The sultans, who professed and maintained Sunni Islam, also took care to address the needs of their Shii Muslim subjects, competing with the Safevids to decorate the Karbala and Nejef shrines (that commemorated crucial events in Shii Islamic history) during the later sixteenth century, and continuing such support later on.
In addition, the dynasty energetically asserted its physical presence in the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, reminding all of the connection between the dynasty and the Holy Places. There, prominent inscriptions proclaimed Ottoman largesse in repairing structures already nearly a millennium old, giving the dynasty a prominent place in the life of these Holy Places that it jealously guarded.
In the late nineteenth century, for example, Sultan Abd ¨ulhamit II prevented other Muslim rulers from decorating the Holy Places, just as his predecessors had competed with the Moghul emperors in the sixteenth century. Similarly, the Ottomans sought to monopolize the provisioning of the local population in Mecca. The sultans also took considerable pains to assure the safety of the pilgrims traveling to Mecca and Medina to fulfill the sacred duties. As Ottoman military power continued to weaken, the regime emphasized its identity as a Muslim state in an unprecedented manner.
As seen (chapter 5), the title and role of caliph began to emerge as an instrument of international politics in the later eighteenth century. During the first half of the eighteenth century, the sultans began taking particularly careful measures to protect and fortify the pilgrimage route from Damascus to the Holy Cities, building forts and bolstering garrisons. Wahhabi revolutionaries from Arabia, deliberately seekin to undermine Ottoman legitimacy, disrupted the pilgrimage during the Methods of rule 97 Plate 2 Interior view of Nusretiye (Victory) Mosque of Sultan Mahmut II (1808–1839) Personal collection of author.
eighteenth century and, in 1803, captured Mecca itself. Sultan Mahmut II then asked Muhammad Ali Pasha in Egypt to send his own troops, who temporarily broke Wahhabi power. Abdulhamit II, to enhance his caliphal title, facilitate pilgrims’ travel, and bind the Syrian–Arabian provinces to Istanbul, built the Hijaz Railroad at the end of the nineteenth century.
During World War I, British efforts to capture Mecca and Medina and disrupt the railroad aimed to undermine Ottoman prestige in the larger Islamic world, as had the Wahhabi attacks more than a century before
(see chapter 5). And yet, no reigning Ottoman sultan ever made the pilgrimage and visited the Holy Cities. Indeed, fewer than half a dozen members of the dynasty ever performed the pilgrimage.3 Four were royal women, several of them wives of sultans.
While in Cairo in 1517, Sultan Selim I received the keys to the Holy Cities from the Sharif of Mecca but, although quite nearby, did not visit the sacred places. In the early seventeenth century, Sultan Osman II announced his intent to make the pilgrimage but soon thereafter was killed. Shortly after his deposition in 1922, Sultan Mehmet VI Vahideddin visited Mecca, perhaps the only male Ottoman ever to have done so, but withdrew before performing the pilgrimage rites.
How are we to understand this dynastic neglect of such a fundamental duty, one incumbent on all Muslims with suitable health and finances? In the time of Sultan Osman II, the ulema issued a formal religious opinion, saying that sultans needed to stay at home to dispense justice rather than leave the capital to go on pilgrimage.4 At the time, the ulema opposed his rule and feared that Osman might have a secret agenda in planning a pilgrimage.
So, this opinion in favor of a sultan not making the pilgrimage may have been quite idiosyncratic. In the end, the absence of the dynasty from the pilgrimage seems remarkable. The Topkapi palace – residence of sultans from the fifteenth until the mid-nineteenth century – loomed as a closed place of power and mystery, projecting the awesome majesty that the dynasty sought to convey. It was a forbidden city, not dissimilar from that in Beijing but on a smaller scale. It was built as a series of concentric circles, one inside the other, with increasingly restricted access as persons passed through gates from the outer to the inner circles. ure.
Destan Episode 23 English Subtitles.
