o then sail the seas of t h e world w i t h o u t f e a r or w o r r y " . T h i s is obviously an e x a g g e r a t i o n , but it m u s t reflect a reality of i n d i g e n o u s m a r i t i m e c a r t o g r a p h y needed by a p e o p l e w h o s e m a n y m e m b e r s d e p e n d e d on s e a f a r i n g in its m a n i f o l d a s p e c t s , f r o m t h e s a i l i n g s of the i m p e r i a l n a v y to t r a d i n g v o y a g e s , personal travel, or corsair pursuits. Little, if a n y t h i n g , of this c a r t o g r a p h i c material is extant, h o w e v e r , and n o sea chart m a n u a l s or atlases a n a l o g o u s to the m a n y versions of " M a r r i n e r ' s M i r r o u r s " p u b l i s h e d in 17" and 1 8 " ' c e n t u r y E u r o p e are k n o w n t o h a v e e x i s t e d . T h e r e is no e v i d e n c e that Turkish

sea charts progressed

toward

the ever more

technologically

sophisticated tools for celestial and o c e a n i c navigation that w e r e rapidly being d e v e l o p e d in Europe. Here again, w e could add to t h e c a u s e s m e n t i o n e d a b o v e the general passivity of the imperial a n d o f f i c i a l O t t o m a n e s t a b l i s h m e n t with respect to the c h a l l e n g e s and p r o m i s e s of the time, that of the p o s t - r e n a i s s a n c e increasingly global world of early m o d e r n E u r o p e . In c o n c l u s i o n , O t t o m a n m a r i t i m e c a r t o g r a p h y p r o d u c e d e x c e p t i o n a l w o r k by o n e r e m a r k a b l e i n d i v i d u a l , Piri R e i s , w h o h o w e v e r n e i t h e r f o u n d e n c o u r a g e m e n t on the part of t h e o f f i c i a l e s t a b l i s h m e n t nor w a s g i v e n t h e o p p o r t u n i t y to f o r m a t e a m of chart m a k e r s w h o in turn m i g h t h a v e b e c o m e the nucleus of modern T u r k i s h c a r t o g r a p h y . Bibliography: The History of Cartography, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward, vol. 2. book 1, Universit) of Chicago Press 1992; contributions by A h m e t T. Karamustafa, ch. 10, "Introduction to Ottoman Cartography," and 11, "Military, Administrative, and Scholarly Maps and Plans"; M. Rogers, ch. 12, "Itineraries and Town Views in Ottoman Histories"; and S. Soucek, ch. 14, "Islamic Charting in the Mediterranean," as well as bibliographies in these chapters and at the end of the volume; A.A. Adivar, La science chez les Turcs ottomans, Paris 1938, and new Turkish ed., Osmanli Turklerinde Him, Istanbul 1982; G. Hagen, Ein osmanischer Geograph bei der Arbeit• Entstehung und Gedankenwelt von Katib Celebis Gihanniima, Berlin 2003.

A CZECH NOBLEMAN'S PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND: 1493'

A pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem has traditionally been an important act of Christian devotion. Its benefits were not only religious, however. Pilgrimage also brought an acquaintance with distant countries, different religions and civilizations. The experience helped the pilgrims themselves, and all those who heard their stories, broaden the narrow horizons of their home villages and towns. These benefits were further multiplied when some of the pilgrims recorded what they had seen and heard on their journeys. In due time, these accounts joined those of other travelers, of the Crusaders, as well as commercial and diplomatic correspondence and government records, as part of the source materials used by historians. A number of pilgrim accounts have no doubt remained in manuscript form, but many others were published, in their original versions or also in various translations. It would probably be a safe guess that every national group in Europe has at least one such account. Those written in Latin or in one of the major European languages have had an obvious advantage: not only were they more widely accessible and intelligible, but they also had a better chance to be translated; for example, a Latin or German book would more readily be translated into English or Spanish than, let us say, a Hungarian or Czech one. I doubt that many outside of those who read Czech have ever heard of the voyage made in 1493 to Jerusalem by Jan Hasistejnsky z Lobkovic, a Czech nobleman, who subsequently committed his memories to writing.

Jan

Hasistejnsky

z Lobkovic

(1450-1517)

Lobkovic was a member of a family that produced some well-known figures in Czech history, including J a n ' s brother Bohuslav, who was a respected representative of Czech humanism. Jan's home was the castle of Kadari in western Bohemia. He was born in a time when Bohemia, recovering from the trauma of the Hussite wars, was trying to devise a system whereby both Catholics and reformers (not yet Protestants: Luther was to proclaim his theses the year of Lobkovic's death) could live together in peace. Lobkovic was a Catholic, as most Czech nobles of his time were. It was his 'in Turks, Hungarians and Kipchaks: A Festschrift in Honor ofTibor Halasi-Kun Turkish Studies: Turkluk Bilgisi Arastirnuilan, v. 8, 1984, pp. 233-240).

fervent (Journal of

240

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HIS'IORY

AND

MARITIME

GEOGRAPHY

faith that spurred him to undertake a pilgrimage in 1493. He wrote an account of it by 1509, but his story had to wait several centuries before it was printed as J ana Hasistejnského Hasistejnsky

z Lobkovic

of Lobkovice's

Pilgrimage

Putovâni

k Svatému

Hrobu...

to the Holy Sepulchre...],

[Jan

edited by

Ferdinand Strejcek, Prague 1902. This edition is based on a manuscript that is not the autograph - believed lost - but a copy made in 1515, thus still in Lobkovic's lifetime. The manuscript itself has 180 folios, while the printed form covers 110 pages.

The Anonymous

Frenchman,

Felix Fabri,

Breydenbach

Lobkovic's story, captivating in itself, is also valuable as a point of reference when compared with other contemporary accounts. Several - one could almost speak of a cluster (no doubt owing to the increased number of voyages following the conclusion of peace between Turkey and Venice in 1479) - were written and published in his lifetime. Three of these will be used in the present essay: an anonymous Frenchman's, and those of the Germans Fabri and Breydenbach. In 1480, a Parisian performed a pilgrimage, an account of which he then wrote without disclosing his name. It was printed in three early editions: in 1517, a few years later, and in 1600. Charles Schefer published a modern edition based on the manuscript: Le voyage de la Saincte cyté de avec la description

Hierusalem,

des lieux, portz, villes, citez et aultres passaiges,

fait

l'an 1480, estan le siège du Grand Turc à Rhodes et régnant en France

Loys

unziesme

de ce nom, par

voyages et de documents.

un auteur

anonyme.

Paris 1882 (Recueil de

11).

Felix Fabrs, a Dominican from Ulm, was on the same pilgrimage in 1480, but he undertook a second voyage in 1483. The Latin account he wrote in 1484 only briefly sketches the first voyage, but exhaustively narrates the second. A modern English translation has been used for the purposes of my essay: The Wanderings

of Felix Fabri. V. 1, part 1, translated by Aubrey

Stewart. London 1896 (Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, VII). The book written by Bernhard von Breydenbach is perhaps the best known. The author, a prelate from Mainz, went to Jerusalem in 1483 and wrote a Latin account of his pilgrimage which was published in 1486; by the end of the century, seven more editions appeared: two in German (1486, 1488), two in French (1488, 1490), one in Dutch (1488), one in Latin (1490), and one in Spanish (1498). A slightly modernized and abbreviated version of the 1486 German edition has been used for the purposes of my essay: Bernhard

A CZECH

NOBLEMAN'S

PILGRIMAGE

von Brevdenbach, Die Reise ins Heilige Land....

241

Hrsg. von Elisabeth Geek,

Wiesbaden 1961. In addition to the intrinsic interest of its text, Breydenbach's book is famous for its magnificent woodcuts, which were based on drawings made by his companion during the pilgrimage, the Dutchman Reuwich.

The Four Accounts Lobkovic left his home on 15 April 1493, and, traveling on horseback, reached Venice on 5 May (p. 5 of the 1902 edition). There, he and his companions (seven other Czechs) found the master of a galley that was to carry pilgrims to the Holy Land, namely "Augustyn Cantoryn, patruon galege pautniczije" (master of a pilgrim galley), the fare being 50 Venetian ducats. This amount represented, in theory at least, the entire "package tour": the roundtrip not only by sea to Jaffa but also by land to Jerusalem, room and board, the arrangement of all the formalities and the payment of all the fees. A glance at the other accounts reveals that "Augustyn Cantoryn" had been in the business of transporting and escorting pilgrims to Palestine at least since 1480: he was Agostino Contarin, a member of an established Venetian family. In each case there was a written contract between him and the pilgrims. Lobkovic states that ...we made a contract with him, to wit: that he would take us to the Holy Land and provide us with safe-conducts protecting us from the heathens, so that we might safely visit the Holy Sepulchre and other holy places; that he would then bring us safely back to Venice; that he would both on the way there and back provide us with food and drink; and that he would receive fifty ducats from each of us. We had two copies made of this contract: one copy was kept by the above-mentioned patron, the other one by us. (p. 5)

The anonymous f renchman: ... En este année mille quatre cens quatre vingtz, estoit patron de la galle'e de Hierusalem ung gentilhomme ve Venise nommé Messire Augustin Contorin qui avoit faict l'année passée le voyage...par ordonnance de la Seigneure de Venise, ledit patron...prend de chascum pellerin pour le paissage, despens et tributz du Souldan. cinquante cinq ducatz d'or et encoire fault il que ilz soyent du coing de Venise .... (pp. 23-25)

Three years after the Frenchman and ten before Lobkovic, Breydenbach concluded a similar contract:

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An dem 17. Tap. des Monats Mai,...verdingten wir uns mit dem Patron der Galeere, genannt Herr Augustin Contereni,...der acht Plätze für uns sechse Personen in seiner Galeere gab und einen Vertrag mit uns machte... (pp. 15-16) L o b k o v i c , a f t e r h a v i n g lived in V e n i c e as a tourist ( o u t of n e c e s s i t y , like m a n y of his p r e d e c e s s o r s , but quite willingly), b o a r d e d the galley on 3 0 M a y 1493, w h i c h then set sail o n 1 J u n e (p. 17). It reached J a f f a , the s t a n d a r d port of t h e J e r u s a l e m - b o u n d pilgrims, on 7 J u l y (p. 51). O n the w a y the s h i p c a l l e d at n u m e r o u s ports, '['he m o s t m e m o r a b l e visit w a s to t h e h a r b o r of R h o d e s , still f r e s h with m e m o r i e s of t h e T u r k i s h s i e g e of 1480 (pp. 3 7 - 4 6 ) . U p o n arrival off J a f f a , the pilgrims c o u l d not d i s e m b a r k i m m e d i a t e l y but h a d to w a i t w h i l e the galley m a s t e r , A g o s t i n o C o n t a r i n , n e g o t i a t e d with the a u t h o r i t i e s : he had to obtain a "gleyth",

a collective safe-conduct for the

group. A f t e r they had d i s e m b a r k e d , f u r t h e r formalities had to take place b e f o r e the p i l g r i m s could set out on their o v e r l a n d trip to J e r u s a l e m . T h e s e p a l a v e r s w e r e a long and l a b o r i o u s p r o c e d u r e , in w h i c h the p i l g r i m s w e r e r e p r e s e n t e d by C o n t a r i n , his s e c r e t a r y , his i n t e r p r e t e r w h o k n e w " w l a s s k y , r z e c k y a p o h a n s k y " (Italian, G r e e k and " H e a t h e n " , i.e. A r a b i c ) , and t h e vicar of t h e m o n a s t e r y of M o u n t Sion in J e r u s a l e m w h o c a m e to J a f f a f o r that p u r p o s e . T h e a u t h o r i t i e s w e r e the g o v e r n o r s of G h a z z a , R a m l a , a n d t h e M a m l u k s u l t a n ' s ( w h o w a s throughout this period a l - M a l i k al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Q ä ' i d B a y , 1 4 6 8 - 1 4 9 6 ) kätib (secretary). T h e s e o f f i c i a l s c a m e with a retinue of 150 a r m e d h o r s e m e n a n d a c a r a v a n of 6 0 c a m e l s c a r r y i n g v i c t u a l s a n d o t h e r necessities: On Wednesday after St. Margaret at two o'clock, the lord of Ghazza and that of Ramla and Ibrahim, secretary of King Zoldan and, as I heard, his great favorite, came with 150 horsemen, all in white gowns, and each wearing a red hat with golden threads.. And here, erecting over twenty tents, they set up camp.. .And immediately afterward the prior of the Franciscan monastery of Jerusalem came, they call him vicar; he was accompanied by another monk, and brought with him to the galley, for the patron, the safeconduct issued by the lord of Ghazza. (pp. 52-53) A l a r g e tent w a s set u p in w h i c h t h e M u s l i m o f f i c i a l s w i t h t h e i r c o u n c i l o r s , t h e galley master with his secretary, a n d t h e F r a n c i s c a n vicar w e r e p l a c e d . T h e p i l g r i m s had to pass, o n e by o n e , b e f o r e this a s s e m b l y w h i l e their n a m e s were being recorded: And then the vicar asked each pilgrim what was his father's and mother's name, and his own. The vicar then repeated it aloud, and above-mentioned lord of Ramla and Ibrahim, the royal secretary, independently recorded our names. And the scribe of our patron recorded our names. (p. 53)

his the both also

A CZECH

NOBLEMAN'S

PILGRIMAGE

243

The anonymous Frenchman had a similar experience: Le gardien du mont de Syon vint en nostre gallée dire que chascun se apprestasi et que les commissaries estoyent venuz. Et tantost, le gardien et le patron et les quatre trompettes descendirent en terre pour avoir seureté et congié de descendre les pellerins. Et incontinent, nous descendîmes. Et à l'entrée de terre, estoient plusieurs Sarraiins en armes qui menoient chascun ung pellerin l'ung après l'aultre devant le gardien et patron et lesdictz commissaries qui prenoient les noms de nous et de nos pères seullement... (p. 59) Breydenbach's and Fabri's accounts also depict this scene. Here is the latter's: Above us stood the Father Guardian of Mount Sion and his brethren together, with the governors of the land, and the elders of the Saracens and Moors, and with a scribe; and they had so ranged themselves on either side that the pilgrims must needs pass through the midst of them: nor could two pilgrims pass through them together, but one after the other. Nor would they let us pass in a continuous stream, but they laid hold, of each man, looked at him narrowly, and demanded his own name and the name of his father, both of which names the scribe wrote down in his documents. My name of Felix causes I know not what difficulties in their language, for both in my former pilgrimage and in this one I was obliged to repeat my name to them several times, and even then they could neither pronounce it nor write it without putting some outlandish diphthong before it, and gurgling its syllables in their throats so as not to say "Felix" but some word which I cannot pronounce in the place thereof... (p. 223) Lobkovic, who had befriended Agostino Contarin f r o m the start of the journey, and thus had the opportunity to hear many interesting things f r o m him, was also able to see and record the journey from the galley master's point of view. For example the expenses incurred by Contarin: besides the obvious one of the initial investment and cost of the voyage, there were cash expenditures which consisted of the basic fee of 12 ducats per pilgrim he had to pay the Sultan's representative and the inevitable bribes and presents: On Friday before St. Mary Magdalen, our patron came to an agreement with the lord of Chazza and Ibrahim, King Zoldan's secretary, how much per pilgrim he had to pay for the safe-conduct: twelve Venetian gold ducats. Having agreed to this, the lord of Ghazza departed after midnight, leaving behind him the above-mentioned Ibrahim with some forty horsemen, his courtiers whom the heathens call Mamluks so that they would escort us to Jerusalem, (p. 54)

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E v e n t u a l l y a s s e s , m u l e s and h o r s e s w e r e b r o u g h t f o r the p i l g r i m s t o ride o n , a n d t h e g r o u p set o u t . T h i s part of the trip, both o n t h e w a y to the holy city and later back to J a f f a , included a t o r m e n t that had beset the earlier pilgrims as well: And here youths and heathen women threw stones at us. so that we had to hurry on. Even so. they had wounded some of the pilgrims. O n e c o u l d w o n d e r w h e r e the a b o v e - m e n t i o n e d forty a r m e d M a m l u k s w e r e o n such o c c a s i o n s ; they p r o b a b l y l o o k e d the o t h e r w a y , a n d i n t e r v e n e d o n l y in m o r e s e r i o u s d i f f i c u l t i e s , as w e can i n f e r f r o m t h e

anonymous

F r e n c h m a n ' s story. Et à soleil couchant, nous rencontrasmes une grant compagnie d'Arabes et Ethiopiens qui mcnoyent des chameaulx et nous vouloyent battre et piller et avoyent leurs arc:, tendus contre nous et nous firent tous joindre ensemble à tout leurs arcz, basions et pierres. Et firent lesdictz. Sarrazins qui nous menaient si grande diligence de nous defendre que nul des pellerins ne ust mal. (p. 68) L o b k o v i c a n d his c o m p a n i o n s r e a c h e d J e r u s a l e m on 2 3 J u l y , a n d the e s s e n t i a l p a r t of t h e p i l g r i m a g e lasted until 1 A u g u s t : a t i g h t l y

packed

p r o g r a m , led by the F r a n c i s c a n s of M o u n t S i o n , of visits t o all the p l a c e s m e m o r a b l e f r o m t h e G o s p e l s , including B e t h l e h e m but not, in 1493, the river J o r d a n - p e r h a p s b e c a u s e of d i f f i c u l t i e s s i m i l a r to t h o s e m e n t i o n e d by t h e a n o n y m o u s F r e n c h m a n . A l t h o u g h the c o n t r a c t s p e c i f i e d that t h e holy river w o u l d be visited, Contarin c a n c e l l e d that part b e c a u s e of t h e B e d o u i n s w h o preyed there on pilgrims in order to rob them: Et après plusieurs plainctifz que firent les pellerins de ce qu'ils ne pouveoient aller audict fleuve, il fut diet par les commissaries et truchemens du Souldan que, si les pellerins y vouloyent aller, qu'il falloit avoir renfort et puissance de gens d'armes pour garder les pellerins et resister audietz Arabes... A t that point Contari n told the p i l g r i m s that they w o u l d h a v e t o b e a r t h e c o s t of the additional escort. T h e y r e f u s e d , a r g u i n g that t h e 5 0 d u c a t s paid in V e n i c e s h o u l d c o v e r the entire tour, a n d stated that they w o u l d go t h e r e with the p r e s e n t escort, trusting that G o d , w h o h a d p r o t e c t e d t h e m f r o m t h e T u r k s , w o u l d also protect them f r o m the A r a b s : Et adonc les pellerins requirent que les commissaries du Souldan les conduisent comme Hz estoyent tenuz sans avoir garde et qu'ilz avoyent esté preservez des mains du Turc qui est plus grant chose que lesditz Arabes et

A CZECH NOBLEMAN'S

PILGRIMAGE

245

avoyent espérance que Dieu les garderait desdictz Arabes. Et adonc le gardien du mont de Syon avec plusieurs des religieux dudict lieu dirent qu 'ils nous accompagne rayent, (p. 88) Lobkovic's description of the memorable places in Jerusalem (pp. 5887) is the most standard part of his book, closely resembling other pilgrims' accounts for obvious reasons: the same events and associations came to the pilgrims' minds as they saw the places and objects they knew so well f r o m the Gospels and sermons. It is nonetheless touching, and we can guess how he felt when the Franciscan friars brought the pilgrims to what they said was the 'stone on which Jesus stood when he was sentenced to death, and another stone on which Pilate stood when he was pronouncing that sentence" (p. 64). At every such m e m o r a b l e place, Lobkovic, j u s t like the others, always mentions the indulgences rewarding the pilgrims for having visited it; in this case, "sedm leth a sedm Karen" (seven years and seven

carenas).

H a v i n g c o m p l e t e d their visit to the holy places in J e r u s a l e m , Lobkovic and his companions left the city on 1 August and reached Jaffa several d a y s later. T h e tribulations incurred on the trip to J e r u s a l e m reappeared, perhaps in a worse and more costly form: at Ramla, the local governor refused to provide the next relay of mounts unless he received money, contrary to the agreement that such service was covered by the initial fee of 12 ducats per pilgrim; worse still, he threatened Contarin that, unless he received the sum of 60 gold pieces, he would send some of the pilgrims to Cairo. It was at that point that Agostino Contarin told Lobkovic how much all these expenses beyond the base f e e of 12 ducats per pilgrim had cost him: 1000 ducats. L o b k o v i c ' s account suggests that most of these additional expenses were borne by Contarin himself. If this was true, the Venetian g a l l e y - m a s t e r had b e c o m e m o r e generous by 1493 than he had been previously, judging by the anonymous Frenchman's account: ...Et [nous] jusmes audict Rames... destenuz par le patron qui fist payer à tous les pellerins, oultre l'accord qui estoit faict à Venise entre lesdictz pe lier ins et luy, ung ducat et huyt marcelins et disoit ledict patron que c'estait pour payer les asnes et fist de grans extorcions à aulcuns qui ne vouloyent payer, en les faisant prendre par les Sarrazins pour les mettre en prison, dont plusieurs pellerins luy donnèrent grant blasme de les contraindre par les Sarrazins à payer ce à quoy ilz n 'estoyent point tenuz par raison, (p. 99) According to Lobkovic, Contarin was the last person to board the galley; the "heathens" allowed him to do so only after he had agreed to buy "cotton, cotton yarn and other trinkets" f r o m them. Eventually, however, all was safe and ready, and the galley sailed at dawn on Wednesday, 7 August, the

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day of St. Donatus (p. 88). A f t e r stopovers at Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete and a few other places, the galley reached P a r e n z o on 28 S e p t e m b e r (p. 96). Lobkovic and his Czech c o m p a n i o n s , too impatient to wait in that harbor another day, hired a "bark" that departed forthwith: /4s we sailed out, we spoke with the patron - he spoke Slavic well - and admonished him to hug the coast. He promised to do so, and we, trusting his word, lay down and fell asleep. He, however, got drunk and neglected his task, until a strong wind drove us far out into the open sea. Here, big waves high as houses, heaved by the wind, tossed the hark up and down as if it had been climbing up and down the ladder... (p. 97) T h e situation became so desperate that the pilgrims expected to drown m o m e n t a r i l y , their only hope being divine assistance: they p r o m i s e d to perform a pilgrimage to the shrine of the M a d o n n a of L o r e t o if they were saved. N o sooner had they made this vow than the waves calmed down, and the pilgrims reached Venice on 30 September.

The Voyage: Further

Comments

L o b k o v i c ' s account as well as those of other authors suggest that, left to their own devices, most of the pilgrims might have failed to reach their goal and return safely. T h e Czech nobleman was well aware of the challenges Agostino Contarin had to meet and of the service he had rendered. This m a y have been due in part to the friendship between him and the "patron", as has been pointed out above. T h r o u g h o u t the narrative, w e k e e p m e e t i n g his remark "A prawil mi patron nass, z e . . . " (And our patron told m e t h a t . . . ) . H e thus b e c a m e o n e of the best i n f o r m e d authors of pilgrimage accounts. A n educated and curious man. he took an interest in everything he saw or heard: the appearance and history of harbors and islands, the occupation and identity of the inhabitants, the food produced and consumed there, the flora and f a u n a , etc. A few examples: The Ship: C o n t a r i n ' s galley measured " z delij xxxiii mych sahuow a z ssirzij asy vi nebo vi a puol s a h u " (33 of m y f a t h o m s long and about 6 or 6 V 2 f a t h o m s wide). It was a bireme, a galley with two tiers of oars on each side, like most standard galleys of the time. Fabri sailed on C o n t a r i n ' s ship in 1480 (p. 11) and saw it again in 1493, when he sailed on the rival galley of Per Lando, which was a trireme, of similar length but wider (p. 86). T h e Passengers: There were 185 pilgrims and 2 0 4 c r e w m e n on board ship when Lobkovic reached Jaffa (p. 103), altogether 389 persons. The Czech author gives a list of the pilgrims, by country or region or ethnic group (thus

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there were 8 Czechs, 5 Bavarians, 5 Hungarians, 20 people f r o m France, 8 Englishmen, etc.). He records the names of many of these and often their occupation or social station. Some brought along their own cooks, as six of the Frenchmen did and, surprisingly, Lobkovic himself ("Blazek, kucharz panie h a s y s t e y n s k e h o " ) . Only two w o m e n are mentioned a m o n g these pilgrims: Lady Johanna, countess of Perier, and maiden Magdalena, her maid; these w o m e n , f r o m Brittany (listed here separately f r o m France), were accompanied by the countess's priest and cook. Women were understandably a minority on the difficult pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as we can also infer f r o m the other accounts. Their presence was not always approved of, j u d g i n g by Fabri's remarks: And, moreover, certain women well-stricken in years, wealthy matrons, six in number, were there together with us, desiring to cross the sea to the holy places. I was astonished at the courage of these women, who.. .through love for the Holy Land joined themselves to young knights and underwent the labours of strong men. The proud nobles, however, were not pleased at this, and thought that they would not embark into the ship in which these ladies were to go, considering it a disgrace that they should receive the knighthood in company with old women... (p. 11) Nevertheless, the women in question did perform the pilgrimage and bore the fatigue better than the men; on the homeward journey, this is what happened: And the number of the sick became so great, that there was now no one to wait upon them and furnish them with necessaries. Howbeit, those ancient matrons, seeing our miseries, were moved with compassion, and ministered to us, for there was none of them that was sick. Herein God, by the strength of these old women, confounded the valour of those knights, who at Venice had treated them with scorn... (p. 26) Rhodes: One of the most captivating passages in Lobkovic's book is his description of the fortress of Rhodes and of its environs. The Czech pilgrim was impressed by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. He had the honor of being received by the Grand Master himself, Pierre d'Aubusson, both on his outward and homeward journey: The Master of Rhodes, by the name of Pierre d'Aubusson, from France, is a well-born lord and warlike against the Turks... (p. 38) Here this Grand Master holds his court, and is the supreme commander of the order with the white cross of which the lord of Strakonice is also a member... (p. 40) And this master is a Frenchman and his name is Petrus Dauboson. And is a wellborn man, about seventy years of age, and has a long and gray beard.... (p. 89)

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The Grand Master had ships with which he kept raiding the coasts of Turkey and Egypt, unless there was a truce: Here the Master of Rhodes has his galleys, naves and fustas. When he doesn't have a truce with the Turks or King Zoldan, he orders his courtiers one, two or three hundred, according to the need - to board those galleys and ships and sail to the Turkish mountains located some 12 or 14 miles from Rhodes. And if they meet on the way a Turkish ship and catch it, they remove all the Turks from it; if they encounter nothing at sea, they disembark on the coast and raid the nearby Turkish villages; having gathered prisoners and animals and whatever else is worthwhile, they load all that on their ships and return home. (p. 39) L o b k o v i c w a s impressed by the solidity of the fortress of R h o d e s , which had not only been repaired since M e h m e t Fatih had tried to conquer it in 1480 but continued to be reinforced in expectation of another siege. By 1493, stories about the siege had b e c o m e embellished by the imagination of the narrators, as w a s the one heard by Lobkovic: " O t m a n uli, a very warlike emperor", having conquered many Christian lands, wanted still more, and his choice fell on Rhodes. He had almost breached the walls of the fortress with heavy artillery and his troops were on the verge of s w a m p i n g the defenders when a procession of w o m e n and virgins, carrying a standard with a cross and the Eucharist, approached the focal point of the struggle. T h e Turks, seeing this procession, were seized by fright and retreated. Thus the island was saved. T h e besiegers had left behind not only many dead but also all those cannon balls that had been shot at the city. The Grand Master had new guns cast, big enough to accommodate ihe Turkish projectiles, thereby further strengthening the d e f e n s e s of the fortress. T h e Sultan, resenting the possession of his cannon balls by the Infidels, wrote the Grand Master, o f f e r i n g him "ten gold ducats for each of these balls, big or small". The Knight answered that he was prepared to return them to the sultan f r e e , but in the same m a n n e r he had received them, should the l urk c o m e once more to Rhodes. W h a t L o b k o v i c a d m i r e d the most on R h o d e s , h o w e v e r , w a s the " I n f i r m a r í a " , a hospicc lor Palestine-bound pilgrims. T r u e to their original vocation and nickname, the Knights Hospitallers financed and administered this hospice. It was a large building with m a n y rooms, each of which had one or t w o beds, and was a free shelter for those traveling to or f r o m the H o l y Sepulchre. T h o s e w h o had fallen ill could stay until they recovered, and the care was exemplary: two doctors were in residence looking after them, making tours of the sick twice a day - morning and evening - and prescribing the necessary medicines that were then prepared by the pharmacy of the infirmary.

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Lobkovic sailed to Palestine at a time of relative peace in the eastern Mediterranean. The pilgrims of 1480 were less fortunate. The anonymous Frenchman and Felix Fabri sailed at the very moment of the siege of Rhodes, and their accounts reflect the terror the name Turk evoked among the Christians. News of the siege reached Venice just as Contarin's galley was starting the voyage, and many pilgrims immediately decided not to go; by the time the galley arrived at Corfu, a Venetian possession, the authorities advised those still undaunted that the Republic, although she had a peace treaty with the Sultan, could not guarantee their safety (Fabri, p. 12). The galley and many pilgrims did sail, nevertheless, but between Crete and Cyprus it made a wide detour southward into the open sea in order to avoid Rhodes (ibid., p. 22; the anonymous Frenchman, p. 53).

Lobkovic and Piri Reis The Christian literature of pilgrimage to Jerusalem seems to be considerably more voluminous that its Islamic counterpart, that of the hajj to Mecca. One reason for this might be that for Muslims - at least for those living within the confines of the Ottoman Empire - the hajj was less perilous and exotic, for it took place within the bounds of the Dar al-Islam, territory ruled by Muslims. The books by Lobkovic and Breydenbach do, however, elicit a comparison with one of the highlights of Ottoman Turkish literature, the Kitabi bahriye, a portolan written by their younger contemporary Piri Reis. Lobkovic, who discussed much of what he saw during the voyage with the galley master Contarin, acquired at times the point of view of a mariner, and his account bears traces of a portolan: his description of the coasts, harbors, islands, the size of the latter and the distances between them. Most of the harbors and islands he mentions are also described by the Kitabi bahriye. In the Turkish portolan, the text is accompanied by often remarkable maps and views of coastal cities and harbors. Lobkovic's book lacks such illustrations, but they are present in Breydenbach's work. These woodcuts, based, as has been stated at the beginning of this article, on drawings by Reuwich, include views of Venice, Parenzo, Corfu, Modon, Candia, and Rhodes (in addition to Rome and Jerusalem). These views invite comparison with those in the Turkish portolan and suggest possible links.

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Conclusion V e n i c e w a s u n d o u b t e d l y not the only port f r o m w h i c h pilgrims left f o r Palestine,

and

a pilgrims'

galley

was

surely

not the only

type

of

transportation: other ports, o t h e r t y p e s of vessels m u s t h a v e been used. S o m e people m a y h a v e preferred to trav el o v e r l a n d through the O t t o m a n p o s s e s s i o n s in the Balkans, A n a t o l i a and Syria. N e v e r t h e l e s s , the route and m a n n e r c h o s e n by L o b k o v i c s e e m s to h a v e been the m o s t typical o n e . H i s a c c o u n t , a l t h o u g h it c o n t a i n s neither revisionist nor e x c e p t i o n a l l y n e w i n f o r m a t i o n , d o e s add its share of interesting details and o b s e r v a t i o n s to the already v o l u m i n o u s b o d y of k n o w l e d g e c o n t r i b u t e d by the J e r u s a l e m - b o u n d p i l g r i m s of t h e late M i d d l e A g e s and the early modern period.

HARANT'S

AND ALI'S HALAT A COMPARISON 1

PUTOWANJ

AL-QAHIRE:

When contemporary authors but of different ethnic, religious or cultural backgrounds visit a foreign country and then write about their experiences, a comparison of their accounts may be worthwhile. It can shed a special light both on the subject under discussion and on the authors and their societies themselves. One example is the description of Cairo by the Czech nobleman Krystof Harant z Polzic a Bezdruzic (1564-1621), and by the Turkish official Mustafa Ali of Gallipoli (1541-1600). A brief comparison of their accounts is the subject of this article. Harant visited Cairo in October/November 1598, at the end of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and as a corollary to a trip to Mount Sinai. His account was written a few years later and bore the title Putowanj, aneb

Cesta

Z Kralowstwj

mesta

Ceskeho do ... Zeme swate...dale

do Egypta a welikeho

Kairu... Ali came to Cairo in the summer of 1599, while on the way to Jedda where he was to assume the function of an emin

and, incidentally, also

perform a hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. He spent a period of one to two months in Cairo, and wrote the greater part of his Halatu l-Qahire

mine I-

'adati z-zahire by the end of that stay. Before discussing the Putowanj and the Halat, let us first glance some more at the authors themselves. Both had received an excellent education characteristic of their respective milieus; it included Latin and Greek in Harant's case, Persian and Arabic in Ali's. Up to a point, both became men of letters: Ali composed poems, some in Persian; Harant wrote Latin poetry. Their scholarly output included historical works by Ali, musicological ones by Harant. Nevertheless, both men's personal ambitions lay elsewhere: in social and political advancement, search of high office. Neither was a member of the military class, but their religious loyalties as well as political commitments involved them directly or indirectly in two of the major wars of their time: Ali in the 1578 war of the Ottoman sultan against Safavid Persia, Harant during 1593-1597 in the Habsburg emperor's war against Ottoman Turkey. For their political ambitions, both men depended largely on the favors that could be bestowed from the center of their empires, but in Ali's case, success or failure, which kept taking turns, had the additional effect of material 1 In Festschrift Andreas Tietze zum 70. Geburtstag, Morgenlandes, 76. Band, 1986, pp. 263-68.

Wiener Zeitschrift

für die Kunde

des

252

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HISTORY

AND

MARITIMK

GEOGRAPHY

well-being or straits, whereas Harant, a landed nobleman, had adequate means of his own. This was also reflected in the manner they visited Egypt. Ali travelled as a government official, Harant did so as a private citizen whose main motivation was, after the performance of a religiously meritorious act (pilgrimage to Jerusalem), curiosity to see the "Orient", the lands that had played such a role in the formation of his religion and civilization. In Egypt itself, Ali and Harant were treading different grounds indeed. The Turkish author was visiting a country that was part of the Dar al-Islam as well as of an empire of which he was a citizen; furthermore, he came as an official of the imperial government. Harant, on the other hand, was not only a Christian visiting Islamic territory, but also a subject of the Habsburg emperor who was still at war with the Ottoman sultan. This forced him to conceal his true identity, wear a pilgrim's garb and usually pretend that he was a citizen of Venice. Ali's account, although highly emotional and marked by an undertone of personal grievances and goals, is presented in an impersonal matter; he seldom identifies himself as the author and does not even tell us how he travelled from the coast to Cairo. In contrast, Harant uses the first person throughout the narrative which he presents in a dispassionate, matter-of-fact yet vivid manner. Ali's principal focus is on the administrative, financial and military state of the city and country since the Ottoman conquest of 1517, an aspect beyond the grasp of Harant who depicts the physical features of Cairo as well as the life of its populace in a broad gamut of both details and generalities. Ali's stories about various government officials offer a rich array of inside information that is not documented in other sources. T h e observations of an outsider such as Harant, naive as they may be, also add their documentary value and have a special charm. Events connected with §erif Mehmet Pa§a, the penultimate governor mentioned by Ali, can serve as an example. This descendant of the Prophet rose rapidly through the echelons of the Ottoman administration in Istanbul and eventually was appointed to the important post in Cairo, 'while all the great and noble disagreed with this appointment". His case illustrates what must have been a frequent scenario of seemingly objective criticisms and warnings with the underlying elements of envy and backstage intrigue. One of the objections, however, reflects the force of the more orthodox tradition in the Ottoman ruling élite: the latter's slave origin and kul status was deemed more desirable even than descent from the Prophet. The new governor, stung by the criticisms, endeavored to be a good administrator, judging by Ali's remarks:

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AND A L P S HALAT

AL QAHIRE

253

Arrived there, he immediately started just government....In collecting the tribute,... he showed slowness and negligence, he seemed to be collecting the money against his own will... Which may mean that financial exactions were toned down during his tenure of office, while Toward the soldiery of Egypt he never showed softness; he found it wise to break their independence and he kept them out of sight... No such discipline had existed since the time of the Pharaohs... E v e n t u a l l y , h o w e v e r , the e v e r - p e r s i s t e n t ill-wishers and

vested

interests, f r o m Mevlana Fehmi w h o accused him in a poem of planning to rebel against the padqah

and declare himself the ruler of Egypt, "to become a

Master of Mint and Sermon", all the way down to the soldiery spreading the downright absurd calumny that "He claims to be the ¡hidden] Mahdi, he talks about coming out [of his hiding place]", succeeded in causing his dismissal and recall to Istanbul. Harant's visit coincided with the departure of §erif Mehmet Pa§a. The Czech pilgrim describes the pa§a's cortège f r o m the citadel through the city on the homeward j o u r n e y in a manner that suggests his genuine popularity among the people of Cairo: On the 8