Book report: “The Ottomans“ by Marc David Baer
I got this book from Amazon looking for a one-stop overview of Ottoman history, doing research for the game. I didn’t know what a ride it would be. At the moment of writing I’m around 99% done with the first pass of the book, probably finished when you’re reading this. This is me just storming through the pages because it reads like a generational thriller, similar to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, only real. In the coming weeks and months I will scour the book for excerpts and references. But here are my thoughts so far.
Baer, M. D. (2022). Cover page of the 2022 edition of The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs. John Murray Press.
Baer walks us through literature, direct historical quotes, broad descriptions of context regional and global, zooming in to individual actions and personal drama. The prose is energetic, there isn’t ever a slouch, or a boring few pages you have to slog through. Most of the book follows the dynasty chronologically, delving into the reigns of successive sultans, but Baer occasionally speeds up to connect a theme or slows down to give historical turns their due weight.
The lives of the sultans makes for a great lens in my opinion as it allows us the top-down perspective of large players in history, continent-spanning events, and large societal change as well as an easy opportunity to connect these rulers and their decisions to the consequences they had for the empire and its subjects. Like a great film director, Baer masterfully controls this pacing or point of view, the result of it being a holistic depiction of the empire and its inhabitants whether royal or commoner.
“[The] monarch of the lands, the exalter of the empire, the Khan of the seven climes at this auspicious conjunction and the fortunate lord of the four corners of the earth, the emperor of the regions of Rûm and Persia and Hungary, of the lands of the Tatars and Wallachians and Russians, of the Turks and Arabs and Moldavia, of the dominions of Karamania and Abyssinia and the Kipchak steppes, of the eastern climes and of Cawazir and Shirvan, of the western climes and of Algeria and Kairouan, the napdishah bearing the crown of the lands of Hind and Sind and Baghdad, of the Franks and Croatians and Belgrade, possessor of the crown of his predecessors, Sultan, son of Sultan...the Shadow of God, the protector of faith and state, Khan Murad.”
Ottoman history is populated by holy warriors, nomads, strategists, lawmakers, lovers, rivals, religious leaders, hedonists, wine drinkers, and colourful characters of all sorts. There are so many betrayals, alliances, and plot twists that this thoroughly researched history sometimes reads like a soap opera.
The empire was, up to a point, a stunningly eclectic collection of peoples, faiths, laws, traditions, and habits. Baer gives us great descriptions of ‘the Ottoman Way’ which I believe is a concept that explains much of Ottoman history. In the most literal sense, it was their arrangement for governing diverse peoples that were usually conquered and incorporated into the empire. Baer references an ‘empire of difference‘ that the Ottomans ruled, and this meant there were policies of toleration where religious freedom and even a degree of autonomy were allowed, but there was a sexual, ethnic, and religious hierarchy, with male Muslims always on top.
I believe this philosophy extended to other aspects of the dynasty’s identity and indeed they were in part Mongol, Arab, European, and Roman, but always their own thing. The empire and the dynasty were always the first and most important consideration, all religious, cultural, legal, or any other kind of question was always inferior in priority to their imperialism. One very interesting factoid is that no sultan ever made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and yet religion is such a core part of their and the empire’s story.
(ca. 1555–60). Tughra (Insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66). [Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper]. The Metropolitan Museum. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/449534
A tughra is a stylized royal seal and signature applied by the Ottoman sultans to every royal edict. Different types were used by the early rulers. Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66) introduced a standard calligraphic design, starting from right with two to three horizontal lines, drawing a large oval to the left, and ending in the center with intervening letters at the bottom and three vertical undulated axes at the top. Each sultan’s tughra is slightly different, but typically comprises the name of the reigning sultan as well as his father’s name, his title, and the phrase "the eternally victorious." In this example, administrative function and artistry have created a masterpiece of Ottoman calligraphy, where the designed surface is filled with ornaments such as the scrolling floral vines in gold and blue.
How does all this relate to the game? Well, I felt it necessary to get to know Ottoman history better than my surface-level understanding and the journey has been fascinating. Baer’s book is an important source for me, not only for its high-quality information and storytelling, but also the amount of specific references it contains. A veritable treasure trove in paperback format.
More directly, it has influenced how I see my game’s antagonists. To strive for a universal empire as the Ottomans did following the Roman example, is to wish to rule the world. I think this is a great motivation for a villain and their organisation. It is not trivial as it is not a cartoonish evil wish but can have great nuance, one must have a godly ego for such a wish and the wish itself may be rooted in the desire to do good, or to strive for order. The latter portions of the book, when we feel the dynasty’s vitality dissipate, when there are no more great conquerors, and the empire fails to keep up with the world, are an amazing yet haunting slow motion train crash of the empire descending into disorder, persecution, genocide, and war on all sides. Real world examples of how these ambitions often turn out. Not to sound morbid but that’s great game material!
Where is the game set? I’m not sure yet, but I find the life of Suleiman I really fascinating. There was a millenarian prophecy of the tenth sultan coming to power at the end of the tenth Islamic century. He was supposed to be the last ruler before the apocalypse. In my head I toyed with the idea that somehow his father Selim I found an elixir of immortality, like the one sought by Chinese emperors and this new birth made him the tenth and last sultan. The game would then be set a century or two later with the ruler’s name forgotten after he retreated into the higher realms and his domain expanded across much of the earth.
Just an idea :)
“Although he had cut off access to the Black Sea side of the Bosporus strait and was using his navy in the Marmara Sea to bombard the sea walls, Mehmed II still faced the problem of not being close enough to attack the inner city. For the Byzantines had constructed a giant chain, which they used as a seemingly impenetrable floating gate, to block access to the Golden Horn, the waterway that led inland to the city’s harbour. So confident were the Byzantines that the city was safe from Ottoman naval attack that they left the walls along the Golden Horn unguarded. But Mehmed II had a plan. In April 1453, he ordered his men to lay down giant beams greased with animal fat leading inland from the Bosporus to the Golden Horn. Five dozen ships were fastened to long cables and pulled along these glide ways up the steep hill and across land by the hands of thousands of soldiers from the Bosporus to the Genoese colony - marked by its tower and numerous Catholic churches - and then downhill to the Golden Horn. It made for an unbelievable sight, ‘ships borne along on the mainland as if sailing on the sea, with their crews and their sails’. Seeing the Ottoman warships lying at anchor in the Golden Horn, the Byzantine defenders were stupefied. Bad portents - icons dropped at religious processions, flash floods and torrential hail, a dense fog that signalled the divine presence abandoning the city - terrified them further.”
Thank you for reading, this is definitely not the last of this book as I think it still has a lot to give to my game!
