I would like to cite an example from one of the most authoritative (French) books on the Ottoman Empire, an anthology of texts by about twenty world famous experts, specialists not only for certain periods but also for given topics from this field, all under the direction of a man of indubitable authority, one can find a manipulation of facts in the section entitled ‘Administering the Empire’ with its extension in the chapter ‘The Levers of Power’:
‘The system was characterised by the exceptionally ethnic variegation of the ruling class in the Empire. Among forty-seven grand viziers (during the reign of eleven sultans – note V.B.) who ruled between 1453 and 1623, only five were of Turkish origins.’
Few people know of this shocking, mathematical puzzle (this time buried in history, and only later in literature): that the strongest empire for centuries on the soil of Asia and a good part Europe and Africa could so easily and consistently put the greatest power in the hands of people who were not even of its ethnic background, and most often not even (originally) of its religion! If nothing else, this fact in and of itself demands that we stop to give pause in the quotation, doesn’t it? Then the fire gets turned up:
‘Among others there were eleven Albanians, six Greeks, one Circassian, an Armenian, a Georgian and an Italian, while ten of them were of unknown origins.’
After some quick addition it is clear that this is far less than the sum of forty-seven grand viziers. So where are the other eleven? What was their background if they were not among the Turks or any of the other ethnic groups cited, or even among those ‘ten of unknown origins’?
Reading on in the same passage, there’s another infuriating anomaly: ‘The grand vizier Mehmed-pasha Sokolović, the Sultan’s own kul,3 a Serb from Bosnia, proved to be loyal to his roots when he built religious endowments in his home country or when he made the renovation possible of the Serbian Patriarchate in Peć in 1557.’
Here we have one more grand vizier, non-existent in the previous calculations! Now we are only missing ten! But I would like to suggest that the authors of the study did know who those viziers were as well. We just do not know whether this one that we discovered belongs to the ‘ten of unknown origins’ or to the other ten that are missing from the total. Obviously, the authors know everything they need to about Sokolović, yet they first denied his existence as a grand vizier, and then already in the very next paragraph of the same book, wrote him in. This leads one to believe they also know about the others, and to question why they have also left them out.
I, for example, know about at least one more of those ‘non-existent’ viziers, because that vizier was also a Serb by background. His name was Rüstem-pasha Opuković. He was born in 1500 in Bosnia, not far from Sarajevo and held the position of grand vizier twice: from 1544 to 1553 and from 1555 to his death in 1561. Twice – unusual and rare, and especially easy to remember. He was invested as the grand vizier of the empire personally by Suleiman the Magnificent after a conflict between the Grand Vizier Hadim Suleiman-pasha (the namesake of the Sultan) and another vizier, Deli Husrev-pasha (who was, as we already know, also a Serb by origins). The Sultan punished both of them by divesting them and expelling them from the capital. Thus, the authors of the study pass right over one of the grand viziers from the time of the most powerful sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who was at the very height of his imperial strength from the very beginning. The man to whom as a wife the Sultan gave his own favourite daughter Mihrimah, born out of his happy and everlasting love with Hürrem (formerly a slave-girl named Roxelana, the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest!).
We could perhaps put these omissions down to forgetfulness, lack of knowledge, or coincidence, but if I were a believer in conspiracy theories, I would claim, or leave room for the possibility, that the remaining grand viziers erased in the anthology were Serbs – each and every one!
So, there is some homework for those with nothing better to do.
The missing viziers could also be of any one of the other ethnic backgrounds, as long as they exist!
And again it seems that mathematics in history can be almost as successful as it is in literature. Yet we remain with the question: what shall we do with sustainable lies?
In spite of the quite visible outward sameness in their studies and behaviour, Bajica could clearly see differences in the way the boys around him accepted the teachings of Islam. The first to stand out was a group who had arrived in Edirne a few years earlier. Among them was Mustafa, Deli Husrev-pasha’s brother. These boys were very careful that their revolt against Islam did not surface in front of their teachers and guardians, but they did not hide it whatsoever in front of the other students. They said that they could never reject the Christian faith, and they especially liked telling this to Bajica. They felt safe because he was the only one among them to have studied to be an Orthodox monk before being brought here, and indeed he had been brought to Edirne literally from the monastery.
Yet, they were surprised by his reserve, and by his counsel as well. They were probably expecting not only that he would openly and directly support them, but that he would indeed most likely decide to be their leader. To be honest, they were not sure their leader in what; although their inclinations were probably towards rebellion. Surely not in an open one, but rather in a conceptual, clandestine one. Bajica, for his part, confronted them with the fact that they had already changed their faith through their conversion in every possible way: in their pledge – in their words and body, their clothing, food, language and prayers. He supported them in their right to go on believing whatever they wanted, even in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but deep within themselves. That right and that secret, he kept telling them, could never be taken away from them by anyone. All other protest against faith in Allah, even if it were only slightly visible in public, would end in the violent loss of their life. Between the two extremes offered – life with Allah and death without him – there were no other possibilities. Only one of those two could be chosen. Of course, they could go on like this, half in secret and half publicly, rejecting faith in the Prophet Mohammed, but in doing so they were, he warned them, each day increasing the danger of betrayal that would come most likely from among their own ranks.
After several discussions, they settled down. They did not accept the foreign faith with their hearts and souls, but they understood that they had no other choice outside that intimate truth, unless they chose to go to their deaths, either by their own hand or someone else’s.
It was good that they did not take his words as a defeat, especially when he spoke to them about the feasible duality of belief. He told them that no one could erase his memories either. Even if he wished to erase them himself, how could that be possible? One cannot extinguish a part of one’s life by making a decision; only life up till now. Nor can life begin on a day of one’s choice. It could be seen that they were surprised by these words, but they realised that they were spoken by the wisest among them.
Only then did Bajica figure out that, of all those in this conservative group, Mustafa, Husrev-pasha’s younger brother, was set apart for higher education, and that he was the only one among them who was destined to service in the ruler’s proximity. Later, he even reminded Mustafa of this, telling him in confidence that they would soon all go their separate ways, and that he alone would remain without anyone else from the rebel group; while some of them might stay together, others might not. He counselled him to be patient and wait for the events that were certain to come and bring change.
He also reminded him that they were related.
When Lord Byron published The Corsair in 1814, in just one day of sales, the first day, it sold ten thousand copies. But, since he did not wish to capitalise on his writing, in accord with his aristocratic constancy, it was not he who sold the books but booksellers. He was of sustainable character and did not wish to sell himself.