Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 53, No. 332, June, 1843. Various
scarce would'st gather from her song
The tale of brother's barbarous wrong.
She sings, but I must silent be:—
When will the spring-tide come for me?
When, like the swallow, spring's own bird,
Shall my faint twittering notes be heard?
Alas! the muse, while silent I
Remain'd, hath gone and pass'd me by,
Nor Phœbus listens to my cry.
And thus forgotten, I await,
By silence lost, Amyclæ's fate.
CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY—SIEGE OF CANDIA
NO. IX
The restraint which the ferocious energy of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi, during the latter years of his reign, had succeeded in imposing on the turbulence of the Janissaries,1 vanished at his death; and for many years subsequently, the domestic annals of the Ottoman capital are filled with the details of the intrigues of women and eunuchs within the palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without. The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad, was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government, he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed Mah-peiker, or the Moon-face,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I., and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding, kept the administration of the state almost wholly in her own hands. The talents of this princess, aided by the ministers of her selection, for some time prevented the incompetency of the sultan from publicly manifesting itself; but Ibrahim at last shook off the control of his mother, and speedily excited the indignant murmurs of the troops and the people by the publicity with which he abandoned himself to the most degrading sensuality. The sanctity of the harem and of the bath had hitherto been held inviolate by even the most despotic of the Ottoman sovereigns; but this sacred barrier was broken through by the unbridled passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene ensued almost without parallel in history—the deposition of an absolute sovereign by form of law. The grand-vizir Ahmed, and other panders to the vices of the sultan, were seized and put to death on the place of public execution; while an immense crowd of soldiers, citizens, and janissaries, assembling before the palace of the mufti early on the morning of August 8, 1648, received from him a fetwa, or decree, to the effect that the sultan (designated as "Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman Effendi") had, by his habitual immorality and disregard of law, forfeited all claim to be considered as a true believer, and was therefore incapable of reigning over the Faithful. The execution of this sentence was entrusted to the Aga of the Janissaries, the Silihdar or grand sword-bearer, and the Kadhi-asker or chief judge of Anatolia, who, repairing to the seraglio, attended by a multitude of military officers and the ulemah, proceeded without ceremony to announce to Ibrahim that his rule was at an end. His furious remonstrances were drowned by the rude voice of the Kadhi Abdul-Aziz Effendi,2 who boldly reproached him with his vices. "Thou hast gone astray," said he, "from the paths in which thy glorious ancestors walked, and hast trampled under foot both law and religion, and thou art no longer the padishah of the Moslems!" He was at last conducted to the same apartment whence he had been taken to ascend the throne, and where, ten days later, his existence was terminated by the bowstring; while the Sultana-Walidah, (whose acquiescence in this extraordinary revolution had been previously secured,) led into the salamlik (hall of audience) her eldest grandson Mohammed,3 an infant scarcely seven years old, who was forthwith seated on the imperial sofa, and received the homage of the dignitaries of the realm.
Sultan Mohammed IV., afterwards surnamed Avadji, or the Hunter, who was destined to fill the throne of the Ottoman Empire during one of the most eventful periods of its history, possessed qualifications which, if his education had not been interrupted by his early accession to supreme power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form, and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, in an access of brutal passion, into a cistern in the gardens of the seraglio; and a contemporary Venetian chronicler says that his dark complexion and vivid restless eye gave him rather the aspect of a Zigano, or gipsy, than an Osmanli. In the first years of his reign, his grandmother, the Walidah Kiosem, acted as regent; but the rule of a woman and a child was little able to curb the turbulent soldiery of the capital; and the old feuds between the spahis and janissaries, which had been dormant since the death of Abaza, broke out afresh with redoubled violence. The war in Crete, which had been commenced under Ibrahim, languished for want of troops and supplies; while the rival military factions fought, sword in hand, in front of the imperial palace, and filled Constantinople with pillage and massacre. The janissaries, who were supported by Kiosem, for some time maintained the ascendency; but this ambitious princess was at length cut off by an intrigue, in the interior of the harem, fomented by the mother of Mohammed, who suspected her of a design to prolong her own sway by the removal of the sultan, in favour of a still younger son of Ibrahim. Seized in the midst of the night of September 3, 1651, by the eunuchs whom her rival had gained, Kiosem was strangled (according to a report preserved by Evliya) with the braids of her own long hair; and the sultan was exhibited at daybreak by the grand-vizir Siawush-Pasha to the people, who thronged round the palace on the rumour of this domestic tragedy, to assure them of the personal safety of their youthful sovereign.
The supreme power was now lodged in the hands of the young Sultana Walidah, and her confidant the Kislar-Aga; but their inexperience was little qualified to encounter the task which had wellnigh baffled the energies of Kiosem; and the expedient of frequently changing the grand-vizir, in obedience to the requisition of which ever party was for the time in the ascendant, prevented the measures of government from acquiring even a shadow of consistence or stability. Twelve vizirs, within eight years from the deposition of Ibrahim, had successively held the reins of power for short periods; and not less than six had been raised to, and deposed from, that precarious dignity, within the last ten months, while the audacity of the troops, and the helplessness of the executive, had reached an unparalleled climax. In a memorable insurrection, arising from the depreciation of the coinage, which marked the spring of 1656, the revolters, not contented with their usual license of plunder and bloodshed, forced their way into the palace, and exacted from the young sultan the surrender of two of his favourite domestics, who were instantly slaughtered before his eyes; while various obnoxious public functionaries were dragged to the At-meidan, and summarily hanged on the branches of a large plane-tree;4 and for several weeks this proscription was continued, till the cry of "Take him to the plane-tree!" became a watchword of as well-known and fearful import, as that of "A la lanterne!" in later times. In this emergency, when the fabric of government seemed on the verge of dissolution, an ancient Anatolian pasha, Mohammed-Kiuprili, who had lately repaired to the capital, was named by her confidential advisers to the Sultana-Walidah as a man whose eminent discernment and sagacity, not less than his fearless intrepidity, rendered him especially fitted for the task of stilling the troubled waters. In opposition to these views it was contended, that the poverty of the proposed premier would prevent his securing the adherence of the troops by the largesses which they had been accustomed to receive, and the project was apparently abandoned; but the incapacity and unpopularity of the grand-vizir, Mohammed-Pasha, (surnamed Egri, or the Crooked,) soon made it obvious that a fresh change alone
See "Chapters of Turkish History," No. III., November 1840.
He was afterwards, in 1651, mufti for a few months; but is better known as an historian, (under the appellation of Kara-Tchelibi-Zadah,) and as having been tutor to Ahmed-Kiuprili.
His name, according to Evliya, was originally Yusuf, but was changed to Mohammed on the entreaty of the ladies of the seraglio, who said that Yusuf was the name of a slave.
The Turkish historian, Naima, fancifully compares this plane to the fabulous tree in the islands of Wak-Wak, the fruit of which consisted of human heads, as is fully detailed in the romance of Hatem Tai, besides various passages of the Thousand and One Nights. Under this same plane, by a singular instance of retribution, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.