A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [179]
The novelist Elif Shafak gives a Turkish perspective:
Suleiman was an unforgettable sultan for many people, for the Turks definitely – he reigned for forty-six years. In the West he was known as Suleiman the Magnificent, but we know him as Suleiman Kanuni – Suleiman ‘the law maker’ – because he changed the legal system. When I look at this signature, it speaks of power, glory, great magnificence. Suleiman was very interested in conquering East and West, and that’s why many historians think he was inspired by Alexander the Great. I see that statement, that world power, in this calligraphy as well.
How do you govern an empire of the size of Suleiman’s and ensure that power in the centre is properly deployed at the periphery? You need a bureaucracy. Administrators all over the empire need to demonstrate that they have the authority of the ruler, which is done by issuing a visible emblem that can be carried and shown to everyone. That emblem is the tughra. It acted like a royal warrant, or a sheriff’s star, giving officers of the empire a badge of power. The tughra would be at the top of all important official documents, and Suleiman issued about 150,000 in his reign. He was industrious in establishing diplomatic ties, creating a formidable civil service and promulgating new laws. All of this required letters of state, instructions to ambassadors and legal documents, all of which would begin with his tughra.
The tughra itself names the sultan, while the line below reads, ‘This is the noble and exalted sign of the Sultan’s name, the revered monogram that gives light to the world. May this instruction, with the help of the Lord and the protection of the Eternal, be given force and effect. The Sultan orders that …’ At this point our paper has been cut, but the document below would have continued with a particular instruction, law or command. Interestingly, there are two languages here: the tughra names the sultan in Arabic, reminding us that Suleiman is protector of the faithful with a duty to the whole Islamic world; the words below it are in Turkish, and proclaim his role as sultan, ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Arabic for the spiritual world, Turkish for the temporal.
Turkish would certainly have been the language of the official to whom this document was addressed. Given the opulent artistry of this tughra, the recipient had to be very grand, so it might be a governor, a general, a diplomat, or perhaps a member of the ruling house; and it could have been sent to any part of Suleiman fast-growing empire, as the historian Caroline Finkel explains:
He overthrew the Mamluk Empire, so Egypt and Syria with all their Arab population, the Hejaz [in south-west Saudi Arabia] as well, with the Holy Places which were extremely important, all these people were now Ottoman subjects, for better or worse. Suleiman’s tughra could be seen as far as the Persian border, where their great rival in the East, the Shi’a Safavid Empire, was always trying to challenge the Ottomans; in North Africa, where Ottoman naval expeditions were having great success against the Spanish Habsburgs in the western Mediterranean; and up into the lower reaches of what we now call Russia.
Suleiman’s Ottoman Empire controlled the whole coastline of the eastern Mediterranean, from Tunis all the way round almost to Trieste. After 800 years the Eastern Roman Empire had been re-established, but now as a Muslim imperium. It was this huge new state that compelled the western Europeans to look for other ways of travelling to and trading with the East, forcing them from the Mediterranean out into the Atlantic. But that is for a later chapter.
Most official documents get lost, destroyed or thrown away. Our driving licences, our tax bills, don’t usually survive death. Similarly, the huge bulk of the official paper of the Ottoman Empire is lost to us. The most common reason for keeping any official document is that it has to do with land, because subsequent generations need to know