poets are Ahmed Pasha, Nejali, Chiali, and Mesihi. The epigrammatic diction of the poet of nature, Chusi, reminds us of Hans Sachs. Among the swarm of poets who surrounded the artistic Sultan were two poetesses, Zeïneb and Mihri, who dedicated their divans (collections of poems) to the Sultan. The conqueror was the founder of numerous schools, and kept such Persian and Indian scholars in his pay as Khoja Jihan, and Jami (Vol. III, p. 376). Bajazet II followed this example. He, like his brother Djem and Prince Korkud, whose end was no less tragic, occupied himself with art and poetry. The Bajazet or pigeon mosque in Stamboul, with its splendid forecourt, remains one of the finest monuments of Osman architecture. Before the battle of Jenishehir, Djem, who had been previ ously victorious at Brusa, proposed to Bajazet that they should divide the empire as brothers. Bajazet replied with the Arabian verse, "The king's sword cleaves the ties of blood, the Sultan has no kinship even with his brothers." Selim I, Suleiman the Great, and Selim II followed this example, conquered kingdoms, and cherished the Muses amid all their cruelties. Mention must also be made at this point of the sheik Vefasade. His dominant personality and his character of the old Roman type made him typical of the sages who adorned that period of Osman history under Mohammed II. In his time occurred the first installation of a poet laureate in the person of Sati, who was commissioned to produce yearly three Kassidé (poems on special subjects), at the beginning of spring and at the two. festivals of Beiram. It must be said that the skilful management of rhyme and metre was the first consideration with the Osman poet. Form was to him more important than content, manner than matter, description than feeling; his poetical forms were derived chiefly from the Arabs, the spirit and home of the desert. Poetry in Turkish is called shür, haircloth (compare the primary meaning of the German Dichtung, Verdichtung), while beït is both the distich and the tent.

C. BAJAZET II AND SELIM I

(a) Bajazet II.- After the death of Mohammed II two dangers threatened the Turkish Empire, - revolt on the part of the Janissaries and internal disruption. Both of these were overcome by Bajazet II (1481-1572). To the Janissaries he made rich presents; indeed, the presents given to these prætorian guards rose at every change in the succession, until their delivery three centuries later brought about a financial crisis. Prince Djem, on the other hand, was for a long time a source of fear and anxiety to the Sultan in the hands of his enemies. Beaten at Jenishehir on June 20, 1481, he fled from Konia to Cairo; defeated at Konia with Kasimbeg of Karaman in the spring of 1482, he took refuge with the knights of Rhodes on July 23; in return for an annual subsidy of forty-five thousand ducats from Turkey, they kept him confined at Rousillon, a commandery of the order on the Rhone; after February, 1483, he was kept at Le Puy. All the princes of Europe rivalled one another in their efforts to get the "Grand Turk" into their power. On March 13, 1489, the prince, famous, like his brother, as a poet, entered the Vatican as a prisoner in honourable confinement. On February 24, 1495, he died in Naples, after Alexander VI had been compelled to hand him over to Charles VIII of France (cf. p. 144). He was presumed to have died from poison administered to him in Rome by the Pope, who was paid by Bajazet for this

service.

Bajazet's court had now become the arena of the diplomatists of Europe. Embassies and proposals for conventions had replaced the sword. The six Italian powers were the chief rivals for the Sultan's favour; they did not shrink upon occasion from employing the help of the infidels to procure the destruction of their Christian opponents. While Bajazet conquered Kilia and Akjerman, two important points in Moldavia, while the emperor Frederic III was embroiled with Matthias Corvinus, further disputes upon the succession breaking out after the death of the king of Hungary (April 6, 1490), Spain meanwhile had conquered Granada in 1492, and was consequently able to interfere independently in the course of European affairs. A short time previously King Ferrante I of Naples had secretly supported the Moors against the Spaniards. He now concluded peace with Spain, from whose harbour, Palos, the Pope's great compatriot, Columbus, had sailed to the discovery of a new world. Impressed by these events, the Sultan sent the Pope the sacred lance of Longinus as a most valuable present. The decree of the grand inquisitor Torquemada (Vol. IV, p. 535) of March 31, 1492, had expelled three hundred thousand Jews from Spain; they were hospitably received by Bajazet, who settled them in Constantinople, Saloniki, Smyrna, and Aleppo. From their great centres of refuge the Spanioles, or Sephardim, rose to positions of high honour and wealth, even as diplomatists in the service of the Porte, and were therein surpassed only by Greeks, Armenians, and Levantines.

On March 31, 1495, a holy league was concluded (Vol. VII, 207 f) by Venice, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Maximilian I, Lodovico il Moro, and the Pope for the protection of Christianity against the Turks. None the less, several Hungarian towns in Bosnia were conquered in 1496. In 1497 the Turks, Tartars, and Wallachians burst into Poland, devastating the land far and wide from Lemberg and Přzemysl to Banczug. On August 26, 1499, fell Lepanto, the only possession remaining to Venice on the Gulf of Corinth. Starting from Bosnia the Turks devastated the Venetian continent to the neighbourhood of Vicenza. The coasts of Southern Italy were plundered; in August, 1500, the Venetians lost Modon, Navarino, and Koron in the Morea. In vain did Alexander VI issue a great jubilee indulgence (op. cit. p. 226). Benedetto Pesaro succeeded in reconquering Ægina; towards the end of the same year, Cephallenia; Alessio in 1501, and Santa Maura (Leukas) in 1502; but in 1501 Durazzo was lost, as also was Butrinto in 1502. Venice was reaping the fruits of her former careless peace policy; under the peace of October 6, 1505, she was obliged to return Santa Maura. Hungary, which had accomplished nothing save a few marauding raids upon Turkish territory, had concluded a seven years' armistice on October 20. The Holy Roman Empire was not even able to collect the "common penny" (Vol. VII, p. 224) which had been voted at repeated diets. In vain did the humanist Jakob Wimpheling of Strassburg complain in 1505 in his "Epitome rerum Germanicarum" of the decay of the empire, the selfishness of the princes, and the advance of the Turks. Fifty years before Hans Rosenblüt had uttered an emphatic warning in "The Turk's Carnival Play:" "Our master the Turk is rich and strong, and is very reverent to his God, so that he supports him, and all his affairs prosper. Whatever he has begun has turned out according to his desire."

The last years of Sultan Bajazet were troubled by disturbances within the empire and revolts excited by his sons. The Janissaries, who had placed him on

EXPLANATION OF THE PORTRAITS OVERLEAF

Above, on the right: Mohammed II Bujuk (the great), Ghazi (conqueror of the unbelievers) or Fatih (the conqueror, 1451–1481). Painted on November 25, 1480, by Gentile Bellini (1426–1507). (The portrait is framed in Renaissance carving (not reproduced here), from the edge of which hangs an embroidered curtain. On the left panel of this cresting is inscribed, "Terrarum marisque victor ac dominator orbis . . . Sultan . . . inte. . . Mahometi resultat ars vera Gientilis militis aurati Belini naturae. . . qui cuncta reducit in propriam propria simulacra;" on the right hand panel: “MCCCCLXXX Die XXV mensis Novembris." The portrait was originally in the collection of Paolo Giovio in Como, and is now in the gallery of Sir H. Layard at Venice.)

Above, on the left: Suleiman II el Kenani (the great or illustrious; 1520–1566).

(From an album of portraits of Sultans (photographic reproductions by Abdullah frères in Constantinople), executed in pastel by an Italian at the beginning of the nineteenth century, arranged and collected by Tewfik Pasha in a folio volume, which is now in the library of the Baglad Kiosk in the old seraglio, but is not open to inspection.)

In the centre, on the right: Selim III (1789-1807); the founder of the modern Turkish military system.

(From a painting.)

In the centre, on the left: Mahmud II (1808-1839); the summoner of Moltke and destroyer of the Janissaries.

(From a painting.)

Below, on the right: Abd ul Medshid (1839-1861); recognised as "Majesty " and "Emperor” after 1856 (in the peace of Paris).

(From a painting.)

Below, on the left: Abd ul Aziz (1861-1876), the thirty-second Sultan of the Osmans.

(From a photograph.)

the throne, obliged him to abdicate on April 25, 1512, in favour of his third son, Selim.

(b) Selim I.-Selim I (1512-1520), an imperious and warlike character, revived the plans of Mohammed II, and threatened Christianity with death and destruction. After poisoning his father Bajazet, two brothers, and five nephews, he built a powerful fleet of five hundred sail; conquered the Shah Ismail of Persia (Vol. III, p. 381) at Khaldyran on August 23, 1514, after arousing him to fight on Turkish soil by the capture and murder of forty thousand Shiites; conquered Armenia, the west of Aserbeijân, Kurdistan, and Mesopotamia; and in 1516 overthrew in Syria and Palestine the mighty kingdom of the Egyptian Mamelukes (cf. Vol. III, p. 710), with which his father had been unable to cope (1485-1491). After the battle of Heliopolis he marched into Cairo on January 26, 1517. Tûmân II Bey, the last of the Burjites, was taken prisoner, and executed on April 13. While the conqueror rested in his palace near the Nigjâs (the Nilometer), on the island of Rôda, he sent for the shadow performer of the "Karagöz" (p. 124), who represented the hanging of Tûmân on the Torzuwêle and the double breakage of the rope, to the Sultan's great satisfaction. Selim had the most beautiful marble pillars of the citadel broken out and taken to Stamboul. Cairo was reduced to the position of a provincial town. The richest merchants emigated to Constantinople. Selim, being recognised as protector by Mecca and Medina, forced the last descendant of the Abbassid caliphs, Mutavakkil, to surrender his rights of supremacy, that he might himself thus become caliph; that is, the spiritual and temporal head of all the followers of Islam. His position as such was recognised neither by the Persian Shiites (Vol. III, p. 380) nor by the fanatical Arabs of the sacred cities, who regarded their Shereef as their spiritual head and as related to the prophet. At the time, however, the event implied the highest limit of power in the East.

Algiers had also fallen into Turkish hands (Vol. IV, p. 225). The towns on the Italian seaboard were now harried by the descents of the Turks (corsairs). In Hungary the Turkish problem had grown more acute than ever before. Carniola, Styria, Carinthia, and Austria lay open to Turkish attacks. At the peace congress of Cambrai in 1517 the emperor Maximilian I proposed a detailed scheme for the partition of Turkey to the monarchs, by the adoption of which their differences might be settled with the utmost profit to all concerned. At the imperial diet in Augsburg in 1518 the crusade of Leo X was approved. But nothing was done.

D. SULEIMAN II THE MAGNIFICENT

BUT a few years and two main outposts of Christendom fell into the hands of the Osmans, Belgrade on August 29, 1521, and Rhodes on December 21, 1522. Selim's son, the glorious Suleimân, had ascended the throne (Soliman II, 15201566; see the plate facing this page, "Six Osman Sultans "). In honour of his father he built the splendid Selimije mosque on the fifth hill of Stamboul, and placed the following inscription on the warrior king's grave: "Here rests Selim, the terror of the world; yet his body alone is here, his heart is still in battle." He avenged upon the knights of St. John the defeat which the conqueror of Byzantium had suffered before Rhodes, in 1480; after a heroic defence and a six months' siege the strong island-fortress fell. A son of Djem, whom Suleimân found in Rhodes, was strangled. The inhabitants of the island migrated in 1527