Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

religious liberty; and many of these Near Eastern Christians were

harassed heretics- Nestorians or Monophysites. Soon a large part of

the conquered terrain accepted the Moslem creed; so war solves

theological problems before which reason stands in hesitant impotence.

Having thus extended his realm, Orkhan took the title Sultan of the

Ottomans. The Byzantine emperors made their peace with him, hired

his soldiers, and allowed his son Suleiman to establish Ottoman

strongholds on European soil. Orkhan died in 1359, aged seventy-one,

firmly placed in the memory of his people.

His successors formed a dynasty hardly equaled in history for a

merger of martial vigor and skill, administrative ability, barbarous

cruelty, and cultured devotion to letters, science, and art. Murad

(Amurath) I was the least attractive of the line. Illiterate, he

signed his name by pressing his inked fingers upon documents, in the

fashion of less distinguished homicides. When his son Saondji led a

criminally unsuccessful revolt against him Murad tore out the

youth's eyes, cut off his head, and compelled the fathers of the

rebels to behead their sons. `063032 He trained an almost invincible

army, conquered most of the Balkans, and eased their submission by

giving them a more efficient government than they had known under

Christian domination.

Bajazet I inherited his father's crown on the field of Kosova

(1389). After leading the army to victory, he ordered the execution of

his brother Yakub, who had fought valiantly throughout that crucial

day. Such fratricide became a regular aftermath of an Ottoman

accession, on the principle that sedition against the government is so

disruptive that all potential claimants to the throne should be

disposed of at the earliest convenience. Bajazet earned the title of

Yilderim- the Thunderbolt- by the speed of his military strategy,

but he lacked the statesmanship of his father, and wasted some of

his wild energy in sexual enterprise. Stephen Lazarevitch, vassal

ruler of Serbia, contributed a sister to Bajazet's harem; this Lady

Despoina became his favorite wife, taught him to love wine and

sumptuous banquets, and perhaps unwittingly weakened him as a man. His

pride flourished till his fall. After deflowering Europe's chivalry at

Nicopolis he released the Count of Nevers with a characteristic

challenge, as reported or improved by Froissart:

-

John, I know well thou art a great lord in thy country, and son to a

great lord. Thou art young, and peradventure thou shalt bear some

blame or shame that this adventure hath fallen to thee in thy first

chivalry; and to excuse thyself of this blame, and to recover thine

honor, peradventure thou wilt assemble a puissance of men, and come to

make war against me. If I were in doubt or fear thereof, ere thou

departed I should cause thee to swear by thy law and faith that

never thou, nor none of thy company, should bear arms... against me.

But I will neither make thee nor none of thy company to make any

such oath or promise, but I will that when thou art returned and art

at thy pleasure, thou shalt raise what puissance thou wilt, and

spare not, but come against me; thou shalt find me always ready to

receive thee and thy company.... And this that I say, show it to

whom thou list, for I am able to do deeds of arms, and every ready

to conquer further into Christendom. `063033

-

When Timur captured Bajazet at Ankara he treated him with all

respect despite the year of insulting correspondence that had passed

between them. He ordered the Sultan's bonds removed, seated him at his

side, assured him that his life would be spared, and directed that

three splendid tents should be fitted out for his suite. But when

Bajazet tried to escape he was confined to a room with barred windows,

which legend magnified into an iron cage. Bajazet fell ill; Timur

summoned the best physicians to treat him, and sent the Lady

Despoina to attend and console him. These ministrations failed to

revive the vital forces of the broken Sultan, and Bajazet died a

prisoner, a year after his defeat.

His son Mohammed I reorganized the Ottoman government and power.

Though he blinded one pretender and killed another, he acquired the

cognomen "Gentleman" by his courtly manners, his just rule, and the

ten years of peace that he allowed to Christendom. Murad II had like

tastes, and preferred poetry to war; but when Constantinople set up

a rival to depose him, and Hungary violated its pledge of peace, he

proved himself, at Varna (1444), as good a general as any. Then he

retired to Magnesia in Asia Minor, where twice a week he held reunions

of poets and pundits, read verse, and talked science and philosophy. A

revolt at Adrianople called him back to Europe; he suppressed it,

and overcame Hunyadi Janos in a second battle of Kosovo. When he

died (1451), after thirty years of rule, Christian historians ranked

him among the greatest monarchs of his time. His will directed that he

should be buried at Brusa in a modest chapel without a roof, "so

that the mercy and blessing of God might come unto him with the

shining of the sun and moon, and the falling of the rain and dew

upon his grave." `063034

Mohammed II equaled his father in culture and conquests, political

acumen, and length of reign, but not in justice or nobility. Bettering

Christian instruction, he broke solemn treaties, and tarnished his

victories with superfluous slaughter. He was Orientally subtle in

negotiation and strategy. Asked what his plans were, he answered,

"If a hair in my beard knew, I would pluck it out." `063035 He spoke

five languages, was well read in several literatures, excelled in

mathematics and engineering, cultivated the arts, gave pensions to

thirty Ottoman poets, and sent royal gifts to poets in Persia and

India. His grand vizier, Mahmud Pasha, seconded him as a patron of

letters and art; he and his master supported so many colleges and

pious foundations that the Sultan received the name "Father of Good

Works." Mohammed was also "Sire of Victory"; to him and his cannon

Constantinople fell; under the guns of his navy the Black Sea became a

Turkish pond; before his legions and diplomacy the Balkans crumbled

into servitude. But this irresistible conqueror could not conquer

himself. By the age of fifty he had worn himself out by every form

of sexual excess; aphrodisiacs failed to implement his lust; finally

his harem classed him with his eunuchs. He died (1481), aged

fifty-one, just when his army seemed on the verge of conquering

Italy for Islam.

A contest among his sons gave the throne to Bajazet II. The new

sultan was not inclined to war, but when Venice took Cyprus, and

challenged Turkish control of the eastern Mediterranean, he roused

himself, deceived his deceivers with a pledge of peace, built an

armada of 270 vessels, and destroyed a Venetian fleet off the coasts

of Greece. A Turkish army raided northern Italy as far west as Vicenza

(1502); Venice sued for peace; Bajazet gave her lenient terms, and

retired to poetry and philosophy. His son Selim deposed him, and

mounted the throne (1512); presently- some said of poison- Bajazet

died.

History is in some aspects an alternation of contrasting themes: the

moods and forms of one age are repudiated by the next, which tires

of tradition and lusts for novelty; classicism begets romanticism,

which begets realism, which begets impressionism; a period of war

calls for a decade of peace, and peace prolonged invites aggressive

war. Selim I despised his father's pacific policy. Vigorous in frame

and will, indifferent to pleasures and amenities, loving the chase and

the camp, he won the nickname of "the Grim" by having nine relatives

strangled to contracept revolt, and waging war after war of

conquest. It did not displease him that Shah Isma'il of Persia

raided the Turkish frontier. He registered a vow that if Allah would

grant him victory over the Persians, he would build three mighty

mosques- in Jerusalem, Buda, and Rome. `063036 Having heated the

religious predilections of his people to the fighting point, he

marched against Isma'il, captured Tabriz, and made northern

Mesopotamia an Ottoman province. In 1515 he turned his artillery and

Janissaries against the Mamluks, and added Syria, Arabia, and Egypt to

his realm (1517). He carried to Constantinople, as an honored captive,

the Cairene "caliph"- rather the high priest- of orthodox

Mohammedanism; and thereafter the Ottoman sultans, like Henry VIII,

became the masters of the church as well as of the state.

In the full glory of his powers Selim prepared to conquer Rhodes and

Christendom. When all his preparations were complete he caught the

plague and died (1520). Leo X, who had trembled more at Selim's

advance than at Luther's rebellion, ordered all Christian churches

to chant a litany of gratitude to God.

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VI. ISLAMIC LITERATURE: 1400-1520

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++++++++++

Even Selim the Grim threaded verses on rhyme, and bequeathed to

Suleiman the Magnificent a royal divan of his collected poems as

well as an empire ranging from the Euphrates to the Danube and the

Nile. Twelve sultans and many princes- including that Prince Djem whom

his brother Bajazet II paid Christian kings and popes to keep in

refined confinement- appear among the 2,200 Ottoman poets who have won

fame in the last six centuries. `063037 Most of these bards took their

forms and ideas, sometimes the language, of their verse from the

Persians; they continued to celebrate, in endless rivulets of rhyme,

the greatness of Allah, the wisdom of the shah or sultan, and the

trembling envy of the cypress trees seeing the white slenderness of

the beloved's legs. We of the West are now too familiar with these

charms to thrill to such lofty similes; but the "terrible Turks,"

whose women, were alluringly robed from nose to toes, were stirred

to the roots by these poetic revelations; and the poetry that in its

denatured translation leaves us unmoved could inspire them to piety,

polygamy, and war.

From a thousand dead immortals we cull with untutored fancy three

names still unfamiliar to the provincial Occident. Ahmedi of Sives (d.

1413), taking his cue from the Persian master Nizami, wrote an

Iskander-nama, or Book of Alexander, an immense epic in strong,

crude style, which gave not only the story of Alexander's conquest

by Persia, but as well the history, religion, science, and

philosophy of the Near East from the earliest times to Bajazet I. We

must forgo quotation, for the English version is such stuff as

nightmares are made of. The poetry of Ahmad Pasha (d. 1496) so

delighted Mohammed II that the Sultan made him vizier; the poet fell

in love with a pretty page in the conqueror's retinue; Mohammed,

having the same predilection, ordered the poet's death; Ahmad sent his

master so melting a lyric that Mohammed gave him the boy, but banished

both to Brusa. `063038 There Ahmad took into his home a younger

poet, soon destined to surpass him. Nejati (d. 1508), whose real

name was Isa (Jesus), wrote an ode in praise of Mohammed II, and

fastened it to the turban of the Sultan's favorite partner in chess.

Mohammed's curiosity fell for the lure; he read the scroll, sent for

the author, and made him an official of the royal palace. Bajazet II

kept him in favor and affluence, and Nejati, triumphing heroically

over prosperity, wrote in those two reigns some of the most lauded

lyrics in Ottoman literature.

Even so the great masters of Moslem poetry were still the Persians.

The court of Husein Baiqara at Herat so teemed with nightingales that

his vizier, Mir Ali Shir Nawa'i, complained, "If you stretch out your

feet you kick the backside of a poet"; to which a bard replied, "And

so do you if you pull up yours." `063039 For Mir Ali Shir (d. 1501),

besides helping to rule Khurasan, supporting literature and art, and

winning renown as a miniaturist and a composer, was also a major poet-

at once the Maecenas and Horace of his time. It was his enlightened

patronage that gave aid and comfort to the painters Bihzad and Shah

Muzaffar, and the musicians Qul-Muhammad, Shayki Na'i, and Husein Udi,

and the supreme Moslem poet of the fifteenth century- Mulla Nuru'd-Din

Abd-er-Rahman Jami (d. 1492).

In a long and uneventful life Jami found time to achieve fame as a

scholar and mystic as well as a poet. As a Sufi he expounded in

graceful prose the old mystic theme, that the joyous union of the soul

with the Beloved- i.e., God- comes only when the soul realizes that

self is a delusion, and that the things of this world are a maya of

transitory phantoms melting in a mist of mortality. Most of Jami's

poetry is mysticism in verse, spiced with some attractive

sensuality. Salaman wa Absal tells a pretty tale to point the

superiority of divine to earthly love. Salaman is the son of the

shah of Yun (i.e., Ionia); born without a mother (which is much more

difficult than parthenogenesis), he is brought up by the fair princess

Absal, who becomes enamored of him when he reaches fourteen. She

conquers him with cosmetics:

-

The darkness of her eyes she darkened round

With surma, to benight him in midday,

And over them adorned and arched the bows

To wound him there when lost; her musky locks

Into so many snaky ringlets curled,

In which Temptation nestled o'er her cheek,

Whose rose she kindled with vermilion dew,

And then one subtle grain of musk laid there,

The bird of that beloved heart to snare.

Sometimes, in passing, with a laugh would break

The pearl-enclosing ruby of her lips....

Or, rising as in haste, her golden anklets

Clash, at whose sudden summons to bring down

Under her silver feet the golden crown `063040

-

of the heir-apparent Prince. He yields without effort to these

lures, and for a time boy and lady enjoy a lyric love. The King

reproaches the youth for such dalliance, and bids him steel himself

for war and government. Instead Salaman elopes with Absal on a

camel, "like sweet twin almonds in a single shell." Reaching the

sea, they make a boat, sail it "for a moon," and come to a verdant

isle rich in fragrant flowers, singing birds, and fruit falling

profusely at their feet. But in this Eden conscience stabs the

Prince with thoughts of the royal tasks he has shunned. He persuades

Absal to return with him to Yun; he tries to train himself for

kingship, but is so torn between duty and beauty that at last, half

mad, he joins Absal in suicide: they build a pyre and leap hand in

hand into its flames. Absal is consumed, but Salaman emerges

incombustible. Now, his soul cleansed, he inherits and graces the

throne- It is all an allegory, Jami explains: the King is God, Salaman

is the soul of man, Absal is sensual delight; the happy isle is a

Satanic Eden in which the soul is seduced from its divine destiny; the

pyre is the fire of life's experience, in which sensual desire is

burned away; the throne that the purified soul attains is that of

God Himself. It is hard to believe that a poet who could so

sensitively picture a woman's charms would seriously ask us to shun

them, except occasionally.

With an audacity redeemed by the result, Jami dared to rhyme again

the favorite themes of a dozen poets before him: Yusuf u Zulaikha,

and Laila wa Majnun. In an eloquent exordium he restates the Sufi

theory of heavenly and earthly beauty:

-

In the Primal Solitude, while yet Existence gave no sign of being,

and the universe lay hid in the negation of itself, Something

was.... It was beauty absolute, showing Herself to Herself alone,

and by Her own light. As of a most beautiful lady in the bridal

chamber of mystery was Her robe, pure of all stain of imperfection. No

mirror had Her face reflected, nor had the comb passed through Her

tresses, nor the breeze with balmy breath stirred even a single

hair, nor any nightingale come nestling to her Rose.... But beauty

cannot bear to be unknown; behold the Tulip on the mountain top,

piercing the rock with its shoot at the first smile of spring.... So

Beauty Eternal came forth from the Holy Places of Mystery to beam on

all horizons and all souls; and a single ray, darting from Her, struck

Earth and its Heavens; and so She was revealed in the mirror of

created things.... And all atoms of the universe became as mirrors

casting back each one an aspect of the Eternal Glory. Something of Her

brightness fell upon the rose, and the nightingale was crazed with

helpless love. Fire caught Her ardor, and a thousand moths came to

perish in the flame.... And She it was who gave the Moon of Canaan

that sweet brightness which made Zulaikha mad. `063041

-

From these celestial heights Jami descends to describe the

Princess Zulaikha's loveliness with fervent repetition and detail,

even to her "chaste fortress and forbidden place."

-

Her breasts were orbs of a light most pure,

Twin bubbles new-risen from fount Kafur,

Two young pomegranates grown on one spray,

Where bold hope never a finger might lay. `063042

-

She sees Joseph in a dream, and falls in love with him at first

seeming; but her father marries her to Potiphar, his vizier. Then

she sees Joseph in the flesh, exposed in the market as a slave. She

buys him, tempts him, he refuses her advances, she wastes away. The

vizier dies; Joseph displaces him and marries Zulaikha; soon both

waste away, at last to death. Only the love of God is truth and life.-

It is an old tale; but who could sleep over such sermons?

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VII. ART IN ASIATIC ISLAM

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Through all the reach of Islam, from Granada to Delhi and Samarkand,

kings and nobles used geniuses and slaves to raise mosques and

mausoleums, to paint and fire tiles, to weave and dye silks and

rugs, to beat metal and carve wood and ivory, to illuminate

manuscripts with liquid color and line. The Il-Khans, the Timurids,

the Ottomans, the Mamluks, even the petty dynasties that ruled the

frailer fragments of Islam, maintained the Oriental tradition of

tempering pillage with poetry, and assassination with art. In rural

villages and urban palaces wealth graduated into beauty, and a

fortunate few enjoyed the nearness of things tempting to the touch

or fair to see.

The mosque was still the collective shrine of Moslem arts. There

brick and tile composed the lyric of the minaret; portals of faience

broke into flashing colors the ardor of the sun; the pulpit

displayed the carved contours or inlaid intricacies of its wood; the

splendor of the mihrab pointed the worshiper to Mecca; grilles and

chandeliers offered their metal lacery as homage to Allah; rugs

softened tiled floors and cushioned praying knees; precious silks

enveloped illuminated Korans. At Tabriz Clavijo marveled at "beautiful

mosques adorned with tiles in blue and gold"; `063043 and at Isfahan

one of Uljaitu's viziers set up in the Friday Mosque a mihrab in which

prosaic stucco became a lure of arabesques and lettering. Uljaitu

himself raised at Sultaniya a sumptuous mausoleum (1313), planning

to bring to it the remains of Ali and Husein, the founder saints of

the Shi'a sect; the plan miscarried graciously, and the Khan's own

bones were housed in this imposing cenotaph. Immense and majestic

are the ruins of the mosque at Varamin (1326).

Timur loved to build, and stole architectural ideas, as well as

silver and gold, from the victims of his arms. Like a conqueror, he

favored mass, as symbolizing his empire and his will; like a

nouveau riche he loved color, and carried decoration to

extravagance. Charmed by the glazed blue tiles of Herat, he drew

Persian potters to Samarkand to face with gleaming slabs the mosques

and palaces of his capital; soon the city shone and sparkled with

glorified clay. At Damascus he noted a bulbous dome swelling out above

the base and then tapering upward to a point; he bade his engineers

take its plan and measurements before it fell in the general

conflagration; he topped Samarkand with such domes, and spread the

style between India and Russia, so that it ranges now from the Taj

Mahal to the Red Square. When he returned from India he brought back

so many artists and artisans that they raised for him in three

months a gigantic mosque- the "Church of the King"- with a portal

100 feet high and a ceiling upheld by 480 pillars of stone. For his

sister Tchouchouk Bika he built the funerary mosque that became the

architectural masterpiece of his reign. `063044 When he ordered a

mosque to honor the memory of his chief wife, Bibi Khanun, he

supervised the construction himself, threw meat to the workers in

the excavations and coins to assiduous artisans, and inspired or

compelled all to work con furia until winter halted building and

cooled his architectural fire.

His descendants achieved a maturer art. At Mashhad, on the way

from Tehran to Samarkand, Shah Rukh's enterprising wife, Gawhar

Shad, engaged the architect Qavam ad-Din to build the mosque that

bears her name (1418). It is the most gorgeous and colorful production

of Moslem Persian architecture. `063045 Minarets carrying exquisite

"lanterns" guard the shrine. Four lordly arches lead into a central

court, each faced with faience tiles "never equaled before or

since"- `063046 a splendor of time-defying color in a hundred forms of

arabesque and geometrical patterns and floral motives and stately

Kufic script, all made more brilliant by the Persian sun. Over the

southwest "Portico of the Sanctuary" a dome of blue tiles rivals the

sky; and on the portal, in large white letters on a blue ground, is

the proud and pious dedication of the Queen:

-

Her Highness, the Noble in Greatness, the Sun of the Heaven of

Chastity and Continence... Gawhar Shad- may her greatness be

eternal, and may her chastity endure!... from her private property,

and for the benefit of her future state, and for the day on which

the works of everyone will be judged, with zeal for Allah and with

thankfulness... built this great Masjid-i-Jami, the Holy House, in the

reign of the Great Sultan, the Lord of Rulers, the Father of

Victory, Shah Rukh.... May Allah make eternal his Kingdom and

Empire! And may He increase on the inhabitants of the world His

Goodness, His Justice, and His Generosity! `063047

-

The mosque of Gawhar Shad was but one of a complex of buildings that

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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