Ottoman Sultan Quotes

Aurangzeb’s contemporaries included such kings as Charles II of England, Louis XIV of France, and Sultan Suleiman II of the Ottoman Empire. No one asserts that these historical figures were ‘good rulers’ under present-day norms because it makes little sense to assess the past by contemporary criteria. The aim of historical study is something else entirely.

It is the face of rebellion and determination. It does not show age, terror, or ennui. It is frozen in time, in a moment when you took a stand against a man who abused you. It is a mark of rebellion against man’s dominion, even an Ottoman Sultan. What face could be more beautiful, Kucuk?

The government here is entirely in the hands of the army. The Grand Signor [Ottoman Sultan], with all his absolute power, is as much a slave as any of his subjects, and trembles at a janissary's frown.

For a capitalist system to work, the state had to protect, not regulate or interfere with, free markets. Both for political and religious reasons, this the sultan could not do: The Ottomans had then no idea of the balance of trade. . . . Originated from an age-old tradition in the Middle East, the Ottoman trade policy was that the state had to be concerned above all that the people and craftsmen in the cities in particular would not suffer a shortage of necessities and raw material. Consequently, the imports were always welcomed and encouraged, and exports discouraged.

In the Ottoman times, there were itinerant storytellers called "meddah. " They would go to coffee houses, where they would tell a story in front of an audience, often improvising. With each new person in the story, the meddah would change his voice, impersonating that character. Everybody could go and listen, you know ordinary people, even the sultan, Muslims and non-Muslims. Stories cut across all boundaries. Like "The Tales of Nasreddin Hodja," which were very popular throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans and Asia. Today, stories continue to transcend borders

To think beyond the familiar narratives handed down to us by generations of historians is to see that Columbus’s life simply cannot be understood without taking Islam into account.

No!” Lada shook her head, eyes still wild. “I cannot go in there! If a woman enters the harem complex, she belongs to the sultan!” Mehmed peered out the window they had climbed through, to make sure their path was clear. “I would not hold you to that, Lada, and—” “It would not matter! Everyone would know, I would be labeled your concubine, and—” Radu took her hand, which still hung in the air pointing accusingly at Mehmed, and squeezed it in his own. “And you would be unmarriageable? What a tragedy. I know how dearly you treasured the hope of marrying some minor Ottoman noble, dear sister.” She finally met his eyes, hers still feverish and frenzied. “But I would be his.” “I think our Mehmed is smart enough to know he could never claim you. Right?” Radu’s tone was light, and he turned to Mehmed with a playful smile. Perhaps it was the dimness of the room, or the stress of the night, but Mehmed’s face was clouded with…disappointment? Hurt? Then a tight, false smile took its place, and he nodded. Radu’s own chest felt equally tight with anxiety and fear and a twisting, bitter sense of jealousy.

Instantly Mehmet had clarified the practice of Ottoman succession, which he was later to codify as a law of fratricide: “whichever of my sons inherits the sultan’s throne, it behooves him to kill his brother in the interest of the world order.

Needless to say, most Cronus Club members during the conflict like to move to less fraught areas of the world, such as into the rather more stable heartland of the Ottoman empire, where, while the sultans may be mad during this time, at least their mothers are not.

Given the highly absolutist and extractive Ottoman institutions, the sultan’s hostility to the printing press is easy to understand. Books spread ideas and make the population much harder to control. Some of these ideas may be valuable new ways to increase economic growth, but others may be subversive and challenge the existing political and social status quo. Books also undermine the power of those who control oral knowledge, since they make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can master literacy. This threatened to undermine the existing status quo, where knowledge was controlled by elites. The Ottoman sultans and religious establishment feared the creative destruction that would result.

and by a militant rejection of all later accretions, which included medieval fiqh, mysticism and Falsafah, which most Muslims now regarded as normative. Because the Ottoman sultans did not conform to his vision of true Islam, Abd al-Wahhab declared that they were apostates and worthy of death. Instead, he tried to create an enclave of pure faith, based on his view of the first ummah of the seventh century. His aggressive techniques would be used by some fundamentalists in the twentieth century, a period of even greater change and unrest. Wahhabism is the form of Islam that is still practised today in Saudi Arabia, a puritan religion based on a strictly literal interpretation of scripture and early Islamic tradition.

By the Venetians, the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

and he prepared his elite professional household regiments: the infantry – the famous Janissaries – the cavalry regiments, and all the other attendant corps of gunners, armorers, bodyguards, and military police. These crack troops, paid regularly every three months and armed at the sultan’s expense, were all Christians largely from the Balkans, taken as children and converted to Islam. They owed their total loyalty to the sultan. Although few in number – probably no more than 5,000 infantry – they comprised the durable core of the Ottoman army.

In 1846 Easter fell on the same date in the Latin and Greek Orthodox calendars, so the holy shrines were much more crowded than usual, and the mood was very tense. The two religious communities had long been arguing about who should have first right to carry out their Good Friday rituals on the altar of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where the cross of Jesus was supposed to have been inserted in the rock. During recent years the rivalry between the Latins and the Greeks had reached such fever pitch that Mehmet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had been forced to position soldiers inside and outside the church to preserve order. But even this had not prevented fights from breaking out. On this Good Friday the Latin priests arrived with their white linen altar-cloth to find that the Greeks had got there first with their silk embroidered cloth. The Catholics demanded to see the Greeks’ firman, their decree from the Sultan in Constantinople, empowering them to place their silk cloth on the altar first. The Greeks demanded to see the Latins’ firman allowing them to remove it. A fight broke out between the priests, who were quickly joined by monks and pilgrims on either side. Soon the whole church was a battlefield. The rival groups of worshippers fought not only with their fists, but with crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense-burners, and even bits of wood which they tore from the sacred shrines. The fighting continued with knives and pistols smuggled into the Holy Sepulchre by worshippers of either side. By the time the church was cleared by Mehmet Pasha’s guards, more than forty people lay dead on the floor.1

Not long ago I was in Istanbul, Turkey. While there I toured the Topkapi Palace—the former royal palace of the Ottoman sultans and center of the Ottoman Empire. Among the many artifacts collected throughout the centuries and on display was an item I found quite remarkable—the sword of the prophet Muhammad. There, under protective glass and illuminated by high-tech lighting, was the fourteen-hundred-year-old sword of the founder of Islam. As I looked at the sword with its curved handle and jeweled scabbard, I thought how significant it is that no one will ever visit a museum and be shown a weapon that belonged to Jesus. Jesus brings freedom to the world in a way different from Pharaoh, Alexander, Caesar, Muhammad, Napoleon, and Patton. Jesus sets us free not by killing enemies but by being killed by enemies and forgiving them … by whom I mean us. Forgiveness and cosuffering love is the truth that sets us free—free from the false freedom inflicted by swords ancient and modern. Muhammad could fight a war in the name of freedom to liberate his followers from Meccan oppression, but Jesus had a radically different understanding of freedom. And lest this sound like crass Christian triumphalism, my real question is this: Do we Christians secretly wish that Jesus were more like Muhammad? It’s not an idle question. The moment the church took to the Crusades in order to fight Muslims, it had already surrendered its vision of Jesus to the model of Muhammad. Muhammad may have thought freedom could be found at the end of a sword, but Jesus never did. So are Christians who most enthusiastically support US-led wars against Muslim nations actually trying to turn Jesus into some version of Muhammad? It’s a serious question.

The constitution? Your words mock me and all women! I watched an old slave woman save my brother in an oven when they came to murder him. There is my constitution! When they learned of her cunning, I watched three of the animals rape her, to pay for her loyalty to the Sultan’s family. A servant woman who saved a male Ottoman! No assistance from men, no protection!

German Protestant woodcuts from the sixteenth century depict Luther’s vision of the Antichrist as a beast with two heads—one a mitered pope and the other a turbaned Ottoman sultan.

epistle of the Mogul emperor provoked the Sultan, whose family

Whisper it softly, but many Greeks, including clergy, welcomed the Ottomans. On the whole Muslim rulers have been much more tolerant of infidels than their Christian counterparts have. As long as their subjects paid taxes and provided recruits to the harems and armies of the Sultan, they could have whatever religion they liked. Only when they joined religion with revolt did scimitars and stakes come out. Orthodox Christianity was under far greater threat from the Roman variety imposed by Venetians and Franks and Catalans. Jews too were safer from pogrom under the crescent than the cross. This is not a line of thought that goes down well in Greek company.

It is indispensable, therefore, to recognise the existence of the Kurdish phenomenon. This, however, is not possible without information about the historical background. ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS KURD AND KURDISTAN The name Kurdistan goes back to the Sumerian word kur, which more than 5,000 years ago meant something like ‘mountain’. The suffix ti stood for affiliation. The word kurti then had the meaning of mountain tribe or mountain people. The Luwians, who settled in western Anatolia about 3,000 years ago, called Kurdistan Gondwana, which in their language meant land of the villages. In Kurdish, gond is still the word for village. During the reign of Assure (from the early to mid Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age) the Kurds were called Nairi, which translates as ‘people by the river’. In the Middle Ages, under the reign of the Arab sultanates the Kurdish areas were referred to as beled ekrad. The Seljuk sultans who spoke Persian were the first to use the word Kurdistan, land of the Kurds, in their official communiqués. The Ottoman sultans also called the area settled by the Kurds Kurdistan. Until the 1920s, this name was generally used. After 1925 the existence of the Kurds was denied, particularly in Turkey.

The loss of Mecca threatened Sultan Mahmud II’s authority and finances, and in 1811 he ordered the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, Mohammed Ali Pasha, to expel the Wahhabis. Mohammed Ali Pasha and his son, Ibrahim Pasha, campaigned for seven years to destroy the First Saudi State. When Imam Saud al-Saud died in 1814, his son, Imam Abdullah, withdrew to the Nejd pursued by Ibrahim Pasha and an army of 5,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and 150 artillerymen with howitzers, mortars, and cannon.14 This largely Egyptian army besieged the then Saudi capital of Dir’iyyah, where the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Wahhabis, who had no artillery, held out for six months before surrendering on September 11, 1818.

Sultan Mehmet quickly sought to reestablish Constantinople as an international and multicultural capital. He invited all those Christians who had fled to return and restore the city to its former character. The patriarch of Constantinople was granted authority to oversee all Orthodox communities within the empire. In fact, the new power of the patriarch and his administrators under the Ottoman Turks came to be resented by some outlying Orthodox communities as an infringement upon their former autonomous authority

For centuries, the Ottoman Sultans had been recognized as Caliphs—for Sunnis the spiritual successors of the Prophet Mohammed. In 1924, the leader of post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, constitutionally abolished the Caliphate.

Despite their great victory on the Iberian peninsula, Christians were losing captives, commercial influence, and territory to the Ottomans almost everywhere else. The ideological wind propelling the white sails of Columbus’s three ships was the fifteenth-century world’s most exigent political struggle—the one between Catholic Europe and the Muslim Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, contrary to nearly all conventional accounts of world history, was the very reason Europeans went to America.

Mehmet’s response was short and to the point: “what the city contains is its own; beyond the fosse it has no dominion, owns nothing. If I want to build a fortress at the sacred mouth, it can’t forbid me.” He reminded the Greeks of the many Christian attempts to bar Ottoman passage over the straits and concluded in typically forthright style: “Go away and tell your emperor this: ‘the sultan who now rules is not like his predecessors. What they couldn’t achieve, he can do easily and at once; the things they did not wish to do, he certainly does. The next man to come here on a mission like this will be flayed alive.’” It could hardly be clearer.

Ottoman Empire was an Islamic state whose legitimacy depended on the upholding of sharia law. In theory, the law and the scholars who interpreted it placed a check on the sultan’s executive authority. The abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 marked the end of the political system that had governed the Arab world for over a thousand years. First colonial governments and then newly independent, republican Arab regimes sought to replace Islamic institutions with foreign concepts such as elected legislatures, written legal codes, and secular court systems. Nearly everywhere in the Arab world, the ulama were marginalized. They became minor officials with no real political authority. Everywhere, that is, except Saudi Arabia—where there never was a colonial government or secular Arab Nationalist regime, and where the classical Islamic constitutional order in which executive power was counterbalanced by the scholars is to this day preserved in a still-recognizable fashion.

At the same time Beyazid II, the eighth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, issued an invitation to the 250,000 Jews banished by Spain to come to his country.

In 1217 a Christian pilgrim, Master Thetmar, discovered a small chapel with two Greek monks in the deserted ruins of Petra.[114] Petra continued to served as an important stopping-off point on the trade and Hajj routes between the Arabian Peninsula and the rest of the Mamluk and Ottoman lands. The Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Baibars, visited Aaron’s tomb on Mount Hor and one of the crusader castles in 1276 CE.

In 1867 a French Jew, Charles Netter, suggested to the Alliance a means to help Jews from Persia and Eastern Europe build new lives as farmers in Ottoman Palestine. With the organisation’s support, he went to Istanbul a year later and met the Grand Vizier of the Imperial State Council. Netter persuaded the Grand Vizier to procure a decree from the Sultan allowing the Alliance to lease land near Jaffa for a Jewish agricultural school. The Governor of Syria, Rashid Pasha, then authorised the purchase of a ninety–nine–year lease on 2,600 dunams (650 acres) of land.14 Netter built a school on this land in 1870, which he named Mikve Israel (‘The Hope of Israel’), serving as both principal and instructor there, and witnessing the beginnings of Jewish agricultural settlement in Ottoman Palestine.15

Nietzsche hoped that Bayreuth would be the fulfillment of his Greco-German dreams—a modern festival along Hellenic lines, fusing Apollonian and Dionysian elements, presented before an audience of elite aesthetes. Wagner, for his part, clung to his fantasy of a great popular festival, open to people of all backgrounds. Supporters were building up an international network of Wagner Societies, whose members made advance contributions in exchange for tickets. Through their patronage, Wagner hoped to keep admission free. By 1873, fund-raising was lagging, especially among German notables. Two of the biggest donors were, reputedly, Abdülaziz, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Isma’il Pasha, the khedive of Egypt.

Nevlinsky had a more realistic, or more opportunistic, approach. He suggested that Herzl, as an eminent journalist connected with one of Europe’s most influential newspapers, could be of great service to the Ottoman Empire’s public relations regarding its persecuted Armenian minority. Accordingly, Herzl provided his newspaper a flattering interview with the Grand Vizier, Halil Rifat Pasha, and a pro-Turkish account of recent mass killings in Armenia as well as the empire’s conflict with Greece over Crete. Herzl was not unsympathetic to the Armenian cause, but he believed that Armenian “revolutionaries” were bringing misfortune upon themselves and, in a meeting in London with the Armenian nationalist leader Avetis Nazarbekian, urged him to order his followers to lay down their arms. Herzl may well have viewed the Armenians with compassion, but he also knew that so long as the “Armenian Question” exercised the sultan, he would not brook any consideration of concessions to another non-Muslim minority.

Al-Wahhab allied with Muhammed bin Saud, the founder of the state of Saudi Arabia, and provided religious and ideological backing to the newly formed state.  The Wahhabi Saudi troops took advantage of the chaos of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I to seize control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It’s probably safe to say that the Shia will never forgive the Wahhabis for the zealotry they pursued upon taking the cities, which included obliterating centuries-old sacred Shia shrines and claiming that they were used to worship the Imams as gods and were therefore heretical.  In the Cemetery of al-Baqi in Medina, they utterly destroyed the tombs of the Imams Hasan, Ali ibn Husayn, Muhammed ibn Ali, and Jafar, as well as the tomb of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad.  In Mecca, they destroyed the Cemetery of Mualla, where the ancestors of Muhammad and his first wife Khadija were buried.  These prominent destructions were part of a pattern of violence that witnessed the Wahhabi Saudis smash buildings, tombs and mosques associated with the history of the Prophet and his family and which were venerated by Shia.  In addition, they alienated Shia from governance and oppressed them throughout the kingdom[26].  This vandalism has been repeated time and time again by Wahhabis in other areas as well, including the much-publicized destruction of the Buddha statues of the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001[27] and the outbreak of violence in 2013 around the city of Timbuktu, where Wahhabi fundamentalists  destroyed holy artifacts and burned a priceless library of manuscripts before fleeing the arrival of French troops[28]. While the establishment of the Wahhabi school of thought created an intellectual form of anti-Shia ideology, it is probable that this philosophy would have remained isolated in the political backwater of the Nejd Sultanate (the core of modern Saudi Arabia) if not for the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the final abolition of the Caliphate. The Ottomans had claimed to be Caliphs of the Muslim world since 1453, the same year that they conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) from the Byzantine Empire, and they ruled over a considerable portion of the world's Sunnis, as well as the shrine cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.  After 1876, the Sultans had placed particular emphasis on their role as Caliphs in order to bolster their global position by asserting their Empire's "Muslim” character, and while this was never universally accepted by all Sunnis or Shias, Sunni Muslims everywhere at least could say that there was a government that claimed to represent the form of rule established by the Prophet and that provided legitimacy and continuity.

By 1500 there were 1,700 printing presses distributed in 300 European cities in every country except Russia.16 In the Ottoman empire, a decree of Sultan Selim I specified the death penalty for anyone who even used a printing press. Istanbul did not acquire a printing press until 1726 and the owners were allowed to publish only a few titles before being closed down.

knife before being killed himself by the sultan’s bodyguards.

The precise circumstances of the death of Sultan Murad on the day of the battle are unclear.

Some accounts suggest that a small band of Serbian fighters were able to fight their way to the sultan’s tent and kill him there.

This seems unlikely, as the sultan’s Janissary guard would have stayed close to him at all times during the battle.

Bayezid quickly demonstrated that he had the ruthlessness required to be an effective sultan

Sultan Murad and Prince Lazar both died during the battle,

When Obilić was taken into the presence of the sultan, he was able to kill Murad

Specifically, they wanted an end to the rule of the sultans and the introduction of some level of democracy

was finally disbanded. A sultan of the Ottoman Empire would never again be deposed by a Janissary revolt

Meclis-i Maarif-i Umumiye, a form of government where absolute power was devolved from the sultan.

Worship of God is the highest throne, the happiest of all estates.” —Sultan Suleiman

The 11 sultans who followed, his direct descendants, continued to expand the empire until, 250 years later,

The following day, Sultan Bayezid watched as several thousand Christian prisoners were executed in retaliation

Suleiman was the first sultan to be formally married, to a woman who would later become known as Hürrem Sultan

Sultan Bayezid which numbered around 20,000.

the army of the Ottoman Empire under the command of Sultan Bayezid near the city of Ankara.

In 1413, Bayezid’s son Mehmed finally achieved victory and emerged as the new sultan.

Many of the sultans who came to power in the next hundred years

were very young and were subject to the influence of their mothers, the valide sultans.

Other adult sultans were greatly influenced by their wives, the haseki sultans.

the sultan died in captivity three months later, the remainder of the Ottoman Empire was embroiled in a civil war

Selim became the new sultan of the Ottoman Empire in April 1512

but by nightfall, King Sigismund had fled the field in a fisherman’s boat and what was left of his army surrendered to Sultan Bayezid.

Amur Timur, more generally known as Tamerlane (Timur the Lame), was a warlord just as ruthless and successful as any Ottoman sultan.

he approached the young sultan who proved much more receptive to these new ideas.

The Ottoman sultanate was abolished, and the last sultan, Abdulmejid II, left for exile on a British battleship.

It is a story of shrewd and able sultans who used their absolute power to increase the influence of the empire and of weak, corrupt,

many Turkish princes who had previously been under the sultan’s rule defected to the shah, converting to Shia Islam

Murad IV, who became the sultan at the age of eleven in 1623, was perhaps the most competent Ottoman ruler of the 17th century.

During his reign, the sultan made sure to surround himself with the men he personally trusted,

Aided by many high-ranking officials, the military entered Istanbul and massacred many of the sultan’s closest allies in court,

However, for the next few decades, due to weak sultans under the influence of their harems

Sultan Suleyman would try to capitalize on the Christians’ religious strife by encouraging the promotion of Protestantism in Hungary,

By the time of Sultan Suleyman’s death in 1566, the empire spanned three continents, possessed a huge army and a competent navy,

Instead, the new sultan was often called Sarhoş, meaning “Drunkard,” because of his love for wine and women.

He declared Selim as the new Ottoman sultan and left Istanbul to spend the rest of his days in peace.

Sultan Bayezid had grown older and weaker, meaning that a change in leadership was necessary to deal with the Safavids.

youngest of the sultan’s three sons, convinced the Janissaries to support him in overthrowing his father.

the Ottomans achieved a close victory against the Mamluks, thanks to their superior troops, and killed the Mamluk sultan, Qansuh al-Ghuri, routing the Egyptian army.

Sultan Selim was very unlike his father when it came to nearly everything, from personality to his decisions as a ruler.

The resistance from within the empire was not the only force acting against the sultan.

financial decisions the sultan had made weakened the economy, and the upset Janissaries and sipahis led an insurrection

late May, they stormed the palace in Istanbul and forced the sultan to abdicate.

The sultan seized Athens in 1826, swinging the tide back into the hands of the central government.

Sultan Bayezid I led his men back into the Balkans and took the fight to the Bulgarians,

the inhabitants of Nicopolis, who were hopeful their sultan would arrive to aid in their defense.

However, this decision proved to be fatal for the sultan and forever affected his legacy.

allow for a slow and gruesome capture of the Byzantines’ crown jewel. When the word of the crusade reached the sultan’s ears,

Upon his return, Tamerlane sent an emissary to Sultan Bayezid, proposing that he swear fealty

Sultan Selim eventually reaching the Mamluk capital of Cairo in early 1517 after defeating the remainder of the Mamluk

Sultan Selim became the first Ottoman ruler to ever stretch the Ottoman Empire over three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa).

Prince Murad would become the Ottoman sultan in late 1362 after the death of Orhan.

However, once the Balkan nations saw the sultan abandon their frontiers,

Sultan Selim has come to be known as “the Grim” for his dreadful personality,

As soon as he had become sultan himself, he slaughtered many of his family members, only leaving Suleyman alive

incredible military, diplomatic, social, and economic achievements as sultan, Suleyman would be forever remembered as “the Magnificent.

the sultan’s assistance was needed after the French king was captured in the summer of 1525. Suleyman thrust into the Habsburg

not surprising that Sultan Suleyman was referred to by his contemporaries as “the Magnificent” for his achievements.

However, the roots of these problems went far deeper than harem rivalries and the sultan’s preferences.

Mehmed III, the son of Murad III, became the new sultan in 1595 after the passing of his father.

Suleiman was born into a huge empire with its capital in Constantinople (Istanbul

He went on to rule for forty-six years, longer than any other sultan,

Suleiman was one of the great figures of his age—and it was truly an age of great rulers.

His father, Selim, had arguably conquered more territory,

And as far as we know, Suleiman was his only son.

Admiral Hayreddin (Khayr-ad-Din) Barbarossa, who was made grand admiral in 1533.

This gave the sultan effective control of the eastern Mediterranean