Featured Article » Nonfiction

What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate (Why the Ottomans aren't Talking to Up-timers)

Written by Panteleimon Roberts

Diplomacy with the Ottomans seems not to be working for Grantville and the USE because the Ottomans don’t seem to want to talk. "Almost a year and a half, from the spring of 1632 onward, of patient and carefully drafted letters, friendly overtures carried to Istanbul by a dozen or more hands, had dropped into a black hole for all the good they seemed to have done."[1] In fact, we are told that ". . . anyone claiming to be an up-timer would automatically be put to death if found anywhere within the Ottoman Empire."[2]

This hardly seems fair. After all, what have the up-timers done to the Ottomans? Aren’t they freely sharing their twentieth century knowledge with all who are interested, bringing wonderful advances in technology and an enlightened political system that includes religious freedom wherever their influence extends?

The fact is Sultan Murad IV and his advisers would not have banned up-timers without believing they had good reason to do so. As it happens, the actions described above are a big part of those reasons. The activities of the up-timers look very suspicious to Ottoman eyes, and it does not help that the up-timers have allied themselves with the enemies of those who the Ottomans consider to be their best friends in Europe. To understand this, we must consider what information the Ottomans have about Grantville and what their interpretations of this information are likely to be.

What information the Ottomans have about the up-timers will depend, in part, on where they got their information. So the first questions that must be answered are where the information about Grantville comes from and what is it likely to include.

The first source will have been the letters sent from Grantville. So what happened to all those letters? Most probably they were all collected in a file either under the control of the clerk in charge of the European-German records, given where Grantville appeared, or in the files relating to the Swedes, given the initial alliances Grantville made. It is unlikely that any were delivered directly to Murad IV himself—this simply wasn’t done with materials from unknown non-Muslim foreigners. If a sufficiently important messenger carried one of the letters, it is possible that the Grand Vizier, Tabaniyassi Mehmed Pasha, might have accepted it.[3] Mehmed Pasha was fairly well informed about events in Europe—and he felt (as Murad IV seems also to have felt) that the interests of the Empire were best served by avoiding entanglements in European affairs and letting the Christians knock themselves out while the Safavids were dealt with. Those under him tended to have similar ideas—the Persians were seen as the main enemy—although there were factions that felt advantage should be taken if and when a European target of opportunity appeared.

Grantville would not have appeared to be a target of opportunity. The initial impression would have been that some local German ruler had decided to attempt to set up a private kingdom, and was hoping for an Ottoman connection to give the Habsburgs pause before they smashed him. Supporting some would-be princeling would have held no attraction at all for the Ottomans. It would also not have been anything worth mentioning to the sultan except possibly in passing, as an example of how the Thirty Years' War was fragmenting Europe.

Then, too, it is important to recognize that the Ottomans in general, and Murad in particular, were somewhat preoccupied in 1632 and 1633 with issues closer to home than Grantville. In 1632, the sultan would certainly have been more interested in ensuring that he had control over Constantinople than in what was happening in Germany. In 1633, Murad was still securing control over the wider Empire. When he did have attention to spare, it would have gone to the struggle with the Persians. All in all, it seems likely that no serious notice would have been taken prior to mid-1633.

When notice was finally taken, it would have been clear that Grantville was no small matter of a rebellious lord, but rather a major player in a radically changed power structure in Europe. This would have worried the Ottomans, since their expectation would have been that, should one side or the other gain victory in the internecine structures that had been occupying the Christians, the Europeans would then unite and attack them, and the last thing they wanted was a second war on top of the war they already had with the Persians. Further, as will be shown below, the initial letters from Grantville will not have made a good impression.

At some point as information about the up-timers came in, those responsible for the security of the Empire would have concluded that a threat existed. The conclusion may have been reached at a low level first, as the clerks responsible for dealing with correspondence from abroad noticed the increase in the apparent importance of Grantville. Or it may have occurred at a higher level—one can imagine the French ambassador securing an audience with the Grand Vizier to seek an alliance against this new threat. Whether the alert came from above or below, it would have eventually reached an official with the responsibility to bring the potential threat to the attention of the sultan so that action could be taken.

Sultan es-Selatin Murad Oglu Ahmed (known to us as Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire) wielded absolute power.[4] Nevertheless, both as a matter of religious duty and practicality, Sultan Murad will have consulted with his government before acting.

While such consultations could be as simple as the divan-i hümayun (Imperial Council, hereafter just divan) meeting, making a decision, and sending recommendations to the sultan for his approval, this is unlikely to be how it happened. Murad was actually very engaged with his government and, while it was always clear that the final decision was his, surprisingly willing to listen to others before the decision was made.[5] Given the complexities and ramifications of the appearance of the up-timers, while the divan may have sent a recommendation to the sultan, it was most likely to request that he convene a meshveret (consultative meeting), which brought in a wider group and provided a military council-style three-step forum in which to deal with complex problems.

The first step of a meshveret entails bringing in experts to explain the problems and possible responses. The experts in this case would have included the scribes responsible for European relations, possibly some foreigners (including ambassadors) with direct experience or information from their homelands of the people from Grantville, and a selection of the learned men of the ulema.[6]

Once the experts had spoken, the sultan would invite the officials of his government to offer their opinions. This would be done in a strict order of precedence, with the lowest ranking speaking first. After all who wished to speak had done so, the sultan would speak, giving his views and issuing any commands he felt appropriate to the situation, leaving the implementation of his orders to the affected officials or to the divan. The meshveret ended when the sultan spoke, giving him the last, and indisputable, word on the subject.

The resources available to the Ottomans to learn about things happening in the middle of Europe did not, popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, include a network of Ottoman intelligence officers. Instead they relied on the reports of merchants, intelligence provided by their tributary state the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), and information provided to them by the foreign diplomats who resided in Constantinople. Because of the perceived need for rapidly producing an assessment, merchant reports would not have been a major part of the picture since they were obtained only irregularly and took time to compile. The Ottomans would have asked the Ragusans for what they had, and summoned the diplomats to tell what they knew.[7]

The Republic of Ragusa had an intelligence network which was in many ways the equal of that of up-time countries. The Ragusans had developed their intelligence capabilities for the purpose of survival—Ragusa was an essentially merchant state with neither the ability to field large armies or significant natural defenses located in a region over which major powers contended. They used the intelligence that they gained as bargaining chips to maintain their independence. Decisions about what intelligence was shared were made by the Ragusan Senate.[8]

Because decisions about intelligence sharing were made with an eye toward what was best for Ragusa, a certain bias was introduced into what intelligence was shared. To put it simply, the Ragusans preferred to provide information to the Ottomans that was selected to conform to what the Ragusans thought the Ottomans expected. As they would have been unsure of the reception it would receive, their comprehensive report on Grantville would, by policy, not have been the first.[9] The information that shaped the initial Ottoman opinion of Grantville would perforce come from the European missions in Constantinople.[10]

The European diplomatic community in Constantinople at this time consisted of four ambassadors, the resident representative of the Holy Roman Empire, and various temporary missions. The four ambassadors were, in order of seniority, the Venetian Baillio, the French ambassador, The English ambassador, and the Dutch ambassador.

Of those who might present a favorable, or at least neutral, view of Grantville, Ottoman relations with Venice may be regarded as comparable to those between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period of détente.[11] The Dutch, while ably represented by Cornelis Haga, are newcomers.

Those who might present a negative view of Grantville are in rather better positions. The resident representative of the Holy Roman Empire, Johann Rudolf Schmid, labors under the handicap that relations between the Habsburg Emperor and the Ottomans tend to be strained. But he seems to have been a remarkably capable and well-connected individual.[12] The English representative, Sir Peter Wyche, was at least competent, reasonably well-liked by the Ottomans, and absolutely loyal to Charles I.[13]

And then there are the French. The French had an extraordinarily close relationship with the Ottomans. Indeed, it was so close that many believed that a French princess must have figured in the lineage of the Ottoman sultans.[14] This was fortunate for the French because their ambassadors in this period left something to be desired.[15] We may well learn that Richelieu sent a special embassy to Constantinople relatively early on to explain the up-timer threat to the Ottomans. But, whether the information was provided by the existing ambassador or a special emissary, there is no question that the French view will have had a large impact on Ottoman perceptions of Grantville.

The Ottomans’ first impressions of Grantville would thus come from the letters sent by Grantville and from the information presented by diplomats who were at best neutral and more often hostile to Grantville. So what impressions would have been created?

The letters would have been examined carefully—after all, they would be certain to represent the most positive image of this new power. While none of these letters have been published, they would presumably have included an offer of friendly relations and the explanation that Grantville had been somehow transported back more than three hundred years in the future. The offer of friendly relations would presumably have included offers of access to whatever the up-timers knew about what the years to come held for the Ottomans as well as offers to allow the Ottomans to share in the advanced technological knowledge of the up-timers.

In Europe, such actions meant that Grantville found allies in leaders who, either out of necessity or enlightenment, accepted the idea that Grantville is from a reasonable future and were receptive in varying degrees to its principles, policies, and knowledge. To a larger degree than anyone in Grantville may understand, this acceptance rested on having some common world views. In the Ottoman Empire, the situation is going to be rather different. The up-timers will probably not appreciate how their explanation of their presence and their offers will have alarmed and outraged the Ottomans.

The claim that Grantville is from the future, and thus that its people know what is to come, sounds perilously like a claim to being an entire city of prophets. Every Muslim knows that Muhammad is the last prophet, and so the first reaction of the Ottoman in the street to the description of the up-timer’s origin is likely to be that it is clearly a lie, and a blasphemous lie at that.[16] The fact of this claim would have justified Sultan Murad’s order to execute up-timers to the average citizen of the Empire. Indeed, given the prominence of the fundamentalist Kadizadeli movement, there might have been a risk of riots if he had not given such an order.[17]

Among the men of the ulema, the words of the up-timers will have been parsed more carefully, and it will have been recognized that the up-timers themselves are not claiming to be prophets. At the same time their claim of having been translated to the seventeenth-century present from the twentieth-century future will be examined very carefully.

The first question will be "Is this true?"—was the Ring of Fire (hereafter RoF) a real event or is it simply some sort of fantastic lie maintained for unfathomable reasons? Arguing for the truth of the matter will be the amazing mechanisms and advanced skills of the up-timers, along with the fact that some of these mechanisms can be duplicated and the skills taught—this means that they are not simple illusions. The possibility that it is a very elaborate deception perpetrated by Shaitan will not be ruled out absolutely, but they will probably accept that Grantville does come from the future, at least as a working hypothesis. This however will simply have led to more questions.

Accepting the realty of the RoF means that you have to explain how it happened and why. Was it the work of man, of Allah, or of Shaitan? The ulema will have been looking at everything that they could find out to decide the answers, and what they learn will not have looked good for Grantville.

First of all, in the city of Grantville as it appeared, there were Christian Churches aplenty, and a diverse population of various sorts of Christians and even Jews and believers in certain other odd ideas (including atheists!), and not one single Muslim! Yet it would be obvious to any seventeenth-century Ottoman Muslim that, while there might be a very few Christians and Jews still hanging on to their misguided beliefs almost four centuries in the future, the vast majority of the world’s population in the twentieth century would be Muslim (and likely citizens of the Ottoman Empire as well).

Then there is the issue of the changes that Grantville brings. There is a hadith that says:

 

"Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in hell."

 

It is not correct to say that innovations (or bid’a, singular bid’at) are outlawed—in fact, in the seventeenth century the majority of Islamic jurists would require that an innovation be demonstrated to be bad to forbid it, rather than requiring that it be shown to be good to allow it. But, while Murad IV himself seems to have been rather open-minded towards inventions, particularly practical or entertaining ones, the pious, and particularly the ultrapious, who have significant influence over popular opinion in this period, tend to be very suspicious of innovations. And Grantville, which is demonstrably and suspiciously non-Islamic, is spreading innovations by the hundreds, and doing so actively.

In the ordinary course of things, an innovation would be examined in a somewhat leisurely manner to determine, based on its benefits or the harm it did (or the lack of either benefit or harm), where it falls in the five categories of actions (obligatory, recommended, permissible, offensive, and unlawful). The sheer volume of changes introduced by Grantville makes this considered method of evaluation impossible. This would be viewed in and of itself as evidence of malign intent—while some or even a majority of these innovations might be harmless or even good, it could well be that the good innovations are there to help mask the evil ones.

Then there is the issue of politics. The ideal of representative democracy promoted by Grantville is revolutionary in Europe. In the Ottoman Empire it will be seen as Satanic. The Reformation and the counter-Reformation have undercut the idea that kings rule by divine right in Europe. There has been no comparable movement in the Islamic countries. The idea that men, rather than God, should choose those who rule is simply not going to fly. From the point of view of even the most moderate Muslims in the seventeenth century, this will seem to be nothing more or less than an attempt to place men above God.

In short, all the things the up-timers think of as their good points would be viewed in a very different way by the Ottomans. To this general bad impression produced by their own words and actions will be added the views of the foreign diplomats. Needless to say, given who the Ottomans will be asking, this information will be unlikely to change the negative first impression. The foreign diplomats from countries hostile to the up-timers will not have to work very hard to make things look even worse. The diplomats may simply present the information about the Empire’s future that their agents find in the Grantville library.

To begin with, there is no detailed popular history of Murad IV’s reign in the English language comparable to those available for the Thirty Years' War. While there are popular histories of the Ottoman Empire, the breadth of their coverage tends to mean that Murad’s reign is summarized in a few pages—the information available is likely less than reliable and can most likely be summarized as "came to power as a child, was bloodthirsty and a drunk, killed his brothers except crazy Ibrahim, recaptured Erivan but lost it, recaptured Baghdad, died of cirrhosis and a morbid fear of an eclipse."[18]^,[19] This sort of description is unlikely to produce warm feelings of good fellowship in the sultan or his advisors. This lack of detailed up-time information about the current state of the Ottoman Empire may also be interpreted as evidence that Allah is shielding his people from the evil up-timers.

What Grantville will have had in significant quantities on the Ottomans was information about the end of the empire, especially its final collapse (the sick man of Europe, chapters in books about World War I), as well as information on its successor states. This won’t help much either, especially if presented by, say, a French emissary in a context aimed at preventing Ottoman cooperation with up-timers. It may safely be assumed that the reaction to the information that the "Christian powers" split up the empire and that they subsequently established a state controlled by Jews within its former borders will not be received well.[20] The Ottoman reaction to the descriptions that will be given of American support for Israel against the Arab Muslim coalitions and its direct attack on a Muslim nation in the first Gulf War can only be imagined.[21] The descriptions that would be given by the hostile diplomats of the disruptions caused by new technology, and of the effects of the political activities of Grantville and the Committees of Correspondence will also assure the Ottomans that their initial negative views of these were correct.[22]

In summary, a careful review of the information available from all sources will have led the Ottomans conclude that the up-timers are both hostile and dangerous. Given all this, the Ottoman reaction of excluding up-timers can be seen to be a reasonable and responsible response to the need to protect their citizens from the potentially malign influences of the inhabitants of Grantville. Further it is the most practical action that can be taken given the constraints imposed by the war with Persia. While some of the advisors will doubtless have expressed the opinion that the best thing to do would be to destroy the infidels immediately, the practical need to pursue the Persian war will have led most to recommend a holding action.[23]

There will have been other recommendations, of course. The expansion of the USE will be seen as threatening. In part this is because any unification of the "Christian" nations is going to be perceived as threatening—calls for the reconquest of the Holy Land are a part of European politics during this period, and unification is going to be perceived as a first step. Further, it is likely that the USE’s actions (including those of the seditious Committees of Correspondence) will appear to the Ottomans to be directed against the common assumptions underlying autocratic rule in both Europe and the empire and in particular against their special European partner, France.[24] This will lead the sultan’s advisors to recommend that the pace of the war against the Persians be increased so that it can be concluded before the USE will be ready to launch an attack and draw the empire into a two-front war.[25]

In particular, the events in Europe will have convinced the Ottomans that they must adopt the new military technologies. The structure of the Ottoman Empire means that this can be done. Murad can "fast track" things he sees as necessary, even if there are objections, using his authority as sultan.[26] And there is an already established mechanism that will allow an indirect import of the innovations—the taife-i efrenciyan, or corps of foreign experts.[27] The friendship with the French may be particularly helpful here. Since the French are adapting up-time military technology, it will be possible to adopt the French adaptations with much less upset than would be provoked by taking things directly from Grantville.[28]^,[29]

However, despite the need to innovate, there will be political problems, especially given Murad’s use of the Kadizadelis to ensure popular support for his regime. Among other things, Kadizadeli doctrine included a firm opposition to all bid’a, including innovations other groups regarded as good, or at least acceptable. For instance, when Türk Ahmed (a Kadizadeli preacher) was asked whether he proposed to get rid of spoons since their use in eating had become popular after the time of the Prophet he answered "Let the people eat with their hands. This is not zifir [a game]. Let the people eat with their hands." On the other hand, it seems likely that the Kadizadeli doctrine that requires obedience to the sultan would also, at least to an extent, tend to temper opposition to anything the sultan wanted to import, especially given the probability that technology transfer will primarily be indirect. Getting something from, say, a French expert who accepts pay from the sultan would be a different matter from approaching the infidels directly.

The Ottomans will also be trying to gather more information about the up-timers. In particular, it will be necessary to resolve the question of whether the RoF was the work of Allah or an action of Shaitan (in accordance with the will of Allah). The appearance of Grantville, with its absence of Muslims, could be a warning sent by Allah—a demonstration of the consequences of Muslims having strayed from the proper path. This may well be a popular opinion in the upper circles of government, since Murad’s reforms are justified in part as a return to the old correct ways and such an interpretation could be used to further support the need for reform. However, with its multiplicity of innovations, many promising to ease life, and implication that the future does not belong to Islam, it could also be a temptation sent by Shaitan. This will be a popular interpretation among the more conservative lower echelons of the ulema, and especially the fundamentalists such as the Kadizadelis.

From the perspective of the average citizen, these positions need not be distinguished since, whether warning or demonic temptation, the proper response of a Muslim is clearly to reject what is coming from Grantville and hew to the traditions of Islam. At higher levels, however, total rejection will be problematic. If it is a warning, the "histories" from Grantville should be studied by pious and learned men to allow the identification of pitfalls to avoid. And if it is a temptation, the innovations must nevertheless be studied least they give undue advantages to the forces of the unbelievers.

Related to the problem of the RoF is the problem of the nature of the up-timers themselves. Are they supernatural or human? If supernatural, are they mala’ikah (angels) or evil jinn?If human, are they conmen (a possibility that will have been largely eliminated as the reality of the event was confirmed), human servants of Shaitan (evil men), or simply men (misguided, of course, given that they are not Muslim)?

The possibility that the up-timers are mala’ikah would have been relatively easy to reject. Angels would not deny the Prophet, but the up-timers do not follow Islam. However, jinn can have the seeming of men.[30] The issue of whether or not the up-timers are jinn may have been settled in 1634 when some were invited to a reception for a "Turkish delegation" in Venice. Since the invitation would have only been extended with the permission of the Ottoman diplomats, it seems probable that at least one reason for it was to allow the emissaries to test the up-timers to determine their nature.^[31] Indeed, as this delegation is not included in von Hammer’s listing of Ottoman missions to Venice, and as it clearly involves more than a simple messenger, this event seems to be a change produced by the Ring of Fire.[32] It thus seems likely that the Ottomans will have decided by 1635 at the latest that the up-timers are human.

The question of what kind of human—innocent or evil—is more complex and it is unlikely to ...