Beyond These Palace Walls

Suleyman: On a good day? Neither of us.

UNDERRATED RELATIONSHIP/PARTNERSHIP/FRIENDSHIP MEME 4/?: @mihrunnisasultans​‘ pick: Süleyman the Magnificent & İbrahim Pasha

Among all the colorful public personalities gracing the Süleymanic era (1520–1566), Ibrahim Pasha, known as “∞makbul [favorite] and maktul [executed],∞” stands out as a particularly intriguing figure. In 1523 this childhood friend, favorite, and slave of Sultan Süleyman was most irregularly promoted to the highest office in the empire, the grand vizierate, directly from the sultan’s personal service, without having had any experience in government. For the following thirteen years, with the enormous power and authority that he assumed, Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha ruled the empire like a second sultan. As the sultan’s chief advisor and commander, Ibrahim Pasha not only was single-handedly in charge of the political and military administration of the empire but also acted as the sultan’s alter ego and absolute representative in public. In this way Ibrahim Pasha played a pivotal role in the promotion of the Ottoman sultan’s image as the world ruler and in the consolidation of Ottoman claims to universal sovereignty both within and beyond the empire’s borders — two crucial developments that defined the Ottoman Empire for centuries to come. Ibrahim Pasha’s career abruptly ended one night in March 1536, when he was mysteriously executed in the imperial palace on the orders of his beloved sultan.

- Ebru Turan, The Marriage of İbrahim Pasha

İbrahim Pasha had been born a Venetian subject at Parga, on the Ionian coast opposite Corfu, and after his capture by the Ottomans had served in Süleyman’s household in Manisa when he was prince-governor of Saruhan. Almost as soon as he became sultan, Süleyman publicly demonstrated the favour in which he held İbrahim by building him a magnificent palace on the Hippodrome in Istanbul. Having inherited his first grand vezir, Piri Mehmed Pasha, from his father, Süleyman appointed İbrahim to succeed him. Such promotion, of someone who was not a vezir but a senior officer of the Sultan’s household, was extraordinary.

- Caroline Finkiel, Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire

The Sultan and Grand Vezir, well-informed about matters in the West, quickly received details of Charles V’s splendid coronation as Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII in 1530, and as quickly interpreted it as tending to reinforce the claim that the Holy Roman Emperor saw himself as the recreated caesar of the Roman Empire. Sultan Mehmed II had aspired to be a universal sovereign and had been seen as a rival by Matthias Corvinus, in his day the most powerful figure in central Europe, who fancied himself the new Hercules or (like Mehmed himself and, according to the Venetian ambassadors of the sixteenth century, both Selim I and Süleyman) Alexander the Great. Süleyman could not leave this perceived challenge unanswered. From Venice İbrahim Pasha commissioned a gold helmet of four superimposed crowns surmounted with a plumed aigrette. It reached Edirne in May 1532, by way of the Ottoman tributary port-city of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic, as the Sultan was leading his army towards Hungary. The helmet-crown was prominently displayed at the audiences Süleyman gave and played its part in the carefullychoreographed triumphal parades that took place along the route to war, for the benefit of the foreign ambassadors and other observers the Sultan wanted to impress with his power. The Habsburg envoys Süleyman received at Niš seemed unaware that the turban was the headgear of sultans, and thought this gaudy regalia was the Ottoman imperial crown. Neither the timing of İbrahim Pasha’s commission nor its form was accidental. The helmet-crown bore stylistic similarities to the Emperor’s and also to the papal tiara – but with more tiers it symbolized a challenge to their power. İbrahim was like a brother to the Sultan, his intimate adviser and highest officer of state, and this very closeness made him enemies. In 1525 his palace on the Hippodrome was sacked in a janissary uprising in Istanbul that may have been incited by his rivals.

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In ‘The Story of Suleyman’s attachment to his Vezir Ibrahim’, Stanley Lane-Poole wrote: ‘Suleyman, great as he was, shared his greatness with a second mind, to which his reign owed much of its brilliance. The Grand Vezir Ibrahim was the counterpart of the Grand Monarch Suleyman. He was the son of a sailor at Parga, and had been captured by corsairs, by whom he was sold to be the slave of a widow at Magnesia. Here he passed into the hands of the young prince Suleyman, then Governor of Magnesia, and soon his extraordinary talents and address brought him promotion… From being Grand Falconer on the accession of Suleyman, he rose to be first minister and almost co-Sultan in 1523. He was the object of the Sultan’s tender regard: an emperor knows better than most men how solitary is life without friendship and love, and Suleyman loved this man more than a brother. Ibrahim was not only a friend, he was an entertaining and instructive companion. He read Persian, Greek and Italian; he knew how to open unknown worlds to the Sultan’s mind, and Sulevman drank in his Vezir’s wisdom with assiduity. They lived together: their meals were shared in common; even their beds were in the same room. The Sultan gave his sister in marriage to the sailor’s son, and Ibrahim was at the summit of power.’