On campaign against the Persians in 1548, taking Tabriz and much of the Caucasus, Suleiman, now thin and gouty, was feeling his age.* ‘You said your noble foot was aching,’ wrote Hürrem. ‘God knows, my sultan, I was so upset I cried.’ In 1553, Shah Tahmasp counter-attacked and Suleiman dispatched the Lucky Louse, married to his daughter Mihrimah and grand vizier for nine years, to repel him. The padishah was informed by the Louse that Mustafa was discussing Suleiman’s ‘retirement’. The prince may have believed that the Louse – backed by his wife Mihrimah and mother-in-law Hürrem – wanted to kill him.
‘God forbid,’ retorted Suleiman, ‘my Mustafa Khan should dare such insolence.’ But wearily he led his own army to join the Louse, travelling with his youngest son, the hunchbacked Cihangir, who suggested to his father that his hunchback would prevent him being killed by his brothers. ‘My son,’ replied Suleiman, ‘Mustafa will become sultan and kill you all.’
At Ereğli, Suleiman summoned Mustafa, whose mother begged him not to go. Leaving his bodyguards, Mustafa entered his father’s tent where, watched by the padishah, the Tongueless jumped on him with their bowstrings. He fought back but when he tried to escape he tripped on his robe and was strangled, his body tossed outside the sultanic tent. The army mourned him and demanded the head of the Louse. Suleiman agreed to dismiss the vizier. From Constantinople, Hürrem warned him to send good news to calm the city and pleaded for the life of the Louse, signing off, ‘And that’s that. Your lowly slave.’
The Lucky Louse was lucky again: although his wife Mihrimah was unhappy in her marriage, she continued to promote her husband. Two years later, Suleiman had his vizier strangled and reappointed the Louse. Hürrem had won: only her two sons were left, Selim and Bayezid. But one would succeed – and one would have to die.
Selim was plump, genial and hedonistic, a bibulous poetaster whose favoured concubine Nurbanu was a Greek noblewoman enslaved by Barbarossa. He was unpopular with the army who called him the Ox; in Constantinople, he was called the Blond. Bayezid was martial and ambitious.
While Hürrem promoted Selim, Bayezid toyed with rebelling. Hürrem brokered his pardon. But in 1558 she died in the Old Palace, buried in the tomb of the Suleimaniye Mosque that the padishah had prepared for them both. After her mother’s death, Mihrimah moved into the Old Palace and became her father’s companion and adviser, building charitable foundations and mosques (including commissioning Sinan – who was said to be in love with her – to design the exquisitely blue Rüstem Pasha Mosque in honour of her late husband). A painting shows her haughty good looks: she had become a Euro-Asian potentate, trying to keep peace between her brothers.
Yet Bayezid still planned to seize power. Here was a power family that talked about death and treason in poetry. Suleiman warned the boy, who wrote back:
Forgive Bayezid’s offence, spare the life of this slave.
I’m innocent, God knows, my fortune-favoured sultan, my father.
Suleiman replied:
My Bayezid, I’ll forgive you your offence if you mend your ways.
But for once don’t say ‘I’m innocent’. Show repentance, my dear son.
It was now that Europe’s wealthiest private family arrived in Constantinople. They were Iberian Jews, the Mendes, led by Doña Gracia and her nephew Joseph Nasi, married to her daughter Reyna. They had already lived an extraordinary life: Doña Gracia, the heiress to the banking house of Mendes/Benveniste, had been expelled from Spain to Portugal whence she had escaped to Antwerp. When Charles V tried to steal her fortune, she and Joseph fled through France to Venice before negotiating their arrival in Istanbul. With a background of fake conversions and secret Jewish observance, they were born survivors who enjoyed a portfolio of different names.* The Venetians imprisoned Gracia, at which her nephew Joseph wrote to Suleiman’s Jewish doctor. Suleiman ordered the
In 1559, Bayezid mustered troops. Suleiman sent Selim to defeat the rebel, who fled with his four sons to Persia where he was granted asylum by Shah Tahmasp.
