64 | Mahmud Pasha and His Christian Circle
was in a position to create networks of patronage within the army, as well as
among poets and learned men, while he also maintained a private army.
***Mahmud Pasha was probably the only case of an Ottoman official who was in a
position to conceive of and act on the possibility of replacing the dynasty and be-
coming himself emperor. Before this period, the main threat to the sultan came
through the ranks of the Ottoman dynasty itself, while later it would come from
external factors, like the Janissaries or palace factions, which, however, would
never question the legitimacy of the dynasty.
Mahmud Pasha’s story could only have happened in this period of transition,
when the imperial legitimacy of the Ottoman dynasty, which had started to form
after the conquest of Constantinople, had not yet crystallized. We do not know
for certain whether Mahmud Pasha actually had imperial aspirations. However,
because of his aristocratic and imperial descent, which was generally known,
Mahmud Pasha and his circle of Byzantine and Balkan aristocrats, in contrast to
the slaves originating from humble peasant families, might have been expected
to harbor such aspirations.
Two decades after the conquest of Constantinople, many contemporaries,
both Muslim and Christian, did not consider that Ottoman domination over the
Balkans was secure yet and thought that the networks of the old Christian aris-
tocracy and ruling elite of the area could pose a threat to the sultan’s legitimacy.
Mahmud Pasha’s fate showed that they were wrong, that the process of Otto-
man centralization was irreversible and that the cycle of power of the Christian
aristocratic families of the Balkans had definitively come to a close after 1453.
Within a few decades after the grand vizier’s death, these families would finally
disappear, either by sinking into obscurity or by converting to Islam and com-
pletely assimilating with the new regime, becoming part of a Muslim Ottoman
ruling elite.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Babinger, Franz. Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1978. This is the standard volume-length history of Mehmed II’s
reign.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995. This important book attempts to interpret the
rise of the Ottoman dynasty.
Kafescioğlu, Çiğdem. Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision,
and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2009. This book is a study of the transformation of Istanbul from
a Byzantine to an Ottoman city.