58 ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2018LETTER FROM HUNGARY
whose location had eluded generations
of scholars. The discovery of Turbek
is significant because it is the only
town the Ottomans founded in
Hungary during the nearly 150 years
they ruled there. “It is a symbol of the
Ottoman occupation of Europe, and
an expression of dar-al-Islam,” explains
Pap, using the Arabic term that refers
to a region under Muslim rule and
where Islamic law prevails. The newly
unearthed site, which covers about
10 acres and contains the foundations
of a mausoleum, a mosque, a Sufi
monastery, and what is likely a military
barracks, offers a window into the
long-vanished and oft-overlooked
cultural, political, and economic life
that the Ottomans carved out for
themselves more than 600 miles from
their capital of Istanbul.F
ounded in the Anatolia region
of what is now Turkey in 1299 ,
the Ottoman Empire eventually
became a global power and remained
such until its demise during World
War I. The empire reached its height
in the sixteenth century under its
longest-serving ruler, Sultan Suleiman
I, known as Suleiman the Magnificent.
During this period, the Ottomans
extended their rule to almost all of
the Middle East, North Africa, and
parts of Europe. This solidified their
control over lucrative trade routes,
and the new wealth they amassed was
reflected in a grand building spree in
the capital of Istanbul. But Suleiman
was intent on conquering more of
Europe, especially the capital of the
Habsburg Empire, Vienna. This put
Hungary in the Ottomans’ strategic
path. Beginning with their victory
at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 ,
the Ottomans began to gradually
conquer pieces of Hungary, turning
churches into mosques, taking over
fortresses, and adding elements such as
bathhouses to existing cities. Although
the Ottomans gained significant
ground, the continuing fight put up bythe Hungarians challenged their fragile
hold on power.
According to historians, the
Ottomans were confined to living a
rather isolated existence in the areas
they conquered. “They adopted almost
nothing from Hungarian culture and
instead built a high culture of their
own on Hungarian soil,” explains PalFodor, director of the Institute of
History at the Hungarian Academy
of Sciences in Budapest. The local
Hungarian population also never
adopted Islamic culture or religion on
any large scale. “All social factors in
Hungary, from the king at the top to
the peasants at the bottom, regarded
the conquerors as savages, pagans, and
natural enemies, as persecutors of the
country and of the Christian faith,
and, later, as archenemies,” Fodor
says. “The anti-Ottoman struggle
was conceived partly as self-defense,
and partly as a war that protected the
entire Christian world. This explains
why, despite long cohabitation and
occasional political cooperation,
Hungarian and Ottoman Turkish
cultures influenced each other only
superficially.”To protect itself from further
Ottoman encroachment, Hungary
relied on a series of fortresses. One of
these, Szigetvar, dating to the Middle
Ages, became especially important,
as it stood just west of the Ottoman-
occupied Hungarian city of Pecs, and
protected the western half of Hungary,
parts of Croatia, and the roads leadingGyula Kereszturi (above) stands in his yard, where the remains of buildings
belonging to the sultan’s memorial complex were uncovered. Kereszturi discovered
this red sandstone block (top) thought to have come from the complex.