The life of an Ottoman prince was divided by a few distinct thresholds: birth, the start of schooling, circumcision, marriage and the departure to a provincial post. Each threshold was marked by a ceremony, and these ceremonies expressed the joy of the family and also the power, generosity and standing of the dynasty before its subjects. In the words of the Islamic Encyclopaedia of the Turkish Religious Foundation (TDV), the circumcisions and weddings of princes were occasions for ceremonies and entertainments lasting for days, and for the presentation of robes of honour and gifts. Amasya hosted Ottoman princes as sanjak governors for roughly one hundred and eighty-two years, so it sits squarely inside this ceremonial world. The sources, however, contain no detailed description of a princely circumcision festival or wedding held in Amasya itself. The great festivities were usually held in Edirne and Istanbul, and the prince in Amasya was summoned to them.

The Place of Ceremony in Ottoman Princely Life

The word şehzade is Persian for the son of a ruler, and in the Ottoman world it denoted the male members of the dynasty. In the earliest period the princes were known by titles such as pasha, emir, çelebi or beylerbey; the senior princes used pasha and emir, the younger ones çelebi. Because every prince was a potential heir, his birth was received in the palace with great rejoicing, and the sultan's children were not distinguished from one another by the mother who bore them. Information from the seventeenth century says that princely births were announced to the public, celebrated with cannon salutes and festivities, and followed by a congratulatory ceremony in the palace attended by the statesmen. When a prince was weaned, three palace pages of the privy chamber were assigned to his household; the eldest was the chief lala, and the eunuchs under his command also bore the title of lala. The lala was the key figure of Ottoman princely upbringing: he accompanied the prince to his sanjak, conducted the administration in practice, and often shared the prince's political fate.

Education had two stages. In the first, the prince received theoretical instruction inside the palace from the most distinguished teachers of the day; the second stage was the practical apprenticeship in government that began when he was sent out to a sanjak. Circumcision and marriage fell between or within these two stages, and on each occasion the dynasty displayed its splendour. Earlier Turkic states had also granted ceremonial privileges to princes. Among the Seljuks the sultans had the nevbet, the ceremonial drum salute, played five times a day while the princes had it played three times, a small example of how the rank of a ruler's son was measured even by the order of drumbeats. The Ottoman dynasty turned this inheritance into a broader calendar of ceremonies, and Amasya became one of the oldest centres of the sanjak life that formed the second stage.

The Circumcision at Edirne in 1457: Bayezid Summoned from Amasya

The earliest and best documented princely circumcision directly involving Amasya is the festival held at Edirne in the spring of 1457 for Mehmed the Conqueror's sons Bayezid and Mustafa. Bayezid had been born in Didymoteichon in 1448 and was sent to the sanjak of Amasya at the age of seven. His brother Mustafa was at Manisa. On his return from the Belgrade campaign, Mehmed decided to have both sons circumcised, summoned them to the capital and sent invitations to neighbouring rulers. Thanks to the account of Aşıkpaşazade, the course of the festival is known in detail. According to him, all the sanjak governors and the notables of every city came to Edirne, the roads were filled for days with guests, camps were pitched around Edirne, and the sultan's pavilion was set up on an island in the Meriç. The festival is dated to 861 in the Islamic calendar and is cited in Ottoman sources as an example of the protocol the sultan followed toward the learned, the dervishes and the begs.

The ceremony was spread over three days, each devoted to a different group. On the first day the scholars were invited. The sultan took his seat, noted scholars of the day were placed on his right and left, and Mevlana Şükrullah and Hızır Bey Çelebi sat opposite. The reciters read the Quran, the scholars commented on the verses, learned conversation followed, and then the men of letters recited panegyrics and ghazals. After the tables were laid, the Quran was recited again, sweets were served, trays were set before each guest, and the sultan bestowed gifts on the guests. Aşıkpaşazade writes that he himself filled a cloth with the offerings, and that many a poor man arrived poor and left rich. On the second day the dervishes and the community of the poor were entertained, and on the third day the begs and emirs. At the end of the third day games were played on horseback and prizes were given to the winners. Aşıkpaşazade adds that such a festival is something a ruler arranges in order to display his worth and greatness.

This account matters for Amasya in two respects. First, the summoning of a seven-year-old governor of Amasya away from his post shows that circumcision was regarded as a palace ceremony. Second, the order of the festival, with scholars received first, then dervishes, then begs, shows before which social groups the dynasty wished to display itself in Mehmed's reign. Throughout his governorship Bayezid learned calligraphy from the Amasya master Şeyh Hamdullah and received his certificate from him; the circle of the prince at Amasya was woven with art and learning as well as ceremony.

Prince Korkut and the Circumcision of 1479

Prince Korkut, reported to have been born in Amasya, was a son of Bayezid. According to the Islamic Encyclopaedia there is no clear record of his year of birth, and the sources mention 1467 or 1469. In 1479, at the wish of his grandfather Mehmed, Korkut was sent to Istanbul with his brothers to be circumcised. This is a second example showing that the sons of princes raised in provincial posts were also called to the capital for circumcision. The events that followed, however, took a far graver turn than the ceremony itself. Mehmed died the next year, tension rose between the supporters of Prince Cem and those who wanted Bayezid, and Grand Vizier İshak Pasha seated Korkut on the throne as regent until his father arrived. Tursun Bey interprets this regency as the sultan's slaves waiting for him only in appearance and, in reality, for his father. That a prince's son who came to the capital for circumcision could within a year become the deputy ruler in a state crisis shows that these ceremonies cannot be considered apart from politics.

Bayezid learned of his father's death in Amasya. He set out with four thousand horsemen, reached Üsküdar on 21 May 1481, and entered Topkapı Palace after attending his father's funeral. On leaving Amasya he left his eldest son Ahmed in his place as governor. Bayezid had governed Amasya for twenty-seven years; sources relate that he invited his teacher Şeyh Hamdullah, with his family, to Istanbul, an important step for the development of the Ottoman school of calligraphy. The journey was an accession journey rather than a circumcision or a wedding, yet it remains the best recorded ceremonial movement from Amasya toward the centre.

Circumcision Festivals under Süleyman the Magnificent: 1530 and 1539

The principal palace festivals of the sixteenth century were the circumcision festivals held at the Atmeydanı. After the conquest of Istanbul the Hippodrome area continued as the Atmeydanı, a venue for horse races and javelin games, and thanks to its proximity to the palace it became the centre of holiday festivities and palace weddings. The circumcision of Süleyman the Magnificent's princes Mustafa, Mehmed and Selim was held here in 1530. According to the Islamic Encyclopaedia, the festivities passed with banquets, juggling and acrobatic shows, horse races and fireworks at night, and the sultan threw gold and silver coins to the crowd from the window of the divan hall of İbrahim Pasha's palace. According to one study, Christian rulers and representatives of Iran also attended the ceremony and presented the sultan with valuable gifts. The seating also deserves notice: at the sultan's right sat the Mufti Kemalpaşazade Ahmed Şemseddin Efendi and the Chief Judge Kadri Çelebi, at his left Muhyiddin Çelebi, while the second table was reserved for viziers, the third for pashas and the fourth for scholars, and a separate table was set for foreign envoys.

The Mustafa named at this festival is the prince who would later become governor of Amasya. He was fifteen at the time and his mother was Mahidevran Hatun. His standing side by side with his two brothers at this ceremony, as the eldest son of the sultan, shows that the dynasty made no protocol distinction among the princes, and that distinctions appeared later with political developments. Mustafa came to Amasya more than ten years after this festival.

The second festival, on 11 November 1539, belonged to Süleyman's sons Bayezid and Cihangir. Bayezid had been born in Istanbul in 1526; he would later be remembered as governor of Amasya and, after his struggle for the throne with his brother Selim, would take refuge in Iran in 1559. During the days of this festival the marriage contract of the sultan's daughter Mihrimah Sultan and Rüstem Pasha was also concluded; according to research, Rüstem Pasha had served in the provinces as a beylerbey and was appointed grand vizier in 1544. That a circumcision festival was used to announce one of the most influential political marriages of the age shows that these ceremonies were also a stage on which the balance of power within the palace was declared.

1582: The Circumcision of Prince Mehmed and the Guild Processions

The festival known as the most magnificent of the Ottoman palace was held, again at the Atmeydanı, in 1582 for Murad III's son Prince Mehmed. Murad had it arranged immediately after Sinan Pasha returned from Iran with the envoy. The festival began on 29 May, the anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul. The Islamic Encyclopaedia writes that it lasted fifty-two days and fifty-two nights, whereas Yılmaz Öztuna speaks of fifty-six days, until 24 July; the difference between the two figures may arise from how the opening and closing days are counted. According to Öztuna, Prince Mehmed was three days past his sixteenth birthday and had not yet been circumcised. The operation was performed by the fourth vizier, Cerrah Mehmed Pasha, who is said to have received from the sultan ten thousand ducats, cloth, a gold basin and ewer, and robes of honour. The circumcision took place on 7 July.

The organisation of the festival was divided among the statesmen of the period. According to Öztuna, the Beylerbey of Rumelia, İbrahim Pasha, was festival master and the Beylerbey of Anatolia, Cafer Pasha, was chief sherbet-maker; the Grand Admiral Kılıç Ali Pasha attended to the structures to be built, and the Janissary Agha Ferhad Pasha to order in the city. The sultan opened the festival by coming from Topkapı Palace to İbrahim Pasha's palace beside the Atmeydanı, followed by the prince in a robe embroidered with gold thread. When the prince kissed his father's hand, the military band began to play. Throughout the festival the musical ensembles never fell silent. Sugar figures of elephants, lions, leopards, horses, camels and giraffes were made at life size and distributed to the public. The viziers and foreign envoys presented gifts; according to the account, the gifts of the viziers and the Kahyabey alone amounted to one hundred and fifteen thousand ducats. For as long as the festival lasted, every night a thousand loaves, a thousand trays of pilaf and about twenty head of cattle were served. At night the fireworks prepared by the navy lit the city. Among the entertainments of those fifty-two days the guild processions were especially remarkable; the miniatures of the Surname of Murad III vividly show tradesmen working in shops on wheels and bath attendants washing customers in a moving bathhouse, which makes the festival a valuable source on the craftsmen of the age. The festival ended earlier than planned because of the death of a prince born two days before, and the sultan ordered it stopped.

The link of this festival with Amasya lies in the father's past. In 1566, when his father Selim II became sultan, Murad III was sent to Amasya at the age of twenty-one and was the last prince appointed governor of the city. Transferred to Manisa a year and a half later, Murad sixteen years afterwards organised this festival for his own son, which can be regarded as the peak of the ceremonial tradition that a prince raised in a sanjak passed on to the next generation.

A Circumcision in the Sanjak: The Example of Manisa

Circumcision festivals were not always held in the capital. According to the encyclopaedia article, Murad III was circumcised at the palace of Manisa in April 1557, while his father Selim II was governor of the sanjak of Saruhan. The details of this circumcision do not appear in the sources, but it shows that circumcision ceremonies could also be held in princely sanjaks. Since no similar record exists for Amasya, it cannot be said that a circumcision festival was held there.

Marriages

Princely marriages enter the sources as an instrument of politics more than as wedding ceremonies. According to the Islamic Encyclopaedia, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Ottoman princes married daughters of the Christian dynasties contested in Rumelia and of the Muslim beys of Anatolia. The Ottomans strengthened their legitimacy over the lands they had taken through these kinships, consolidating it in the eyes of both the administration and the local population. From the middle of the fifteenth century, as unity was established in Anatolia and Rumelia was taken, marriages with the daughters of Muslim and Christian dynasties came to an end. After the practice of sending princes to sanjaks was abolished, the marriage of princes was forbidden.

Recorded marriages of the Amasya princes are limited. We mostly encounter indirect information, such as the births of princes' children: Bayezid's eldest son Ahmed, born in Amasya, served as governor of Amasya for thirty years, the longest of any prince, and Ahmed's son Murad was left in the governorship of Amasya when his father went to Istanbul for the throne, and governed the city between 1511 and 1512. This offers no wedding narrative, but it shows that princely families lived in Amasya for long periods and that children were born there.

Ceremonies of Departure to the Sanjak

After circumcision, the second great threshold in a prince's life was the departure to a sanjak. This meant a prince being sent as governor to a sanjak with his lala, his teachers and his retinue. The ages of the princes who went to Amasya differed considerably. Bayezid was appointed at seven, Murad II at twelve, Alaeddin at fifteen and Mustafa at twenty-four. Murad II went out to his sanjak with his lala Yörgüç Pasha, and experienced statesmen such as Çandarlı İbrahim and Yahya Pasha were appointed lalas to Bayezid.

How these departures were ceremonially conducted is best known from Prince Mehmed's (later Mehmed III) journey to Manisa on 17 December 1583; there is no direct description of a ceremony for Amasya, but the order of this departure shows the general form of such departures. According to Öztuna, the prince, six months and twenty-three days past seventeen, was accompanied by two thousand cavalry and infantry, a retinue of fifteen hundred persons including teachers, lalas, aides, counsellors and concubines. The prince boarded the flagship galley of Grand Admiral Kılıç Ali Pasha, and the grand vizier, the viziers, the scholars and the notables saw him off in ceremony. The sultan's teacher Sadeddin Efendi gave the prince advice on how to conduct himself and prayed for him. Eleven years later, on his father's death, the prince returned from this sanjak and took the throne. The details of this departure show that a prince sent to a sanjak was received as the future of the state rather than as a mere governor.

For Amasya, administrative documents of the departure have been preserved rather than ceremonial descriptions. Süleyman issued a decree sending Prince Mustafa to Amasya; because of the possibility of an attack from the Iranian side during the Hungarian campaign, he ordered his son to be in the region and to go there immediately. The same decree states that Grand Vizier Süleyman Pasha had been dispatched with Janissaries and additional forces, and that the neighbouring sanjak governors were coming in that direction. Mustafa left Manisa on 16 June 1541; this date rests on the entry in Şerafettin Turan's encyclopaedia article. Özcan's study places the appointment in 1538. This difference is one example of the source disputes surrounding the period of the governorship.

Information about Mustafa's retinue in Amasya is better preserved. In 1548 he came from Amasya to Sivas to see his father, who was setting out on the Iranian campaign by way of Van, and a few days later returned with permission. In place of the prince's teacher Hayreddin Efendi of Merzifon, Sürûrî Mustafa Efendi was appointed by the sultan's order. His chancellor was Hamdî Hamdullah Çelebi, his treasurer Lutfullah Lutfî Bey, his divan secretary Fazlî Çelebi; the judge Kâmî Muhammed Efendi, Tabibzade Lutfî Efendi, Seyrekzade Edâyî Beğ and two Çelebis were among his companions. His lala was Cafer Pasha; later Rüstem Pasha summoned him to Istanbul and the sanjak governor of Köstendil, Ahmed Pasha, took his place. These details show that the prince's court worked like a small government office. Hans Dernschwam, who passed through Amasya in April 1554, notes that the palace where the prince had lived was an extremely modest structure. The palace of Amasya was functional and plain, quite unlike the Istanbul palace at whose Atmeydanı the festivals were staged; what stood out in Amasya was the daily order of administration.

The End of Princely Ceremonies

The practice of sending princes to sanjaks ended in the late sixteenth century. According to the Islamic Encyclopaedia, under Süleyman the affair of Prince Mustafa and the struggle for the throne between Selim and Bayezid tightened the supervision of princes still further. Manisa became the sanjak of the heir apparent, and only the heir was sent to a sanjak. The last prince appointed to Amasya was Murad, aged twenty-one, in 1566; he was transferred to Manisa a year and a half later. According to Özcan, the growing importance of the princely sanjaks near Istanbul was a factor. The records give twelve princes who served in Amasya as çelebi sultans, six of whom later became sultan. When the practice of the sanjak departure disappeared, most ceremonies were drawn back inside the palace.

Chronology

1438: On the death of Prince Ahmed the governorship of Amasya fell vacant; according to Özcan, eight-year-old Mehmed II was appointed in his place, though Halil İnalcık notes that this claim is doubtful.

1454: Mehmed the Conqueror's son Bayezid was appointed governor of Amasya at the age of seven.

1457 (AH 861): The circumcision festival of Bayezid and Mustafa was held at Edirne.

1479: Prince Korkut was sent with his brothers to Istanbul for circumcision.

1481: Mehmed the Conqueror died; Bayezid left Amasya and took the throne.

1530: The circumcision festival of Süleyman's sons Mustafa, Mehmed and Selim was held at the Atmeydanı.

11 November 1539: The circumcision of Bayezid and Cihangir; in the same days, the marriage contract of Mihrimah Sultan and Rüstem Pasha.

16 June 1541: Prince Mustafa set out from Manisa for Amasya (encyclopaedia record).

April 1557: Murad III was circumcised at Manisa.

1566: Prince Murad became the last princely governor appointed to Amasya.

1582: The circumcision festival of Prince Mehmed, son of Murad III, was held at the Atmeydanı.

17 December 1583: Prince Mehmed set out for the sanjak of Manisa.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

  • Yılmaz Öztuna, Türk Tarihinden Yapraklar, MEB, Istanbul 1989, pp. 314-317

Other sources

  • Aşıkpaşazade, Tevarih-i Âl-i Osman (account of the 1457 circumcision festival)

Online sources