Category: News

Which ottoman sultan has the most tragic story?

Murad V had a tragic, yet morbidly funny one.

It was the year of 1876, and displeasure with the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz was mounting. His vast expenditures upon the Ottoman Navy(which by then had become the third strongest navy in the world) combined with a drought three years ago had brought the Ottoman finances to a limit and led the Porte to declare a sovereign default on 1875. Tax increases to pay off debts had triggered the Great Eastern Crisis in the Balkans. A group of ministers, officers, and other accomplices finally planned to depose him in a coup, and crown in his stead his nephew, Murad, who was aligned with them politically, a liberal-minded Francophile interested in reforming the Empire along constitutional lines. The coup was planned and Murad was informed: Abdülaziz would be deposed on 31 May 1876.

In the preparation for the coup, however, a decision was made. It would be made one day earlier, on 30 May. However, they forgot to inform Murad.

Murad was awakened by a group of men on his door, sent there to take him to coronation. However, the date change was unbeknownst to him. For Murad, there could be only one explanation for why a group of men were at his door one day before the planned coup. The coup had been exposed. His uncle’s men were there to take him. The only likely outcome for him would be execution.

Never a man of stout mental fortitude, Murad had a panic attack. When the men sent to take him to his coronation entered, they found him severely unhinged.

Murad V did not recover. Sitting atop the throne of his uncle, he lived in a state of ever-declining mental health, oftentimes in panic. The mad sultan was finally dethroned on grounds of his inability to rule after a 93 day reign, to be replaced by his half-brother, Abdülhamid II.

All because of one day.

Cem Arslan
Amateur military historian and fiction writer

June 2, 2023
Did Mehmet II purchase the Hagia Sophia

Did Mehmet II purchase the Hagia Sophia from the Orthodox leadership after the conquest of Byzantine?

No.
Over the last days, I’ve seen this question so many times it’s tiring. Obviously, it has to do with the recent decision of the Turkish government to reconvert Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Either the OP(s) or their source(s) probably think the decision would be more justified, if Sultan Mehmed II had bought the church rather than simply capturing it. I disagree with the premise anyway, but it doesn’t matter, because the question is both factually and fundamentally wrong.

This is how Eleftherios Tserkezis an MA, Byzantine Historian answers this question.

According to the medieval Islamic tradition, when a Christian city was conquered by Muslims, its churches had one of two fates: if it had surrendered, their status would generally be respected; if it had been taken by force, they would all be looted and converted to mosques. Brutal as it may seem, this rule offered the besieged another motive to reconsider opposing the besiegers. It’s for the same reason that, say, the Mongols were so cruel when they sacked cities.

This means that for Mehmed and his people it would be nothing short of sheer folly and insolence to suggest they had to buy Hagia Sophia in order to gain ownership of it. By rejecting the Ottoman ultimatums and fighting against the Ottoman army, the Byzantines had automatically forfeited all their churches. From the moment Constantinople was in Ottoman hands, no further action was necessary, and both the victors and the defeated knew that pretty well.

As a matter of fact, if there’s something curious in the entire affair, it’s that a considerable number of churches remained in Christian hands after the fall. Hagia Sophia was out of the question, of course; it was the most prestigious one, so it was looted and immediately dedicated to the glory of Islam. But the second biggest church, the Holy Apostles, was given by Mehmed to the Orthodox patriarch he appointed, Gennadius II. That was the case with other important churches as well.

Now, it’s clear that Mehmed had many reasons to do that. He was a complex and interesting individual, with broad interests and erudition. Even more importantly, he didn’t want to alienate his numerous Christian subjects, but sought to promote some kind of “tolerance,” which he was certain would guarantee the stability and order of his empire. It is for this reason that he appointed Gennadius patriarch and bestowed privileges on him and the Church in general.

Naturally, this rare behavior needed some kind of ad hoc reason — or excuse. That was offered by the topography of Constantinople. In 1453, the City was a shadow of its former self; entire districts were uninhabited and used as fields. That made it look like it wasn’t one city, but several, separate from each other. Some of the inhabited districts (e.g. Phanar / Fener) surrendered after the Theodosian walls were breached, and that submission was their protection.

In the centuries that followed, a lot of churches were confiscated by the state. An interesting, perhaps apocryphal story has it that Selim I decided to convert every church into a mosque — the original plan was to have all Christians convert to Islam, but it was deemed impractical. Patriarch Theoleptus I found three old Janissaries who testified under oath that they had seen with their own eyes Mehmed II receive the surrender of some districts and guarantee the status of their churches. Selim backed down.

June 1, 2023
Why do Turkish pour water when someone leaves?

Tengri sits on the sky , mighty and powerful . His creations yer-sub earth — water is sacred for Turks in very early times.

Pouring water after the back of the outgoing guest can also be illustrated as an example of the “water cult” in Tengrism.

Idea is simple. Water is holy and most important thing for life. Throwing water behind traveling guests means.

Oh ” yer – earth“ let my people travel safe and fast. I offer you your most valuable thing Water.

Earth most valuable thing is water.

It travel’s and feeds underground spirits that could give them safe passage. It brings them luck. Also “su gibi git, su gibi gel “ go as water , come back as water. Fast as possible.

Mongols throwing milk or Siberian spilling milk is similar means…

Altay Dag on Quora

May 30, 2023
Am I speaking Turkish here?

Did you understand what your Italian friend meant when he/she told you: “Am I speaking Turkish here?”

When in Italy during a conversation a person can’t get their point across they attribute ironically the resistance of the interlocutor to lack of understading of what has been said, and Turkish here stands for an incomprehensible language. The origin of the idiom is clearly due to the contacts among people around the Mediterranean and the difficulties often arising in the practices of trade (particularly in the Levant). This clearly shows when the sentence is heard in the same context but Turkish is replaced by Greek and Arabic (other languages commonly spoken in the Levant).

Notable exception is the phrase “Do I speak Ostrogoth?”, which means the same but is clearly suggestive of the disconcert and confusion of the Italians after the fall of the Roman Empire, when Germanic populations began to spread uninvited in the country.

Source: Giorgio Bellini from Italy

May 25, 2023
Famous Turkish people of Armenian origin

Meet Alex Tataryan. He is the singer of this beautiful Turkish song!

Hayko Cepkin-Turkish rocker of Armenian descent!

Rober Hatemo-singer

His legendary Turkish songs

Onno Tunç-Turkish musician and composer of Armenian origin. The musician behind the Turkish pop music of the 90s. All the hits!

Arto Dalga – Armenian–Turkish singer known for his spiky speeches and scandals. He is currently in a tabloid program that is a troublemaker of Turkish celebrities, Soylemezsem Olmaz.

Garo Mafyan-Another musician behind the Turkish pop music of the 90s.

Dikran Masis, Turkish-Armenian businessman.

May 25, 2023
Did Ottomans relate themselves to Byzantines or Romans?

The answer to this question comes from Dimitris Almyrantis on Quora:

Yes; but forget the Romans you know. The Ottomans didn’t have the option of seeing Rome through a squeaky clean, faux Latinate veneer, pedantically accurate academic writing, or ripped centurions with a British accent. For the Ottomans, Rome was all they had to compare themselves with; the land they were treading was Roman soil, the peoples they alternately fought and married were Roman peoples, and their ceremonial was in the Rumi style. Their own empire was geographically made up of the ‘Roman and Persian and Arab lands’, and on a personal level all their lives were spent within the first third.

In the most practical sense, for the Ottomans Rome wasn’t part of history but of modernity, a viscerally tribal as well as a cultural reality. The only proper translation in our speech would be to speak of the West, not just Rome, encompassing the associations and content of both. The German Kaiser in Vienna, the Greek peasant on his field, and the Pontic country on the easternmost frontier of his empire were all Rum to the Ottoman.

So of course the relation was underway on all levels. The routine of the divan, the sacred privacy of the imperial person and the rhythm of government’s operation – whom the sovereign would speak with, how he would comport himself at court and on the streets – were all consciously adopted from the Roman ceremonial, and fixed as the centerpiece of the Ottoman conceptual space, for all the empire to arrange itself around. On the popular level, the Crescent and the Cross were juxtaposed against each other on every level of society, and the identities built around them were both opposed and codependent. New Rome had been a point of literary and popular fascination for the Islamic world since the latter’s inception; now that the center of one civilization was identified with the other, the combined mythos of both was the spirit of the age.

Miniature ‘Astanbolu’ by Bülent Özgen

May 23, 2023