In the Ottoman dynasty, the upbringing of a prince did not end with an education given in the rooms of the palace. When a prospective ruler reached a certain maturity, he was sent to head a sanjak, where he held a divan, heard cases, distributed timars and, when necessary, gathered his troops and set out on campaign. This practice, known as "going out to the sanjak" (sancağa çıkma), lasted from the early years of the Ottoman state until the late sixteenth century and shaped the way the dynasty reproduced itself. Which sanjak was chosen for a prince indicated, beyond the duty itself, his place in the order of succession; in this respect sanjak appointments were read as an unspoken declaration of the heir. Amasya was one of the oldest and most prestigious centers of this system.

Origins

Placing the children of a ruler at the head of a province so that they might gain administrative experience was not an Ottoman invention. Under the Umayyads and Abbasids, princes served as governors, commanders and leaders of the pilgrimage, and their success in these posts weighed decisively in the choice of heirs and in accessions to the throne. The achievements of Ma'mun as governor of Khorasan during his princehood helped him in his struggle against his brother Amin and in seizing the caliphate. Among the Ghaznavids, princes were given a province on reaching a certain age and set out only after parading before the sultan with their retinue and army. Among the Great Seljuks, princes who received the title of malik were granted a city or region as an iqta, and they fed their own armies and ghulams while heading local authority.

Among the Anatolian Seljuks, princes were assigned to a province under the supervision of experienced statesmen called atabeg or lala; once a year they came before the sultan, reported on their activities and put forward requests for their regions. From the thirteenth century onward, the persons responsible for the education of princes in Anatolia were called lala, a new name the atabeg institution took under Persian influence; a similar structure is found among the Mamluks, the Aq Qoyunlu and the Qara Qoyunlu. The Ottomans made this inheritance a regular part of provincial administration. According to some accounts, the main difference between the atabeg system and the Ottoman sanjak practice was this: where princes were also given military authority under the atabeg system, central authority weakened, and after the dissolution of the Great Seljuk state the atabegates emerged as independent powers. Among the Ottomans, by contrast, the powers of princes were in time fitted into a framework controlled from the center.

From Principality to Sanjak

In the early Ottoman period, newly conquered lands were turned into sanjaks, in a manner similar to the practice of earlier Turkish states, and a bey who had rendered service or a member of the dynasty was appointed at their head. It is related that already in the time of Osman Bey, the places taken were made administrative districts and assigned to beys who had served the policy of conquest and also to members of the dynasty and to princes. Orhan Bey's sending of his son Süleyman Pasha to Balıkesir after its capture is regarded as the first application of this practice. The first Ottoman ruler to rise to the throne out of the sanjak system was Murad I. In the founding years, the most important sanjaks in which princes served were frontier regions; after the time of Murad I, lands taken from the Anatolian principalities in particular were turned into princely sanjaks.

The map of this transformation is clear. Balıkesir, taken from the Karasids; Kütahya, which Germiyanoğlu Süleyman Shah left to the Ottomans; Manisa, taken from the Saruhanids; Isparta and Antalya, taken from the Hamidids; and Sivas and Amasya, taken from Kadı Burhaneddin, became the most important centers of princely sanjaks. Sending a member of the dynasty to the capital of a fallen principality meant winning the goodwill of a population accustomed to being governed by a bey. It also demonstrated the importance the dynasty attached to the region, and it was hoped that the area to which a prince came would behave with greater sensitivity in matters of loyalty to the state. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries princely marriages served the same political aim; princes married daughters of Christian dynastic figures against whom the Ottomans were fighting in Rumelia and daughters of the Muslim beys of Anatolia, and these ties reinforced the legitimacy of the newly acquired lands. Once unity was established in Anatolia and Rumelia was taken, from the mid-fifteenth century on, such marriages came to an end.

Rumelia stayed outside this arrangement. After Savcı, the son of Murad I, rebelled in Rumelia, sending Ottoman princes out to sanjaks there was forbidden. The consideration that Rumelia counted as a theater of war, and the possibility that a future ruler might be captured in battle, may also have played a part in this choice. The only exception is the sanjak of Semendire: Bayezid II, under the pressure of his son Selim, assigned him this sanjak on the Rumelian side, but before the appointment could be put into effect, Selim I deposed his father. Among the princely sanjaks outside Anatolia, Kefe is also mentioned; it is related that Süleyman the Magnificent served there in his princehood.

What Made a Place a Princely Sanjak

A city was expected to have three qualities to be counted as a princely sanjak. First, the sanjaks given to princes and beys in the early period had to lie in a frontier zone; this mattered also for determining the prince who would later take the throne, because the sanjak on the frontier usually held the ruler's eldest son, and heading the military power of the state gave him a serious chance of eventually ascending the throne. The second quality was that the city had been one of the capitals of the old Anatolian principalities. The third was that it was a center of history, culture, civilization and trade. Amasya, as a capital taken from the state of Kadı Burhaneddin, and with its madrasas and the market along the Yeşilırmak, met all of these criteria.

Princes could not choose the sanjak to which they would go. Certain regions came in time to be accepted as princely sanjaks, and these were designated as the places to which princes recognized as heirs were sent. In the early period the term "bey sanjak" was used for the sanjaks given to princes. After Yıldırım Bayezid conquered Amasya, princes recognized as heirs began to be sent to this sanjak; after Selim I, the Saruhan sanjak centered on Manisa came to the fore. Among the cities in which princes served, Amasya, Kütahya, Trabzon, Manisa and Konya stand first. To these may be added Antalya, Kefe, Bolu, Isparta and Kastamonu. Historical tables show that the sanjaks producing the most rulers were Saruhan, that is Manisa, and Amasya.

From Palace Education to the Sanjak

Until the early seventeenth century, the education of princes had two stages. The first was theoretical instruction within the palace, and until they reached the age of ten to thirteen, princes took lessons from the leading teachers of the time. The place set aside for this in the palace was called the princes' school (şehzade okulu); princes also trained in riding and combat in the third court of the palace together with the pages (iç oğlanları). They were taught protocol and politics, and care was taken that they acquire the qualities of a ruler. Accounts that describe the curriculum as a wide program ranging from philosophy to Greek and Latin literature and from astronomy to the history of nations are not confirmed by contemporary sources. At the end of the theoretical education the prince was circumcised, and great ceremonies were held on the occasion.

After the circumcision the practical education began, and the prince worked as sanjak governor in the sanjak to which he was assigned. There was no fixed rule on the age of going out to the sanjak. Some princes were assigned very young, others at about twenty; it is reported, for instance, that Süleyman's son Şehzade Mehmed went out to his sanjak at twenty. Although fifteen is a frequently cited age, it cannot be said that it was applied as a norm. When setting out, the prince was given his lala, his teachers, his mother and a large retinue. The lala's supervisory authority over the prince extended as far as the right to report him to the divan over an improper act. All the supplies and personnel the party needed were provided by the state.

Powers and Revenues in the Sanjak

Princes held broad administrative powers in their sanjaks. They kept a staff resembling the divan organization at the center, and in the sixteenth century the number of this staff rose to as many as 2,000. The prince could appoint and dismiss the officials in his retinue, grant timars and salaries, raise existing timars and salaries, and punish or pardon. He was also responsible for the economic, commercial, building and social activities of the sanjak; he had to report these to the center and obtain approval. Once approval was obtained, the prince issued orders under his own tughra. Princely tughras, like those of rulers, had three flags and two curves, and the tughra-bearing orders written for the administration of the sanjak were called tevki-i hümayun, as in the sultan's decrees. This small court order established in the sanjak served as a rehearsal of the state organization at the center.

Sending a prince to a sanjak also had an economic side. Since the expenses of the princes placed a heavy burden on the treasury, all the revenues of the sanjak to which they went were assigned to them, and the central treasury was thus relieved. Princes benefited from the has revenues of the sanjak where they were, and the taxes collected from the commercial activity of the city were also set aside for them. Up to the sixteenth century in particular, one fifth of the booty taken in operations they carried out independently while in the sanjak, and in campaigns in which they took part as commander (serdar), held an important place among their sources of income. In this way the sanjak gave the prince both a field of duty and a financial resource sufficient to maintain his own retinue.

Military responsibility stood first among the duties of a prince. Until Selim I, princes could set out on campaign at the head of the army at their father's wish, act against those who rebelled or caused unrest in their sanjaks, and even respond to attacks by neighboring states. In the time of Murad I, Yıldırım Bayezid and Yakub Bey had commanded the wings of the army. Such duties gave a prince the chance to show that he was a good soldier and to win esteem in the eyes of his father, the army and the notables of the state. From the sixteenth century, actual command gave way to guard duty. When the ruler left the center on a campaign, he appointed one of his sons as deputy with the title of kaymakam. After the time of Süleyman the Magnificent, the command duties of princes came to an end.

Amasya's Place in the Sanjak System

As one of the first sanjaks of the system, Amasya was a center in which Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II served as sanjak governors. Alaeddin, the son of Murad II, Şehzade Ahmed, the son of Bayezid II, and Şehzade Mustafa and Şehzade Bayezid, the sons of Süleyman, also served as administrators here. The city's being the center of a sanjak near the eastern frontier fed the idea that success in the border struggles would give the princes there an advantage on the road to the throne. That it was one of the bases from which Çelebi Mehmed restored the state in the Interregnum also strengthened the city's place in the memory of the dynasty. The rise of the Safavid state in the east in the sixteenth century, and the unrest seen among the Turkmen groups of Anatolia, gave Amasya a frontier-watching function as well.

The unspoken language of sanjak appointments worked openly in the case of Amasya. The sultan did not declare which son he regarded as his heir, but a prince sent to a weightier or more favorable sanjak was regarded by those around him and by his brothers as close to the throne. Şehzade Ahmed, the son of Bayezid II, saw himself here as the strongest candidate for the throne, and Şehzade Mustafa, the son of Süleyman, settled in Amasya with the same expectation. Such expectations sharpened rivalry within the dynasty. The settling of a prince in Amasya increased both his own claim and the suspicions of his brothers.

In the mid-sixteenth century this function of Amasya began to fade. After the killing of Şehzade Mustafa, the importance of the princely sanjaks nearer Istanbul rose, Amasya's distance from the capital turned into a disadvantage, and Manisa came to the fore as the only princely sanjak. Thereafter Amasya was administered by sanjak governors appointed from the center. Some sources tie the end of the princely sanjak to Şehzade Bayezid's flight to Iran in 1559, and state that no prince served in Amasya after that date. The difference between the two accounts is small, since Şehzade Mustafa's execution in 1553 and Şehzade Bayezid's flight are successive links of the same period. In both approaches the result is the same: in the second half of the sixteenth century Amasya lost its character as a center of princes.

The lively cultural life of the princely palace also persisted throughout this period. Figures such as the historian Şükrullah, the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah, Tacî Bey and his sons Câfer and Sâdî Çelebi, the scholar Müeyyedzade Abdurrahman Çelebi, Zenbilli Ali Efendi and the physician Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin grew up in this environment. Dernschwam, who came to Amasya in 1555 with the Austrian embassy, describes the princely palace as a plain one-storey brick building at the foot of the mountain, with gardens around it, and records that Süleyman was staying there.

The Narrowing of Powers and the Throne Struggles

The main drawback of the sanjak system was that princes who gained power and experience could act independently at a distance from the center. When the sultan died, news was sent to the princes in the sanjaks, and the candidate who received it reached Istanbul with his retinue and took the throne. Princes who could not ascend the throne sometimes rebelled. The first princely rebellion in Ottoman history is the revolt of Savcı Bey, the son of Murad I, in Rumelia. In the following centuries the rebellion of Şehzade Cem against Bayezid II, Selim I's rising against his father and seizure of the throne, and the rebellion of Şehzade Bayezid, the son of Süleyman the Magnificent, formed the main links of this line. Cem's capture in the West had consequences that led to a long period of caution in Ottoman foreign policy. The struggle for the throne between Şehzade Ahmed, who had grown up in Amasya, and Selim is also cited as one of the most striking examples of this danger.

These events limited the sanjak system step by step. Princes who had moved relatively freely before the reign of Selim I began to be sent to sanjaks near the center so that they could be controlled more easily, and the powers of the lalas were increased so that the princes were rendered passive. In the time of Süleyman, the affair of Şehzade Mustafa and the rivalry between Şehzade Selim and Şehzade Bayezid tightened control further. Manisa became the heir's sanjak, and only the prince recognized as heir was sent to a sanjak. Thus the system turned from an order in which several princes at once set up small courts in different corners of the state into a narrow practice in which a single heir was trained in Manisa.

Of the thirteen rulers who sat on the throne during the roughly three centuries from Orhan Bey to the accession of Ahmed I, eleven, apart from Mehmed I and Selim I, ascended as the eldest surviving son. This figure suggests that the rule, though not official, had become custom: the eldest son possessing the qualities of rule was in effect regarded as heir to the throne. Fratricide was the dark counterpart of this structure. Practices such as Osman Bey's removal of his uncle Dündar and Yıldırım Bayezid's having his brother Yakub strangled were in a sense made official by the provision of Mehmed the Conqueror that turned fratricide into law. The main justification was the protection of the ruler's sovereignty and absolute authority; the sultan who took the throne eliminated the other members of the dynasty he regarded as threats to himself and his sons. Similar practices are seen in other states as well; in the Ottoman dynasty they acquired a systematic character over time. In the same period the neighboring Safavid dynasty also assigned its princes to provinces, but after the death of Abbas I in 1629 some of the princes were blinded and others killed, and the practice of provincial assignment was abolished.

The Abandonment of the Sanjak Practice

The last prince to go out to a sanjak was Mehmed III. Having grown up in the sanjak of Manisa, he took the throne in 1595 and, on succeeding his father Murad III, had his nineteen brothers put to death as soon as he sat on the throne. This execution provoked a marked reaction among the public and the administrators, and in the following period it helped strengthen the tendency that princes should not be touched. In the time of Mehmed III the practice of going out to the sanjak came to an end; the three-century custom of princes serving as administrators in sanjaks before accession was cut off at this date. The one or two appointments to sanjaks attempted in order to continue the old custom were not carried out.

Mehmed III's son Ahmed I became the first Ottoman ruler to take the throne without having gone out to a sanjak. He was young when he acceded, and it was not yet known whether he would leave an heir; this uncertainty ensured that the princes in the palace, especially his brother Mustafa, were not touched. When Ahmed I died in 1617 and his brother Mustafa I took the throne, the custom of the "eldest son," which had lasted three centuries, was ended, and the principle of seniority (ekberiyet), under which the eldest male member of the dynasty became ruler, that is the principle of "ekber ve erşed," was adopted. Thus the throne came to be defined, in place of an inheritance passing from father to son, as a right belonging to the eldest male member of the dynasty. The main aim of this arrangement was to prevent throne struggles and the sufferings they caused.

Sources differ on who abolished the practice. In some accounts Mehmed III is named, in others Ahmed I. The distinction depends on where the line between "going out to the sanjak" and the "cage" (kafes) is drawn. Since the sanjak practice was an arrangement applied to princes, it is argued that the decision to end it could only have been made by the father, that is Mehmed III; Ahmed I, the first ruler to take the throne without going out to a sanjak, is cited as the initiator of the cage order, while the first ruler to take the throne from this order was his brother Mustafa I. The fact that the princes who would succeed Mehmed III were young also had a share in the move to the cage.

The Cage Order

From 1617 a closed life known as the kafes began for princes inside the palace. Princes confined to the palace lived relatively freely only during their fathers' reigns; they received a good education, went out with their fathers to the selamliks and on excursions, and kept their own household staff. After the father's death this freedom gave way to strict supervision, and the prince lived a kind of imprisonment in the apartment assigned to him, waiting his turn for the sultanate. These princes lived in a place called the "Şimşirlik" because it adjoined the Harem and was surrounded by box trees. İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı writes that there were twelve apartments there, each with several rooms, and a small garden enclosed by high walls around them.

A prince in the cage had ten or twelve concubines and aghas from the treasury, the pantry and the campaign ward. They were not permitted to correspond with anyone, and the sultan's permission was required for anyone entering their quarters. They were not received in the sultan's presence except for holiday greetings. The principle that princes were not to be touched was closely watched by the kapıkulu; in some cases the soldiers asked to see the princes in order to learn whether they were alive. The princes passed their time with crafts such as jewelry, turning, woodworking, bow making, leatherwork, ivory and embroidery. In this period they were not allowed to have male children, and any pregnancy resulting from contact with concubines was ended at once. The prohibition relaxed from the Tanzimat onward; Yusuf Izzeddin Efendi, the son of Abdülaziz, and Selahaddin Efendi, the son of Murad V, were born during their fathers' time as heir, and their births were kept secret for a while. With the abandonment of Topkapı Palace, the princes were dispersed among various palaces and supervision relaxed further. They became members of the dynasty who, like those in Europe, took on various duties and were closely known to the public.

Assessing the Consequences

The abandonment of the sanjak order brought the state both gains and losses. Throne struggles were forestalled, and in this respect central authority was strengthened. On the other hand, princes came to the throne without acquiring experience of the state, and their ties with the people weakened. It is a frequently voiced assessment that some of the princes confined to the cage lost their mental health in time and withdrew from affairs of state. These judgments rest mostly on later observations and cannot be considered equally valid for every ruler. Nevertheless, the lack of administrative experience in a sanjak among the rulers who came to the throne from the early seventeenth century onward has been a problem constantly cited in discussions of state governance.

According to Eroğlu's finding, the institution of princehood among the Ottomans divides into two periods: the period in which princes served as administrators in the provinces until the late sixteenth century, and the period in which, with the abolition of the sanjak practice, they were condemned to a closed life in the palace. Amasya was one of the centers of the first of these periods and for centuries served as a state school in which the future sultans were trained. The title "City of Princes" arose from this institutional role. After the sanjak practice ended, Amasya became a provincial center governed by sanjak governors appointed from the center; the trace left by the princely palace, the madrasas and the tombs preserved the city's place in dynastic history in the following centuries as well.

Chronology

Fourteenth century, reign of Orhan Bey: After the capture of Balıkesir, his son Süleyman Pasha is sent there, and the practice of going out to the sanjak begins.

Reign of Murad I: The rebellion of Şehzade Savcı in Rumelia; afterward, sending princes to sanjaks in Rumelia is forbidden.

Reign of Yıldırım Bayezid: After the conquest of Amasya, princes recognized as heirs begin to be sent to this sanjak.

Fifteenth century: Çelebi Mehmed, Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II serve as sanjak governors in Amasya; fratricide is legally recognized by the law of Mehmed the Conqueror.

1553: Execution of Şehzade Mustafa; the importance of Manisa grows and Amasya's character as a princely sanjak weakens.

1559: Şehzade Bayezid's flight to Iran; according to some sources, the end of princely assignments in Amasya.

1595: Accession of Mehmed III, the last prince to go out to a sanjak, and abandonment of the sanjak practice.

1617: On the death of Ahmed I, Mustafa I takes the throne; the principle of seniority and the cage order take hold.

Sources

Academic studies

Other sources

  • Hasan Buran, "Sancağa Çıkma Usulü (Sancak Sistemi) Nedir?", Tarih Portalı, 22 April 2023. https://tarihportali.net/sancaga-cikma-usulu-sancak-sistemi-nedir/
  • Haldun Eroğlu, Osmanlı Devletinde Şehzadelik Kurumu, Ankara 2004.
  • Feridun M. Emecen, XVI. Asırda Manisa Kazâsı, Ankara 1989.
  • Mehmet Akman, Osmanlı Devletinde Kardeş Katli, İstanbul 1997.

Online sources