Download PDF | The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman, Melek Ahmed Pasha, (1588-1662 : As Portrayed in Evliya Celeb's Book of Travels), by Robert Dankoff, 1991.
324 Pages
THE AUTHOR AND HIS SUBJECT
Evliya Çelebi was a Turk from Istanbul. His father, Derviş Mehmed Zilli Agha, chief goldsmith at the Ottoman court, had (according to family tradition) accompanied Süleyman the Mag- nificent on his late campaigns. His mother was an Abkhazian slave girl, presented to Sultan Ahmed I along with her cousin, Melek Ahmed, who later became one of the great statesmen of the age and Evliya's chief patron. In the Ottoman system, those men who began their careers as "slaves of the Porte" (kapıkulu)-notably the janissaries, de- rived mainly from the Balkans, and the military slaves from the Caucasus-had the likellest chance to achieve high office in the military and political sphere. Such was the case with Melek Ahmed (though he was not technically a military siave, as he was born in Istanbul), whose career followed a typical pattern: upbringing in the Caucasus: introduction to the palace service as a young man (gulam); graduation to officer status (ağa); ap- pointment to the highest offices of the state (paşa).
The military option was not open, at least in principle, to native Turks, who tended rather to seek careers as religious per- sonnel (ulema) or bureaucrats in the financial administration (efendi). But they too could gain entrance to the centers of power by virtue of their skills. Such was the case with Evliya's father, and with Evliya himself. And anyone noted for refined taste and literary accomplishment could gain the nickname of "gentleman" (çelebt). As a youth of endless curiosity, Evliya explored the variegated metropolis and imbibed tales and accounts of its history, as well as the history of Süleyman's far-flung conquests.
He received a thorough training in Islamic and Ottoman sciences, especially Koran recitation and music. With his fine voice and entertaining manner, he attracted the attention of Sultan Murad IV, thus gaining entry to the palace where his education was refined. He learned the Koran by heart (hafız) and was often called on to recite. And he was the sultan's boon companton (musahib). But Evliya's nature was too restless for a sedentary career as a courtier. His wanderlust was encouraged by the Prophet himself in a dream which (as he tells us) occurred on the night of Ashura, the tenth of Muharrem, In the year of the hegira 1040 (19 August 1630)-his twentieth birthday!
Thereafter, by at- taching himself to various pashas sent out to govern the prov- inces, he traveled the length and breadth of the empire, and into Its peripheries. Evliya served his patrons as Koran reciter, caller to prayer (müezzin), and prayer leader (imam); as boon com- panton and raconteur; more officially, as courier, tax collec- tor, or deputy. But he shunned official status. When Melek offered him the key post of marshal of his guards (kapıcılar kethü- dası). he refused (see Chapter 9). He saw himself as a mendicant (derviş), as "world traveler and boon companion to mankind" (seyyah-ı alem ve nedtm-t bent-Adem). As one of his interlocu- tors puts it: "Evliya Çelebi is a wandering dervish and a world traveler. He cries the chant of every cart he mounts, and sings the praises of every man who feeds him. Wherever he rests his head, he eats and drinks and is merry." Travel was his true ca- reer. And the Book of Travels (Seyahat-name) was his life work.
The Book of Travels is a vast panorama of the Ottoman world in the mid-seventeenth century. At this period the Otto- man state was still a great Imperial power-geographically It was at the height of its glory-although cracks and strains were evident. Evliya's account naturally begins with the capital, also his birthplace, Istanbul, to which he devotes one entire book (the work as a whole is divided into ten "books"). Following the story of the dream (in which the Prophet blesses his travels) the historical and geographical surveys of the metropolis proceed systematically and at a stately pace, although with frequent di gressions and anecdotal asides. Book I is divided into 273 chap- ters: the passages translated below (Chapter 1) are drawn from Chapter 120. "Viziers of Murad IV;" and Chapter 138, "Gazas and Conquests under Murad IV." The longest, Chapter 270, covering sixty-two follos of text-it would make a book of several hundred printed pages-is a description of the guilds of the city as they
paraded before Sultan Murad IV in preparation for the Baghdad campaign of 1638. At one point, while discussing the guild of fireworks makers, Evllya mentions a youthful prank in which he launched a spectacular rocket of his own devising from a boat in the Bosphorus, shocking those on the shore. This took place, he tells us, "during the festivities celebrating the birth of Kaya Sul- tan" Sultan Murad's daughter who later became Melek Pasha's wife that is, in 1633.4 Book II opens with a reprisal of the initiatory dream.
Evli- ya's first venture outside the capital, beginning (so he tells us) just before his thirtieth birthday in 1050/1640, was to the old Ottoman capital of Bursa. After returning to Istanbul to get his father's blessing, he journeys along the Black Sea coast as far as the Caucasus region, the homeland of his mother's kin, and around to the Crimea.
He participates in raids against the infi- del (gaza). He suffers shipwreck. He goes to Crete for the Canea campaign, and so is present at the initial Ottoman victory (1645) in the twenty-five-year-long struggle to conquer that is- land. Returning to Erzurum in the train of the newly appointed governor of that province, his kinsman Defterdar-zade Mehmed Pasha. Evliya accompanies an envoy to Tebriz in the country of the heritical Kızılbaş (1.e., the Safavids of Iran), his first venture outside the Ottoman realm. Later Mehmed Pasha is caught up in one of the frequent Anatolian disturbances of that era, a re- volt by a disaffected ected provincial governor (all such rebels at this time were called celali).
The rebel in this Instance, Varvar Ali Pasha, refused the command of Sultan Ibrahim to forward the wife of another provincial governor. Ipşir Pasha. The same Ipşır Pasha was sent to put down the rebellion. (He was to play an Important role in the later fate of Melek Ahmed Pasha.) Learning of his father's death, Evliya returns to the capital in time to wit- ness the deposition of the extravagant Sultan Ibrahim and the accession of the seven-year-old Sultan Mehmed IV (1648). In the first part of Book III Evliya accompanies Murtaza Pa- sha to Damascus, capital of the province of Şam (Syria). Luckily he is back in the capital when his kinsman Melek Ahmed Pasha Is appointed grand vizier (1650; Chapter 2). From that time on Evliya is almost constantly in Melek's service, following him to Özú. Silistre, and Sofia (Rumeli province; Chapter 3). and back to Istanbul, where the Pasha serves as deputy grand vizier until the arrival of Ipşır Pasha from Aleppo (Chapter 4).
Ipşir "exiles" Melek to Van. On the way there (Book IV) Evliya stops off in Di-yarbekir province and has the opportunity to relate some of Me- lek's exploits when Melek was governor of that province fifteen years earlier (Chapter 5). After reaching Van, Melek takes advan- tage of his position by mounting an expedition against the re- bellious, quasi-independent Kurdish ruler of Bitlis, the flamboyant and wealthy Abdal Khan (Chapter 6). Thus, despite the poor prospects Initially, he is able to amass a small for- tune-as Evllya remarks, "for Melek Ahmed Pasha the province of Van turned out to be a veritable Egypt."5 Evliya once again goes on an embassy to Iran, and takes the opportunity to travel to Baghdad and make an extensive tour of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, returning to Van only at the beginning of Book V. He is in Bitlis collecting some arrears when Melek is removed from office. After an adventurous escape from Bitlis, Evliya warns Melek not to return to the capital via Bitlis and Diyarbekir, but to take a northerly route through Erzurum.
despite the winter season. The remainder of Book V covers the latter part of Melek's career, as governor of Özü (Chapter 7) and Bosnia (Chapter 9), interrupted by the blow caused by the death of his beloved wife, Kaya Sultan (Chapter 8). At the beginning of Book VI Melek is recalled from the Transylvania campaign to marry another sultana, Fatma Sultan, the daughter of his orig- inal patron. Sultan Ahmed I (Chapter 10). The unhappy match Is short-lived, ended by Melek's death in 1662. Though left patronless, Evliya rejoices in the lack of family attachments and goes off to join the German campaign. Book VII includes eyewitness accounts of the Battle of St. Gotthard (1664) and the Ottoman embassy to Vienna under Kara Mehmed Pasha (1665), followed by travels in the Crimea, Circassia, and Kalmukta. Book VIII is largely devoted to Greece, including an eyewitness account of the Candia campaign and the final Otto- man conquest of Crete (1669). Pilgrimage to the holy cities of Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina is the subject of Book IX. In 1672 Evliya finally reaches Egypt, his goal and haven after forty years of travel: and his leisurely description of Cairo In Book X (plus Journeys up and down the Nile) recalls his description, of Istanbul.
If a travel account can be said to have a hero, that hero must be the traveler himself. While the Book of Travels is no exception to this, it can also be said to have another hero: Melek Ahmed Pasha. For it is not simply a travel account (seyahat- name); it is also a chronicle (tarth) of Evliya's life and times. The narrative thread, accounting for roughly 5 percent of the huge ten-book text, is an autoblographical memoir. And the "hero" in Evliya's life, from his own perspective, is not himself but his patron. Of the various patrons who sponsored Evliya's career Melek Pasha was by far the most important. Their bond of kinship provided the basis for Evliya's attachment to Melek and to his household. Evliya served Melek, not only in religious and official capacities, but above all as confidant-we might say, as friend, although their differences in age and in position clearly made Evliya a subordinate. One obligation of a subordinate in the Ottoman system was to praise and otherwise to promote the welfare of his superior, to whom he owed loyalty. Evliya fulfills this obligation in the Book of Travels.
Although not wholly covering up Melek's weak points he tends to portray him in glowing colors. He probably exagger- ates Melek's heroic exploits; and in the course of his eulogy after Melek's death, he says that he has gathered the accounts of those exploits in a separate volume, entitled The Gestes of Me- lek Ahmed Pasha (Risale-t Menakıb-ı Melek Ahmed Paşa).7 The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman in some fashion re- constitutes that volume, lost or never written. What gives Evliya's account its special character is that it goes far beyond the laudatory recounting of public exploits char- acteristic of Ottoman (and Islamic) biographics and hagiogra- phies.
It records how Melek used Evliya as a sounding board for his dreams; how Melek and his wife, Kaya Sultan, related their dreams to each other, and how their dreams reacted to and were fulfilled in events in the world. With these dreams, especially, Evliya comes close to a psychological portrait of his patron and patroness. We gain an acquaintance of their hearts and minds, at a level of intimacy quite unusual, if not unique, in Ottoman (and Islamic) literature.
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