HISTORY GONE WRONG? 399dilate around it. The succession, meanwhile, is defined by social and
political convention. In Muslim lands, succession often went to the
oldest male member of the clan, conceivably an uncle, cousin, or the
oldest son. The Turkish variant was succession by the ablest, later by
the oldest, son.
In both systems the multiplication of spouses and concubines and
the proliferation of descendants (what else could an idle ruler do—
what better proof of vigor? ) posed the question of legitimacy. The
Ottoman way of dealing with this was to strangle all potential com
petitors, delicately to be sure, by a silken cord. Such definitive stakes in
cited to precautionary murder not only of rivals but of the rivals'
mothers (stuffed into a bag and drowned in the Bosphorus); also to the
prudent immurement of the heir-apparent in the harem, safe from in
trusion and harm. This stultifying isolation led to intellectual and po
litical impotence. From the seventeenth century on, the future sultan
was typically an uneducated nonentity—an instrument for others to
play.
Around this void at the center, courtiers maneuvered for influence
and intrigued. As the Ottoman bureaucracy grew, as the paper piled up
and regulations multiplied, the state came to rely on non-Turkish per
sonnel, even at the highest levels. Many of these were recruited by a
head tax in the literal sense (the devshirme): Christian subjects of the
empire were required to supply sons to the state, to be reared as Mus
lims and used in peace and war in occupations high and low.^5 The sys
tem stirred jealousy among the older elites—"how come that those
who enjoy rank and power are all Albanians and Bosnians?"—but this
meant the Ottomans were open to talent, including renegades. They
were no longer a Turkish empire—indeed the very word "Turk" came
to have negative connotations of ignorance and boorishness—but
rather a pluralistic assemblage. Not a melting pot, though: the Turks
never could create an Ottoman identity that commanded the loyalty of
their diverse subjects.
Meanwhile the Turkish warriors of old lost their fighting spirit, and
* The word is Jones's, European Miracle, p. 180. That was the Christian perspective.
For the Muslims, conversion to Islam was a sign of sincerity.
t Very different, then, from open recruitment of talent from different German states
into the Prussian bureaucracy. At the origin of German national identity was a com
mon culture and the pride that went with it. The political frontiers were accidental. The
Ottoman empire brought together a diversity of cultures, and the divisions were any
thing but superficial or accidental.