The Janissaries themselves, the elite infantry of the empire, were also foreign in origin. Recruited as tributes from the young men of the conquered Balkan territories, they became such a powerful force that they undermined the authority of the sultan himself for several centuries, until their dissolution in 1826. Even the army commanders and viziers were foreign in origin.
The Ottoman Empire owes much of its military and organizational success to the contribution of non-Turkish personnel, generally representatives of populations subject to the Sultan’s domination, slaves captured during raids in distant lands, or adventurers on the run from the law. Not that the Turks were not great warriors: on the contrary, they knew how to ride horses with great skill, a legacy from antiquity of a people who emigrated to Anatolia from the inhospitable steppes of Central Asia. From the point of view of valor and courage, they were second to none and always gave evidence of courage and had a spirit of selflessness. However, the Turks have often been commanded by foreigners: from the time of Mehmet the Conqueror (15th century) to the First World War, when they fought on the side of the central empires under the tutelage of German advisors.
The Janissaries themselves, the elite infantry of the empire, were also foreign in origin. Recruited as tributes from the young men of the conquered Balkan territories, they became such a powerful force that they undermined the sultan’s own authority for several centuries, until their dissolution in 1826. Even the army commanders and viziers were foreign in origin. The most respected grand viziers were Albanians, Bosnians, etc. The sultans themselves had little Turkish blood in their veins, since they were all sons of concubine slaves (preferably Slavic or Circassian) and sovereigns who, in turn, were born from concubines.
The reasons for the Ottomans’ openness to “the other” were, on the one hand, a reflex dictated by the imperial dimension, on the other hand, stemmed from the well-known tolerance of the Ottoman sovereigns towards other cultures and communities. This approach allowed the Turks to recognize and engage with relative ease the best personnel in circulation, of any religion or ethnicity, while updating their fighting techniques and modernizing their arsenals. The bombers developed by Urban of Transylvania greatly facilitated the capture of Constantinople and other fortified cities, most recently Belgrade; the adaptation of the crossbow was the cause of the annexation of the Mamluk empire at the beginning of the 16th century.
A NEW LIFE IN THE NAME OF ALLAH
The bridge between foreign knowledge and the Ottoman armed forces was generally made by contracted experts, or so-called renegades. If the former were nothing more than highly paid advisors for a limited period of time, like the aforementioned Urban of Transylvania or the French engineers who modernized the Turkish fleet during the reign of Selim III, the latter were those who “became Turks,” as the saying went.
These renounced the Christian religion with an oath to embrace that of Muhammad. Many renegades were slaves who could not afford to pay for their freedom and, for this reason, agreed to make a new life. Other renegades were individuals who had fled to war, finding their fortune in North Africa. This is the case of Flemish people like Simon Danser and Jan de Janszoon van Harlem, the latter known as Murat Reis.
Ships built in northern Europe and the first galleons, albeit sporadically, served the Ottoman Empire and the Sublime Porte. Being ocean-going vessels, Murat Reis could make raids as far away as Ireland and Iceland. Other renegades were people cut off from their homelands because they were drowning in debt; others were simply lured by Muslim society, which generally exercised a weaker control over customs than Christian Europe (it is not for nothing that cases of renegades doing the opposite, i.e. from Islam to Christianity, were very rare). In all the above cases, the renegades improved living conditions: this was the main incentive that pushed a Christian to “become a Turk”.
The Ottoman navy was the institution that more than any other used specialists of Italian origin, often renegades. For long periods, the Turks dominated not only the lands of three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa – but also the Mediterranean. The day to build a navy in a short period of time: the Venetians, Greeks and Genoese all contributed to making the art of seafaring known to the Turks, a land-based people by definition. In the 16th century, the Ottomans challenged the Habsburgs and Venice at sea with equal weapons; in the 17th century, after the disaster of Lepanto had stopped the momentum for several decades, the Turkish navy regained its positions and raised its head again against the Venetians. During the wars of Crete and the Morea, the Turks used the latest galleons, demonstrating that they always had an eye for technological innovations.
SHIPBUILDER AND COMMANDER
The same personnel who managed the ships of the navy, as well as the masters of weapons, were also foreigners, Greeks and Italians in particular. The Venetian renegade Niccolo Furlan, whose Muslim name was Mustafa, managed to supervise the construction of the first galleons built in the arsenal of Istanbul. Two other Italian renegades, Usta Murat and Mami Ferrarese, reached positions of considerable wealth and prestige in Tunisia. Originally from Levanto, the former managed to replace the local military governor with a single blow after having commanded the pirate fleet of that area. Two captains pasha, the highest “sea” rank in the Ottoman Empire, also came from the Italian peninsula: Uluc Ali Reis and Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan. Both have left moral and material testimonies that survive in Istanbul and contemporary Turkey. Born Giovanni Dionigi Galeni in 1519, Uluc Ali was originally from Le Castella, in Calabria. Destined to become a monk, he was captured in 1536 by Hayreddin Barbarossa, the creator of Ottoman naval power and Kapedan Pasha from 1533 to 1546. After being imprisoned and reduced to a turban, Galen renounced the Christian faith.
According to what Miguel de Cervantes – the author of Don Quixote – wrote, he did it to take revenge on a Muslim who had done him harm: without converting, in fact, he would have been judged in accordance with Islamic law. Uluc Ali, as he took his name after converting to Islam, successfully pursued a career as a pirate; he traveled throughout the Mediterranean, paying particular attention to the Kingdom of Naples, then under Spanish domination, and Liguria.
He captured an impressive number of ships, including one owned by Vincenzo Cicalas. He was not only a great seaman, but also a capable governor. He became the bey of all the major North African cities subject to the Turkish empire: from Algiers to Tripoli, passing through Tunis. In July 1571, Uluc Ali encountered a squadron of the Knights of Malta in Sicily, sinking three of their ships. He failed to capture any of the ships (they had the habit of destroying them so as not to fall into enemy hands) but he would not miss the opportunity to try again a few months later at Lepanto, where he commanded the left wing of the Muslim group. In the southern part of the theater of battle, he found himself facing the galley of the Genoese Gian Andrea Doria and the ships of the Knights of Malta.
Uruc Ali managed, taking advantage of a distraction of the Genoese commander, to rush like a hawk towards some ships that had remained isolated. The precious red flag of the Knights of Malta, with the white cross in the shape of a fork, did not escape his hands this time. Surviving the irreparable Turkish defeat and the carnage that followed, the former pirate took with him to Istanbul a full 42 ships from the disaster: a “gift” certainly important in anticipation of the reconstruction of the Ottoman fleet.
THE TRIUMPHANT CAREER OF A PERSON
In Venice, they were convinced that it was perhaps Gian Andrea Doria who had favored the escape. In one of the halls of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, there is a painting by Andrea Vicentino that immortalizes what was considered the Ligurian malice: in one part of it, we see part of the Christian army at Lepanto opening the way and letting some Muslim ships pass. Of course, this is not proof that things really happened like this, but the painting makes the idea of what the relations between the two Christian “allies” might have been like quite clear.
Whatever the case, on December 19, 1571, Uluc Ali entered Istanbul in command of the surviving units: about 192 ships had been sunk or captured by the Holy League. The flag that had been taken from the Cavaliers was used for propaganda purposes: it was an object of very strong symbolic significance and was therefore used as a trophy in the Basilica of Hagia Sophia. Much was done to remove the mother of all defeats from the eyes of the masses. Uluc Ali was not beheaded, like other commanders who lost. The gift that he brought back after the defeat was worth the Calabrian renegade not only for survival, but also to take the place of Muzinzad Ali, who died at Lepanto, in the role of captain pasha.
With a solemn ceremony, his metamorphosis took place: Uluc Ali Reis was transformed into Kilic Ali (or Ali “Sword”). The new task made Kilic Ali Pasha responsible for all shipbuilding activity in the empire. Within the winter, he rebuilt the fleet and in 1574 re-conquered Tunis, which had been taken the year before by the Spanish. Kilic Ali Pasha died in 1587 in his palace near the Galata neighborhood of Istanbul. He was 68 years old, 51 of which he lived “as a Turk”. As a good Muslim, he dedicated the last years of his life to charitable activities, the third of the five pillars of religion. He built a beautiful mosque in his neighborhood, in a specially reclaimed area.
Kilic Ali Pasha is buried near this sacred building attributed to the great architect Sinan, along the Bosphorus. The death of the Calabrian was truly the end of an era.