Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [98]
Except for the Sultan and his children, every soul in the Grand Seraglio—even the Grand Vizier, the General of the Armies, and the Queen Mother—was a slave, and not one of them was a Turk by birth. They were brought to the palace as children, between the ages of ten and fourteen. The girls were obtained through slave dealers and the boys, under a law of the land, were kidnapped from subject Christian states in lots of two to three thousand every three or four years. The most intelligent, most prepossessing boys were taken, and their kidnapping was by no means always opposed by their parents, for a place at the Sultan’s court was the one available route to wealth and power.
The brightest of these bright children were enrolled in the Palace School inside the Grand Seraglio. Here they underwent a twelve-year brainwashing from which, if they survived, they emerged oblivious of their earlier life, devoted to the sultanate, and fanatical followers of Islam. A seventeenth-century Venetian, Ottaviano Bon, reported of this school that “There is great severity used in all the orders of discipline, the government of them being in the hands of the masters, who are all white eunuchs for the most part, and very rough and cruel in all their actions; insomuch that when one cometh out of that Seraglio, and hath run through all the orders of it, he is, without all question, the most mortified and patient man in the world; for the blows which they suffer, and the fastings which are commanded them for every small fault, are to be admired: nay, some of them are so cruelly handled, that although their time of being in the Seraglio be almost expired, and that they should in a few years come forth to be made great men, yet not being able to endure such cruelty any longer, they procure to be turned out, contenting themselves with the title, and small pay of a Spahee or a Mutaferraka [common soldier] rather than be so often punished and made weary of their lives.”
The first thing the new students learned was to keep quiet, for in the inner palace, where the school was, only the Sultan might speak above a whisper. From the Sultan’s mutes the boys learned sign languages. “Both the Grand Signor, and divers that are about him,” said Bon, “can reason and discourse with the Mutes of any thing as well and as distinctly alla Mutescha, by nods and signs, as they can with words; a thing well befitting … the gravity of the better sort of Turks, who cannot endure much babbling.”
The academic system was excellent, but for the ultimate welfare of the Turkish Empire it had one fatal flaw: it ignored the West. The boys learned Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Tartar; athletics, riding, and warfare: and a special occupation or skill such as hawk-keeping or turban-folding. According to the Koran, “He who learns is the dearly beloved friend of Allah,” and a state law required that every Turk, including the Sultan, should learn how to do something. Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was an accredited gardener, and Abdül Hamid II did cabinetwork.
During their training the boys acted as pages. After graduation they became eligible for positions of trust: Private Secretary, Chief Huntsman, Chief Barber, Chief Accountant, Chief Bath Attendant, and so on. If they were gay and amusing fellows, they might become Boon Companions, who hunted with the Grand Seigneur, read to him, and tried to keep him amused. Eventually they might hope to receive the title of pasha and be sent out to govern a province or to spy on some other provincial governor, for the government was a network of spies and counterspies, with the chief officials in a constant welter of plotting against one another and obtaining one another’s downfall. “He that is even greatest in office is but a statue of glass,” says a Turkish proverb. A popular Turkish curse still is “Mayst thou be vizier to Sultan Selim,” for during the eight-year reign of Selim the Grim seven Grand Viziers (prime ministers) lost their heads.
When Sultans decided that this or that vizier must go,