Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (30 page)

Turning to the relations of Suleiman with more distant Asiatic peoples, we note an interchange of embassies and suggestions of alliance with the successive rulers of the Usbegs of Khorasan. Their Turkish blood, their orthodox Sunnite faith, and their inveterate hostility to the Persians marked them out as the natural friends of the Ottomans. It was the same old story; the Sultan wanted the help of the power to the east of the Persians, just as Charles V wanted the friendship of the Persians against him. The practical nature of his policy is demonstrated by the fact that the ambassador he sent to their Khan took with him three hundred Janissaries and cannon to show the Usbegs, whose armies consisted solely of cavalry, the new military methods of the West. The rising power of the Mogul emperors in Northern India, on the other hand, was too distant to be of the same interest to the Turks that it was to the Persians. Thus, whereas Tahmasp not only cordially received the fugitive Mogul sovereign Humayun (1543), but also aided him to recover his throne, Suleiman merely granted a trifling pension to the son of a claimant to the throne of Delhi, one Burhan Beg, whom Humayun had driven from his dominions.

The Moslem princes of the Malabar coast were another matter; and the story of Suleiman's relations with them is an interesting evidence of the way in which the horizons of the sixteenth century expanded. In the waters of the Indian Ocean the Turks once more came into contact with the forces of Europe, and the struggle there was regarded by both sides as a part of the great contest between the Mohammedan and the Christian worlds. From Suleiman's point of view it was not primarily a war of aggression. The Sultan felt himself in honor bound to listen to the prayers

of his coreligionists, asking aid against the rapacity of an oppressor who had suddenly appeared from beyond the seas.

Scarcely had the Portuguese made their way around the Cape of Good Hope (1486) before they conceived the grandiose idea of diverting the trade of the East from its old channels through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the new route which now was in their hands. Lisbon was to be the eastern mart for all Europe. Competition from those who would suif er by the change was to be put down with ruthless severity. The petty princes of the Malabar coast were able to offer little resistance. The heavily armed Portuguese galleons could easily defeat the immensely superior numbers of their lighter vessels. Two greater powers—Persia and Egypt—were also directly affected. The Persians were not a maritime nation, and made little trouble. Their hold on the regions near the Gulf was but recent. The Portuguese exerted themselves to keep on good terms with them. A clash was averted, and the two parties even talked of an alliance. The Egypt of the Mamelukes, however, was much more seriously threatened by the Portuguese attempts to block the Red Sea; the Venetians, also, were deeply concerned, and kept pointing out to the Soldan the necessity for vigorous action. The latter finally bestirred himself, and, after threatening the Portuguese with the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre and the slaughter of all the Christians in Palestine, he fitted out a considerable squadron, and sent it to the aid of the hard-pressed Malabar princes. This combined Egyptian and Indian fleet was, however, defeated in February, 1509, by Francisco de Almeida with fearful loss off the island of Diu in a battle which has been said to have "turned the Indian Ocean for the next century into a Portuguese sea." 22

22 Sir William Wilson Hunter, A History of British India (London, 1899), I, ii6~u8»

The next few years saw everything develop favorably for the Portuguese. Their most dangerous enemies, the Egyptians, were obliged to leave the Indian Ocean and devote all their energies to efforts, which proved vain, to repel the attacks of Sdim the Terrible; by the end of the year 1517, as we have already seen, their kingdom was in the hands of the Turks. Meantime Affonso de Albuquerque, the greatest of all the Portuguese viceroys in the Orient, had disposed of his rival Almeida, and had begun to carry into effect the magnificent program of imperial expansion which had been the dream of his youth. In 1507 he had seized the island of Socotra, off the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, and constructed a fort there. In the same year he took Ormuz; for the time being he was unable to hold it, but in 1515 he returned, and definitely established it in the control of the Portuguese, who remained for over a century the guardians of the entrance to the Persian Gulf. In the meantime he seized the island of Goa, and converted it into the chief centre of Portuguese power in the East; he also penetrated to the Strait of Malacca, where he installed a Portuguese government which dominated the Malay Peninsula and commanded the trade with China, Japan, and the Spice Islands—"the most lucrative source of Moslem commerce in the Far East." In only one place did he suffer defeat. He was full of great plans for striking at the vitals of Moslem power in the Red Sea, but to get into the Red Sea it was necessary to conquer Aden, and Aden defied him. An attack on it, which he delivered in 1513, was repulsed with heavy loss, and though the local ruler, in the course of the next two decades, agreed from time to time to pay tribute, the Portuguese never obtained effective possession of the place. 23

We may well believe that Suleiman was deeply disturbed by this meteoric rise of the Portuguese power in the Indian

^Hunter, I, 118-128, 131; K. G. Jayne, pp. 93-96.

Ocean. He had inherited Egypt from his father, and therewith the task of repelling the Christians which the Egyptians had so courageously begun, but he was so much occupied during the early years of his reign with his campaigns in the Mediterranean and on the Danube that he could not afford to divert his attention to other things. His first effort in behalf of his Indian coreligionists was apparently made in 1525, w r hen, according to the historian Hajji Halifa, "the Sultan Suleiman appointed the corsair Salman Reis a capudan and commander, and sent him with twenty galleys to that quarter. He proceeded along the coasts of Aden and Yemen, and plundered the habitations of the rebellious and such as were not well affected to the Porte; in consequence of which, the sheiks and Arabs of those districts came out to him with numerous presents, offered their services, and bound themselves to transmit their taxes." 24 This expedition, however, was no very serious affair. In fact, though it was ordered from Constantinople, it should properly be regarded as a part of the pacification and reorganization of Egypt, on which the Grand Vizir was at that time engaged. The submission of the Arab chieftains was only nominal, and very temporary. Seven years later the Sultan sent orders to the pasha of Egypt to construct a fleet of eighty ships of different sizes at Suez. Obviously it was intended to operate in the Indian Ocean, but Suleiman the Eunuch, who was to command it, was called off to serve in the Persian campaigns before the work could be completed, and the project ended in nothing. 25 In 1536, however, Suleiman's interest in the affairs of the Malabar coast was once again aroused in such fashion as to lead to more definite results. In that year, an ambassador from Bahadur Shah, the ruler of Gujarat, arrived in Constantinople to beg for his aid. It would appear

24 Hajji Halifa, Maritime Wars of the Turks, pp. 26-27.

25 Hammer, V, 299-300.

that under pressure of an invasion of his dominions by the Mogul Emperor Humayun, Bahadur had permitted the Portuguese to establish themselves on the island of Diu, where they had built a fortress and made themselves intolerable. There was every reason why Suleiman should listen sympathetically to Bahadur's appeal. Over and above his desire as "Commander of the Faithful" to help his coreligionists against the enemy who had so suddenly descended on them out of the West, he had his own private grudges against the Portuguese. Their recent conquests had struck a heavy blow against the commerce of the Ottoman Empire. Their tenure of Ormuz prevented him from reaping due advantage from the footing that he had recently won on the Persian Gulf. They had sent a powerful contingent to aid Charles V to capture Tunis. Obviously, despite all his manifold activities and responsibilities in other quarters, Suleiman was in honor bound to take vigorous action in the Indian Ocean. On June 13, 1538, a fleet of seventy ships, commanded by Suleiman the Eunuch, and carrying 1500 Janissaries and 5000 other soldiers, set sail from Suez to seek revenge. 26 Among the men at the oar were a large number of Venetians, who had been seized in Egypt when the republic declared war on the Porte. Heavy cannon, some of which threw projectiles of ninety pounds, and other supplies had been sent on from Constantinople, and were dragged across the isthmus of Suez by hand. 27

Sailing down the Red Sea, Suleiman Pasha reached Aden on August 3. There he enticed the sheik to come aboard his flag-ship and promptly hanged him from the yardarm. 28 The town was then sacked and a Turkish governor installed; the rest of the expedition crossed the Indian Ocean

26 R. S. Whiteway, The Rise of Portuguese Power in India, (Westminster, 1899), p. 256.

27 Hammer, V, 300-303.

28 Hunter, I, 147.

with favorable winds, and on September 4 arrived off Din. The Sultan's orders had been to seek out the Portuguese fleet and destroy it, which the Turks, with their formidable artillery, could probably have done. Nevertheless Suleiman the Eunuch elected instead to land his troops, capture two fortresses which guarded the approach to Diu, and finally, in early October, to lay siege to Diu itself. But the small Portuguese garrison defended the place with the utmost heroism, and in November the Turks withdrew. The memory of the great Moslem disaster there in 1509 was still fresh in their minds; provisions were running ominously short; worst of all there was no effective cooperation between them and their Indian allies. Shah Bahadur, at whose invitation they had come, was now dead; and matters were probably not helped by the fact that the Turkish leader gave orders that Bahadur's treasures, which he had sent on to Mecca for safekeeping, should be despatched to Constantinople as a present to the Sultan. Bahadur's successor began to wonder if, after all, the Portuguese were not less to be feared than the Turks. He failed to deliver the supplies that had been promised, and, mindful of the fate of the sheik of Aden, took care to keep himself out of his ally's way. Rumors also reached the Turks that the Portuguese were gathering together a great fleet at Goa to be despatched to the rescue of Diu. Under all the circumstances it is no wonder that they elected to retire. 29 On their return they avenged themselves for their failure before Diu by various deeds of violence on the coasts of Yemen, where they slew the local ruler, and set up a Turkish governor in his place. At Jiddah Suleiman the Eunuch left the fleet in order to make his pilgrimage to Mecca; evidently he wanted to convince both his master and his followers that the expedition he had commanded had gone forth on a Holy War. The Sultan was properly impressed, and when

29 Whiteway, pp. 256-265.

the Turkish leader returned overland to Constantinople, he was given a seat in the Divan, and two years later was made Grand Vizir. 30

The Turks did not venture to penetrate to the Malabar coast again. Diu sustained another and even more terrible siege in 1546, but the assailants on this occasion were Indian Moslems; the Ottomans took no part in it save in so far as stray renegades were enrolled in the forces of the new prince of Gujarat. 31 The Sultan's efforts to extend his authority over the West Coast of India had failed. But in the Persian Gulf he continued for many years more to struggle against the Portuguese. Their hold on Ormuz blocked his access by that route to the Indian Ocean; it rendered nugatory, from the point of view of maritime expansion, his conquest of Baghdad and of Basra, farther down the river, where he had established an arsenal and base of operations. In 1551 he commanded Piri Reis, the capudan of Egypt, and the author of a work on the geography and navigation of the Mediterranean which has been highly esteemed by the Moslems, to sail down the Red Sea with a fleet of thirty ships, and oust the Portuguese from Orrnuz. Piri Reis began well by capturing Muscat, some three hundred miles to the southeast, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Oman. 32 Thence he proceeded to the neighborhood of Ormuz, and laid waste the country round about, but failed to take the fortress; thereafter he went on up the gulf and the river to Basra. On his arrival there he learned that "the fleet of the vile infidels was advancing towards him," so as to prevent the possibility of his escaping; he therefore hurried away with three galleys which were his private property and were laden with his own treasures, and got out of the Strait of Ormuz before the

^Hammer, V, 202-203.

31 This despite Hunter, I, 131, to the contrary. See Whiteway, pp. 305 if.

32 Hajji Halifa, pp. 71-72.

Portuguese could prevent him. The mass of his fleet, which he had left at Basra, was abandoned and ultimately destroyed. One of the three ships with which Piri had escaped was lost on the way home. With the other two he got safely back to Egypt, only to be seized and imprisoned by the Turkish authorities on the spot. Information of his disgraceful conduct was forthwith despatched to the Porte, whence orders were at once received to put him to death, and he "was beheaded accordingly in the Divan of Cairo." 33 Suleiman had no use for behavior such as his.

His successor, one Alurad Bey, who had had much experience in the waters of the Indian Ocean, was no more fortunate than Piri Pasha. Defeated by the Portuguese near Ormuz while attempting to escape, he succeeded in fleeing into Basra with the remnant of his fleet, but the question still remained, how could it be got out again? The task was intrusted to Sidi All Reis, better known by his nom-de-plume of Katibi Rumi, and distinguished as a writer on theology, mathematics, navigation, and astronomy, both in prose and in verse. He was the son and grandson of governors of the imperial naval arsenal at Constantinople, and an experienced sailor who had seen service under many commanders. 34 Crossing by land from Aleppo, he finally reached Basra, and after taking several months to refit his ships, sallied boldly forth, in July, 1554, to meet the foe. Outside of Ormuz he encountered a larger Portuguese fleet, with which he had two fierce encounters; of the second he tells us that "even in the war between Khaireddin Pasha and Andrea Doria no such naval action as this has ever taken place." 35 After losing six of his ships,