Images of Islam, 1453–1600

Turks in Germany and Central Europe

Charlotte Colding Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138546073
• eBook ISBN: 9781317319627
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Using evidence from contemporary printed images, Smith examines the attitudes of Christian Europe to the Ottoman Empire and to Islam. She also considers the relationship between text and image, placing it in the cultural context of the Reformation and beyond.

1 Early Images of the Turk and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1520

Constantinople, the city [which was] the throne of the Eastern Empire and single repository of Greek wisdom, on the second of June of this year [1453] was besieged for fifty days by Prince Mehmed and the Turks, conquered with force, violence and weapons, laid waste and defiled in the third year of the reign of the same Mehmed¹

Introduction

The Fall or Capture of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 during the reign of Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–6, 1451–81) dramatically altered how the city and its inhabitants were perceived by the rest of Christendom, including German-speaking areas of the Holy Roman Empire.² Specifically, the Fall impacted images and descriptions of Turks in early printed sources, even as advances in printing technology, particularly the advent of movable type, enabled the rapid dissemination of new ideas. These early printed works relied heavily on earlier material dealing with the Islamic world. Sources range from illuminated images created during and after the medieval Crusades against Saracens, Moors and other Islamic groups to earlier classical and theological texts rediscovered by humanist scholars during this period. Other influences originated from the Italian states, especially Venice, which re-established new relationships with the Ottoman Empire through trade and diplomacy as well as military confrontation.³ This wide array of sources influenced early printed German images and texts about the Ottoman Empire within the expanding political, military and cultural knowledge of the world.⁴

The military threat of the Islamic 'infidel', or Saracen, as a distant but dangerous enemy had been prevalent in medieval literature, especially in works dealing with the Crusades.⁵ From the time the First Crusade was preached in 1095, many medieval manuscripts, paintings and sculptures depicted the armies of the Saracens and those of the Tartars (a term that included Mongols and other peoples from Central Asia) as military foes related to the devil.⁶ These early responses by Christians to Islam influenced later humanist writings and artists' illustrations. Although they did not originally include the Ottoman Turk, the groups were readily linked during the early modern period. Some sources regarded them as completely different races, others described the Turk conquering the Saracen, and still others the reverse. Such disagreements between writers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries resulted from a lack of first-hand knowledge compounded by conflicting sources concerning the origins of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, how the sources were reused and manipulated often tells more about the background and biases of the writers and artists than any historical detail they repeat.⁷

The links between Ottoman Turks and Saracen and other Islamic groups are also recognized in the text of the humanist Hartman Schedel's Weltchronik or Nuremberg Chronicle, as examined later in this chapter.⁸ Such definitions and ideas about the history of the Turk and the Ottoman Empire fit into the wider humanist histories of the period by scholars such as Theophanes the Confessor, Giovanni Mario Filelfo, Theodore Gaza and Flavio Biondo.⁹ These in turn influenced German historians into the following centuries within a variety of theological, historical and encyclopaedic works.¹⁰ Further examples within illustrated incunabula (early pamphlets, broadsheets or books with movable type) and early single-leaf illustrated prints reveal differing attitudes to the Ottoman Empire and its people forming in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Alongside the developing images of Ottoman Turks as soldier or sultan, the new print medium accelerated the spread of news about conflicts or diplomacy between the Ottoman Empire and Northern European states and how these impacted on sixteenth-century images and ideas.

Medieval Sources on Islam: Saracens and Moors

Ideas about the actions of Muslims at the time of the Crusades expressed in medieval manuscripts can be directly compared to those about the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and how these reflect the changing Christian European attitudes to Islam and the Turk.¹¹ Medieval depictions in illuminated manuscripts, sculpture and stained glass of Saracens, Islamic peoples of the Middle East, the Moors of Southern Spain and Africa, or Asian Tartars also influenced early printed works on these subjects.¹² Images of both Saracens and Moors appeared especially in English and French illuminated apocalypses during the Crusades (1097–1453), and particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.¹³ For instance, images in the Wellcome Apocalypse and the Bavarian Antichrist manuscripts produced in German-speaking areas greatly influenced ideas of Ottoman Turks in incunabula following Constantinople's incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. The most common way to identify a Muslim in illuminated images was by a turban or turban-like headdress, or, in the case of Moors, by their dark skin, as for instance seen in folio 17r of the Wellcome Apocalypse from c. 1420, now held in the Wellcome Library, London. Here, a group comprising many Jews (identified by triangular headdresses), a Saracen (in a turban) and a dark-skinned and turbaned Moor line up to be blessed by a seated beast with the head of a ram, similar to that which rises from the sea in the Book of Revelation. This group is contrasted with the faithful worshippers blessed in the lower part of the illumination.¹⁴ In this way the Jewish and Islamic groups are distinguished from the followers of Christ, an element that would remain significant in early printed images of Turks and Islam in the Ottoman Empire.

Illuminated manuscripts of apocryphal tales concerning the Antichrist were heavily influenced by the apocalyptic texts of Daniel, Paul's Letters to the Thessalonians and the Revelation of St John.¹⁵ These tales often identified the Antichrist with Muhammad, the Islamic infidel and the Saracen, as for example found in the Bavarian Antichrist (1440–50), now in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek.¹⁶ In this manuscript, the image of 'The Adoration of the Antichrist' depicts three kings, Ethiopian, Saracen and Jewish, all bowing down before the Antichrist in the lower part of the illumination. Accompanying the kings are standard bearers, carrying flags showing the head of a Moor (identifiable by the skin tone), that of a Saracen (a head with a turban) and a triangular Jewish hat.¹⁷ As a sinister parody to the Adoration of the Magi, the scene represents the enemies of Christendom bringing about the Last Days with the help of the Antichrist himself, thus reminding Christian readers of the Apocalypse that these ethnic groups are allied with evil. Later incunabula prints also linked Turks with Moors, Saracens, Jews and the Antichrist, as seen in Der Antichrist from 1480 (reprinted in 1482), as well as in many other sources.¹⁸

Warfare and Ottoman Armies

The initial Ottoman expansion into the Mediterranean only concerned Northern European powers indirectly through their alliances and did not pose a direct threat to their territories. However, the increasing military presence of Ottomans in Southern and Central Europe meant that Gennan art began to depict the Ottoman soldier more as a foe than a curiosity. Many humanist writings about the Turk also combined or associated them with Huns as the enemies of Christianity. The title-page woodcut of Johannes Adelphus's Türckisch Chronica from 1513 depicts a band of five raiders on horseback who brandish weapons or carry flags (Figure 1.1).¹⁹

While it is possible to identify the men as Ottoman Turks from the turbans worn by two of them, the most sinister device is the large spear-like arrow brandished by the warrior at the head of the group. Another figure carries a bow and arrow, and a third a flag with the Turkish or Ottoman crescent on it.

Figure 1.1: Johannes Adelphus, DJe Türckisch Chronica: Von irem vrsprung anefang vnd regiment,biß vff dise zeit, sampt yre[n] kriegen vnd streyten mit den christen begangen, Erbaemrklich zu lesen (Strasbourg: Flach, 1513), title page. Courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, A: 153.5 Quod. 2° (7).

The print illustrates a short pamphlet detailing the origins of the Turkish and "Hunnish' peoples and their battle against Christians. It was previously used in Jörg von Nuremberg's Antzeygung from 1500, which along with other sources influenced Adelphus's work.²⁰ The printing press and widespread dissemination of prints made it possible for the same images to be reused in many contexts, either in their original form or as a close copy. This made certain images of Ottoman Turks more recognizable to viewers, but again reinforced older images rather than creating new ones from personal experience.

Only a few of the earliest printed reports and commentaries on the Fall of Constantinople illustrate the atrocities of Ottoman soldiers and armies, and not all of these depict Turks. An example is the earliest German printed work on Ottoman Turks and specifically the warrior Turk, the so-called 'Turkish Calendar'. The response time of print technology was still developing, and the calendar was printed nineteen months after the Fall of Constantinople. The work details the particular progress of the war and provides geographical and statistical information. Significantly, it also refers to Islamic residents of the Ottoman Empire as 'Turks' (Türken) rather than Saracens or Moors, but it is, unfortunately, not illustrated, as was the case of many early printed sources referring to Ottoman questions.²¹

From about 1438, under the rule of Sultan Murad II (r. 1421–44, 1446–51) the janissary or Devshirme order primarily consisted of captives and converts to Islam, and they made up the elite part of the Ottoman army. Trained from childhood to guard the sultan and Empire, they fascinated Christian Europeans, who feared captivity and conversion by the Ottomans.²² Through costume studies and images by artists who had visited the Ottoman Empire, the janissary order came to feature prominently in prints of the Ottoman military, as explored in the next chapter. The image of the Turk as representing warfare and Ottoman soldiers in battle became a powerful symbol of the dangers posed by the Ottoman armies as they made further territorial incursions into Christendom. Many important battles were chronicled in printed format, though they were not always illustrated. These included the Fall of Trebizound, the last Greek territory in Asia Minor, in 1461; the long war against Venice between 1463 and 1479; and the Siege of Rhodes from 1479 to 1480.²³ This last event was an especially popular subject for printed works in the early modern period, as it showed an early victory against the Ottoman armies, though Rhodes eventually fell to the Ottoman army in 1522. Many contemporary German artists capitalized on this fifteenth-century victory as an important defeat of the infidels, and several pamphlets were published on the subject in German-speaking areas, some in German and others in Latin.²⁴ Guillaume Caorsin's (d. 1501) Rhodiorum Vicecancellarij: Obsidionis Rhodie Vrbis ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 Early Images of the Turk and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1520
• 2 Military Images of the Turk and the Conflicts of the Sixteenth Century
• 3 Biblical Images of the Turk: The Apocalyptic and the Exotic
• 4 Travellers' Tales and Images of the Ottoman Empire and Court of Constantinople
• 5 Ottoman Dress in Sixteenth-Century German Printed Costume Books
• 6 Genealogies, Histories, Cosmographies: Encyclopaedic Images of the Turk
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index