God's Shadow

by Alan Mikhail

  310 Piri Reis: Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Pīrī Re’īs” (Soucek).

  310 unfurled the drab gazelle-skin parchment: Abbas Hamdani, “Ottoman Response to the Discovery of America and the New Route to India,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1981): 327. For a detailed description of the map, see Gregory C. McIntosh, The Piri Reis Map of 1513 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000).

  310 dozens of maps: McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 141–53.

  311 a raid off the coast of Valencia in 1501: McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 70, 72–73.

  311 several maps from those voyages: Michel M. Mazzaoui, “Global Policies of Sultan Selim, 1512–1520,” in Essays on Islamic Civilization: Presented to Niyazi Berkes, ed. Donald P. Little (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 240; McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 72–73.

  311 feather headdress and an odd black stone: McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 72–73, 114.

  311 the first Ottoman vessel to enter the Atlantic: Wikipedia, s.v. “Kemal Reis,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemal_Reis (accessed February 15, 2019); Julia McClure, The Franciscan Invention of the New World (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 90.

  311 he may have even interviewed his uncle’s Spanish captive: Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 25.

  311 Piri combined elements from more than a hundred maps: A. Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis: The Oldest Map of America, trans. Leman Yolaç and Engin Uzmen (Ankara: Turkish Historical Association, 1975), 27, 30; Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 328. For a list of all the maps Piri used, see McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 141–53.

  311 “I have made maps”: Quoted in Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 25.

  311 speaks of the Americas and their peoples: For Piri’s descriptions of the New World, see McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 35–121; Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis, 26–42.

  311 “four kinds of parrots”: Quoted in Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis, 29.

  311 gold in the New World: Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis, 31; McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 70–71.

  311 Columbus’s efforts to secure a patron: Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis, 30.

  311–312 “the Portuguese infidels . . . one horn”: Quoted in Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis, 32, 34.

  312 Piri remained true to: Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 328.

  312 firsthand account of an Ottoman merchant: Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 22; Pınar Emiralioğlu, “Relocating the Center of the Universe: China and the Ottoman Imperial Project in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Ottoman Studies 39 (2012): 161–87.

  312 Vilayet Antilia: Afetinan, Life and Works of Pirî Reis, 29; Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 329. For references to Piri’s labelling of the American mainland, see McIntosh, Piri Reis Map, 116. For a general discussion of the varied meanings of Antilia, see G. R. Crone, “The Origin of the Name Antillia,” Geographical Journal 91 (1938): 260–62.

  312 ripped the map in half: See the discussion in Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 23–25; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Pīrī Re’īs” (Soucek).

  313 Vasco da Gama: On Vasco da Gama and the Order of Santiago, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 60–61. Generally on Ottoman, Portuguese, and Mamluk rivalry in the Red Sea, see Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont and Anne Kroell, Mamlouks, ottomans et portugais en Mer Rouge: l’affaire de Djedda en 1517 (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1988).

  314 the Portuguese burned ten Mamluk ships: Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 326.

  314 the Portuguese blockaded the mouth of the Red Sea: Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 326.

  315 nineteen Portuguese ships from India: Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, “Conquistadores, Mercenaries, and Missionaries: The Failed Portuguese Dominion of the Red Sea,” Northeast African Studies 12 (2012): 8.

  315 Socotra: Wikipedia, s.v. “Socotra,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socotra (accessed February 16, 2019).

  315 an even more threatening Portuguese naval battalion: Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, “Conquistadores,” 4–5, 8.

  315 Afonso de Albuquerque: Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Afonso de Albuquerque, Portuguese Conqueror” (Harold V. Livermore), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Afonso-de-Albuquerque (accessed February 24, 2019).

  316 In 1515, he sent one of his most experienced admirals: Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 39; Halil İnalcık, “The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Halil İnalcık with Donald Quataert, 2 vols. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1:321–25.

  317 “The Portuguese have not yet entered”: Quoted in Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 42–43.

  317 “perfidious troublemakers”: Quoted in Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 28.

  317 “in a state of incessant anarchy”: Quoted in Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 43.

  318 Kamaran Island: Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 44.

  318 the first coffee drunk beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire: Elizabeth Horodowich, A Brief History of Venice: A New History of the City and Its People (London: Robinson, 2009), 164.

  318 the café: The world’s first coffeehouses opened in Syria in the 1530s and in Istanbul in the 1540s. Alan Mikhail, “The Heart’s Desire: Gender, Urban Space and the Ottoman Coffee House,” in Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Dana Sajdi (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 137–38. A Lebanese Jew opened Europe’s first café in Oxford in 1650. Coffee arrived in Paris with the Ottoman ambassador in 1669. In 1700, two thousand cafés were thriving in London. In 1683, the same year the Ottoman army brought coffee to the gates of Vienna, Venice opened its first coffeehouse. And the first café in the Americas opened a few years later, in Boston in 1689. Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 8–14.

  319 coffee formed a common market from the Americas to the Malaccas: For instructive ways of thinking about the early modern coffee market, see Steven Topik, “The Integration of the World Coffee Market,” in The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989, ed. William Gervase Clarence-Smith and Steven Topik (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 21–49.

  320 twelve to fifteen thousand tons of coffee beans: Michel Tuchscherer, “Coffee in the Red Sea Area from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in The Global Coffee Economy, 55.

  320 coffee from Mocha represented about 90 percent: Topik, “Integration of the World Coffee Market,” 28.

  320 Java had replaced Yemen: Topik, “Integration of the World Coffee Market,” 28.

  320 2 or 3 percent of the world’s production: Topik, “Integration of the World Coffee Market,” 29; Tuchscherer, “Coffee in the Red Sea Area,” 55.

  320 cheaper to import coffee from Hispaniola to Cairo: Topik, “Integration of the World Coffee Market,” 29.

  320 “one of the most valuable”: Steven Topik and William Gervase Clarence-Smith, “Coffee and Global Development,” in The Global Coffee Economy, 2.

  CHAPTER 21: EMPIRE EVERYWHERE

  324 Selim’s prized naval fleet finally arrived: Stanford J. Shaw, Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808, vol. 1 of History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 84–85.

  324 beginning that march on September 13, 1517: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Selīm I” (Halil İnalcık).

  324 the fleet set sail on its return trip: Michael Winter, “The Ottoman Occupation,” in Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. Carl F. Petry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 504.

  324 a veritable intellectual army: Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık); Shaw, Empire of the Gazis, 85.

  324 lived out the re
st of his days under house arrest in Istanbul: William Muir, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1260–1517 A. D. (London: Smith, Elder, 1896), 212; Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 111.

  324 new center of the Muslim world and the seat of the global caliphate: Fatih Akçe, Sultan Selim I: The Conqueror of the East (Clifton, NJ: Blue Dome Press, 2016), 225.

  325 On his way back to the capital: Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık).

  325 visited the recently completed shrine of Ibn ‘Arabi: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 229.

  325 Selim and his retinue fled plague-stricken Istanbul: Marino Sanudo, I Diarii di Marino Sanuto (MCCCCXCVI-MDXXXIII) Dall’autografo Marciano Ital. Cl. VII Codd. CDXIX-CDLXXVII, ed. Rinaldo Fulin, Federico Stefani, Nicolò Barozzi, Guglielmo Berchet, Marco Allegri, and la R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, 59 vols. (Venice: F.Visentini, 1879–1903), 26:134.

  326 Selim’s primary delight in Edirne was hunting: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:280, 305. On Ottoman hunting, see Alan Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 130–36.

  326 might have to wait in Edirne for days: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:280.

  326 complained that he ignored important affairs of state and army: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:305.

  326 two Italian hunting greyhounds: Sanudo, Diarii, 28:232.

  326 prices of oats and vegetables skyrocketed in Syria: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:188.

  326 the Janissaries . . . came to collect on their investment: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:40, 79.

  327 Officials from as far afield as India and Hungary: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:238, 247.

  327 He maintained the overland embargo: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 111.

  327 “[The harbor of] Diu is waiting”: Quoted in Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 28.

  328 “With the news of the Ottomans”: Quoted in Casale, Ottoman Age of Exploration, 28.

  328 received an ambassador from the ruler of Calicut: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:163.

  328 Selim enthusiastically entered into this alliance: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:141.

  328 instituted high tariffs on Portuguese merchants: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:163; 27:513.

  328 They continued to complain about the Iranian silk embargo: Sanudo, Diarii, 28:151.

  328 Venetian trade in Egyptian ports: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:513.

  328 Venice and Hungary remained the strongest entities: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 113.

  328 In 1517, he renewed the treaty: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 113.

  329 Selim and King Vladislaus II of Hungary: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 113.

  329 two sides frequently had to pump new life into their peace treaty: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:238; 27:79, 305, 357, 474.

  329 renewed the empire’s peace treaty with Poland: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 113.

  329 Selim laughed when he heard this: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:95.

  330 guarded their forests as a precious asset: On Venetian forest management, see Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

  330 planning an invasion of Rhodes: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:22, 95.

  330 diplomats in Edirne attempted to insert into the document: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:357.

  330 Selim grudgingly signed the treaty: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:474.

  331 preparing for a war against the Safavid scourge: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:15; 27:79, 141.

  331 deport several rich Shiite families: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:344.

  331 Also worrisome was the sizable Shiite population of Tripoli: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:344.

  331 Selim sent two hundred troops with sixteen cannons: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:344.

  331 purged two hundred families suspected of Shiite sympathies: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:188.

  332 Shah Ismail moved a rebuilt force: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:344.

  332 bitter cold and heavy snowfall: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:33.

  332 Ismail had been able to capture several abandoned hilltop castles: Sanudo, Diarii, 26:359, 371.

  332 Ottomans attempted to retake one of the captured castles: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:305.

  332 Ottoman soldiers defecting to the Safavids: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:151.

  332 steadily drew in European powers: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:379.

  332 Selim’s plan to travel to the front: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:601.

  332 dispatched a thousand gunners and a thousand additional soldiers: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:600–01.

  332 Safavids had sacked Mosul: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:619.

  332 did the same in Baghdad: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:621.

  333 between sixty and eighty thousand cavalry: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:619–20, 664.

  333 many guns from the Portuguese: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:619.

  333 1,500 Ottoman defectors: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:619, 664.

  333 enlisted Georgians and Tatars: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:619.

  333 dispatched an imposing fleet of a hundred ships: Sanudo, Diarii, 28:596.

  333 He asked the empire’s leading clerics: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 114.

  333 mobilized a force of nearly fifteen thousand troops: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:620–21.

  333 lack of food . . . angered the local population even more: Sanudo, Diarii, 27:664–65.

  333 Selim’s troops chased down internal enemies: Sanudo, Diarii, 28:661.

  333 rebellion . . . erupted in . . . Amasya and Tokat: Sanudo, Diarii, 28:409.

  334 “From Istambol’s throne”: Quoted in Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 113–14.

  CHAPTER 22: FULCRUM OF THE ATLANTIC

  335 the only way to secure . . . was to bring North Africa squarely under Spanish control: Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 36–44.

  336 a new Crusade against Islam in North Africa: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 37.

  336 captured the Moroccan coastal city of Melilla: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 37; Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 30.

  336 The hawks . . . carried the day: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 37–38.

  337 Rebellion of the Alpujarras: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 37–38; L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500–1614 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 35–37.

  337 worked incessantly to eradicate any lingering remnants of Islam: Jane Landers, “The Great Wolof Scare of 1521” (unpublished manuscript), 10.

  337 Isabella’s health began to decline: Kirstin Downey, Isabella: The Warrior Queen (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2014), 403–11.

  337 “In all the realms”: Quoted in Downey, Isabella, 406.

  337 deeply mourned the loss of his patron: Downey, Isabella, 427.

  337 “all these island territories”: Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, ed. and trans. Nigel Griffin (London: Penguin, 1992), 25.

  338 “permanent properties of the Crown”: Downey, Isabella, 409.

  338 ordered that proceeds from the sale of her properties: Downey, Isabella, 408.

  338 Isabella instructed that she be buried: Downey, Isabella, 409–11.

  338 Isabella would continue to wage war against Islam: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 38.

  338 Pedro Navarro: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 38.

  338 expedition of four thousand men against the independent port of Bougie: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 39–42. On the size of this expedition, see Kamen, Empire, 32.

  338 Kemal Reis had temporarily captured Bougie: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 60.

  338 Tenes, Dellys, Mostaganem, and Peñon: These Spanish gains in North Africa came alongside those of Portugal as well: “al-Qasr as-Saghīr in 1458, Anfia in 1469, Mussat in 1488, Tangiers and Arzila in 1471, Agadir in 1505, Safi in 1508, Azemour in 1513, Mazagan in 1514, and Marrakesh in 1515.” Abbas Hamdani, “Ottoman Response to the Discovery of America and the New Route to India,” Journal
of the American Oriental Society 101 (1981): 329.

  338 farthest eastward extension of Spanish hegemony in North Africa: Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 329; Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 75–76; Kamen, Empire, 31–32.

  339 ongoing attempts to forcibly convert Muslims: Harvey, Muslims in Spain; Brian A. Catlos, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 393–97.

  339 Ottomans . . . chief suppliers of matériel, cash, and other resources: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 42; Hamdani, “Ottoman Response,” 329.

  340 9,153 kilograms of American gold arrived in Seville: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 43.

  340 “frontier of opportunity”: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 43.

  341 Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 61; Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 125; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Khayr al-Dīn (Khiḍir) Pasha” (A. Galotta).

  341 Korkud had hired them: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 61; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Khayr al-Dīn (Khiḍir) Pasha” (Galotta).

  341 working for the sultan of the Hafsid Empire: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 61; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Khayr al-Dīn (Khiḍir) Pasha” (Galotta).

  342 the elders of Bougie appealed: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 61.

  342 as well as Pope Leo X, behind him: On the blessing of Pope Leo X, see Marino Sanudo, I Diarii di Marino Sanuto (MCCCCXCVI-MDXXXIII) Dall’autografo Marciano Ital. Cl. VII Codd. CDXIX-CDLXXVII, ed. Rinaldo Fulin, Federico Stefani, Nicolò Barozzi, Guglielmo Berchet, Marco Allegri, and la R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, 59 vols. (Venice: F.Visentini, 1879–1903), 25:465.

  342 the brothers sent one of their men to Istanbul: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 62.

  343 sent ships to Granada to rescue Ibero-Muslims: Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 62.

  343 “the Unbelievers took young women”: Quoted in Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 228, n. 65.

  344 allowed them to recruit young boys from Anatolia: Emrah Safa Gürkan, “The Centre and the Frontier: Ottoman Cooperation with the North African Corsairs in the Sixteenth Century,” Turkish Historical Review 1 (2010): 143.