God’s Shadow

Title: God’s Shadow – The Ottoman Sultan Who Shaped the Modern World

Author: Alan Mikhail

Publisher: Faber, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9780571331932

Pages: 479

 

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was a turning point in history. They soon enforced their control over the trade routes between the East and West. European merchants were denied direct access to Asia, forcing them to procure the wares through Ottoman traders at immense profits to the latter. In the aftermath of this cataclysmic event, a sultan named Selim the Grim (1470 – 1520) assumed the throne. In addition to the trade controls, he sought to overcome his rivals by force and unify the entire Middle East under his banner. The discovery of Americas was an unintended consequence of the European attempt to avoid the Ottomans and to reach Asia by an alternate route through the Western Atlantic. Defeating the Mamelukes who controlled Mecca and Medina, Selim appropriated the title of the Caliph of Islam in 1517. People reverentially called him God’s Shadow on Earth Selim’s territorial expansion upset the balance of power in other central Asian kingdoms and European monarchies. Babur’s expulsion from Samarkand and his eventual invasion of India is an aftereffect of Selim’s ignoring his plea for help and decision to support Babur’s rival. Reformation of European Christianity also owes its origin to Ottoman threat at their doorsteps. All these make Selim the Grim an ideal choice of study with revealing discoveries on the impact he had made in re-forging the flow of history. Alan Mikhail is an American historian who is a professor of history at Yale University. His work centres on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

 

The political changes that took place in the fifteenth century Near East are neatly summarized in the book. After roughly a century of squeezing the Byzantines, the Ottomans overran Constantinople in 1453 and promptly renamed it Istanbul. Mehmet the Conqueror’s grandson Selim transferred the empire into a global power by subjugating the Shiite Safavid dynasty in Iran and annexing the territory of the Egyptian Sunni Mamelukes. This made them the superpower of the Middle East. For many centuries since 1450s, the Ottoman Empire controlled more territory and ruled over more people than any other world power. The Europeans were losing captives, commercial influence and territory to them. It was the Ottoman monopoly of the trade routes to the East, combined with their military prowess that pushed Span and Portugal out of the Mediterranean, compelling merchants and sailors to become global explorers.

 

The hero of the book sports an unfriendly epithet of ‘Grim’, because of his ruthlessness in eliminating rivals that included his own half-brothers and nephews. He killed every blood relation that blocked or was likely to block his way to the throne. It is also said that he often kicked the decapitated heads of those he executed. Selim regularly led the raids that brought slaves – mostly Christian, mostly white – into the empire. They were then sold in the Ottoman markets to the highest bidder. The empire collected taxes on their sale. Blacks were also taken as slaves, but they were mostly castrated and employed as eunuchs guarding the harems. Racism was here added to the vice of slavery. Selim enhanced the ferocity of his soldiers by fanning their greed. He let go of his portion of a fifth of the spoils which the fighters could share among themselves. White slaves were used for training as elite soldiers and sex slaves. Teenage Christian boys were seized from their homes and taken to Ottoman centres of power. They were then forcibly converted to Islam and enlisted into a superior military wing knows as Janissaries. The Christian girls were similarly converted and taken as concubines.

 

A curious thing to note in these recordings of medieval history is the crucial role religion plays in shaping military encounters and its equal disregard in forming opportune political alliances. Political partnerships crossed religious boundaries even in crusades. Pope Innocent VIII colluded with Mamelukes for an attack against Ottomans along with Cem, a pretender to the Ottoman throne. Christian kingdoms had given asylum to Cem as a tactical countermeasure to check Sultan Bayezit who was Cem’s half-brother. Duplicity was integral to early modern negotiations. The Pope offered to keep Cem as a prisoner if Bayezit agreed to a set of conditions like freedom of worship to Christians, unhindered access for pilgrims to Jerusalem and a fee for the proper upkeep of the royal hostage. Bayezit readily agreed and paid 120,000 gold ducats in advance as fee for three years. He also gifted the head of the lance that allegedly pierced Christ’s side during the Crucifixion. The Pope gladly accepted the offerings and duly confined Cem to house arrest till his death.

 

Mikhail introduces a new idea which claims that the European push to the West that eventually discovered the Americas was a reaction to Muslim pressure in the Near East and was a part of the crusades. Columbus met Queen Isabella many times and proposed a voyage westward to the court of the Great Khan of the East who was believed to be a powerful monarch eager to accept Christianity for himself and his realm. Columbus planned to make him join forces with Christian Europe against the Ottomans and together they would retake Jerusalem in an epic battle that would destroy Islam forever. Isabella prevaricated as long as the fall of Granada, the last Muslim principality in mainland Spain, which continued to defy attempts at subjugation. After the city’s conquest in 1492, which was also the first major victory of Christianity against Islam since its formation, Isabella granted the funds Columbus wanted to organize his fleet. He even carried speakers of several Middle Eastern languages on his New World journeys to communicate with Eastern Nestorian Christians in Asia! The Europeans likened the Aztec Civilization in Mexico to a Muslim one as a psychological device to make an enemy of them. Cortes claims to have seen 400 mosques in Mexico and called Montezuma a sultan.

 

This book makes a claim that Selim’s rule shaped the modern history of the world and backs it up with plausible arguments of support. The discovery of Americas and Babur’s invasion of India have already been mentioned. In addition to these, Selim began the tussle between Sunnis and Shiites of Iran which continues to this day. He invaded and defeated the Safavids of Iran. The Safavids returned the fury by instigating Shiites residing in Ottoman provinces to rebel. The author affirms that Selim moulded the Ottoman Empire into a global military and political force. The contours of today’s Middle East and Mediterranean remain the same as he set. The histories of the continents he united continue to follow paths he first cleared. The wars he started and led have still not ended.

 

An unfortunate streak seen throughout the text is the deliberate effort to please hardline Muslim interests that are inclined to justify violent acts against Civilization. The book comes down heavily on crusades. It is argued that European plans for a crusade against the Muslim world have not yet disappeared. Mikhail makes jihad out to be a pious religious duty enjoined on believers to better the world! According to him, jihad means only a personal struggle to accept the summons to follow the path designated by God. Thus jihad makes one a better individual (p.142) and what we now see in the world is a ‘modern-day distortion’. The author even differentiates between the slavery practiced by Muslims and Christians and says that in Islam, slavery was temporary and provided a conduit for upward mobility. This is in total disregard to historical facts which inform that Muslims were the major slaver-raiders in Africa who coerced unsuspecting black men and women into slavery and then sold them off to Europeans. Condonation of forcible kidnapping of boys and girls into slavery by a modern historian is shocking, to say the least. This book makes an all-out attack against Christian symbols of power in an obvious bid to cozy up to Muslim vested interests. The illicit affairs of Pope Alexander VI are given as an irrelevant aside to the main narrative. The author’s remark that in an Islamic state, non-Muslims enjoyed more legal options between their own religious courts and Islamic sharia courts, or even to claim that they were treated at par with the Muslims, is making a mocking irony of the fate of non-Muslims who were downgraded as Dhimmis. It is such irresponsible writers who help foster a sense of victimhood in young Muslims and make them feel that their religion is wronged in the past and present. The book’s observation that Islam made much of European civilization (p.92) is simply laughable.

 

The book is easy to read but difficult to appreciate due to the blatant appeasement of jihadi elements. The narration is very slow and diffused in the first half of the book where European explorations to Americas and early modern European history claim most of the narrative. It can be established that as compared to the abundance of background details, the main narrative often pales into insignificance. A lot of Ottoman paintings from Topkapi Palace are included but these fail to impress the readers on account of their lack of depth and fidelity to real lifeforms.

 

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star