The Sultan's Fleet by Christine Isom-Verhaaren

Author:Christine Isom-Verhaaren [Isom-Verhaaren, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Middle East, Turkey & Ottoman Empire, General, Social History
ISBN: 9780755641734
Google: rehJEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-12-02T02:47:48+00:00

Cigalazade’s palace education provided the opportunity to rise to the highest levels of the Ottoman elite, and he achieved the highest rank, grand vizier, for forty days in 1596. Twenty years earlier his status as a member of the Ottoman elite was confirmed by marriage in 1576 to Saliha, a granddaughter of Mihrimah Sultan. After his first wife died, he married her younger sister in 1581. On the path to grand vizier, he served as governor of the provinces of Van and Baghdad, while becoming a vizier in 1583. Sinan Cigalazade served four sultans: Selim II (1566–74), Murad III (1574–95), Mehmed III (1595–1603), and finally Ahmed I (1603–17).

Cigalazade served with distinction during the Ottoman-Safavid war 1578–90 and at the conclusion he became governor of Erzurum, but he aimed to become admiral, a position then held by Uluç Hasan. According to Venetian reports Cigalazade spent 200,000 sequins (zecchino or gold ducat) trying to obtain the position. Cigalazade had access to large sums of money through his wife. Sultan Süleyman’s daughter, Mihrimah, had possessed a huge fortune and her only heir was her daughter, Hümashah Ayshe, whose husband had served briefly as grand vizier. Hümashah’s daughters certainly brought access to this fortune to their marriages with Cigalazade. When Uluç Hasan Pasha died in 1591, after barely a week the sultan appointed Cigalazade to the post of admiral. Selaniki claimed that Cigalazade had been chosen for his potential seafaring abilities as his father had been a noted corsair, while the Venetian reports state he was chosen for financial reasons.80 Both factors may have influenced Murad III.

We can only speculate regarding Cigalazade’s motivation to obtain the position given the state of the navy in 1591. The admiralship was potentially lucrative because it included control of the arsenal, as well as being governor of the islands in the Aegean. The admiral also led the fleet if the sultan and his advisers decided to launch an expedition to the western Mediterranean. Either making a profit or leading a nava l expedition to the western Mediterranean to visit his family appeared improbable given the fleet’s neglect and consequent weakness.

The condition of the Ottoman navy in the three years of Uluç Hasan’s admiralship when Cigalazade attempted to become admiral is explained through the reports the grand vizier Koca Sinan Pasha prepared for the sultan, Murad III, in 1589–91. Because of political conditions in Europe where France endured the chaos of religious civil war and England had recently survived an attack by the Spanish Armada, possessing an effective navy reemerged as a priority for the sultan and his advisors. However, Ottoman finances were unequal to an extensive reconstruction of the Ottoman navy. Whereas constructing many ships rapidly was easily accomplished after Lepanto in the 1570s, the financial situation in the 1590s had changed radically.

The fleet in 1589 was in a terrible condition, although Uluç Hasan had been advocating reconstruction of the fleet for some time, but this was partly based on his own financial situation as he saw this as a way to obtain the arrears in his own income.

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