On Thursday May 19, 1622, the Ottoman Sultan Osman II (1618–22) was deposed and his uncle Mustafa I (1617–18, 1622–23) enthroned by the Ottoman soldiers stationed in Istanbul. On Friday Osman was killed at the Seven Towers, the prison where the Ottomans held their prestigious inmates.Footnote ¹ This was the first clear-cut regicide in Ottoman history. However, most of the seventeenth-century authors who covered this event in some detail did not really declare these Ottoman soldiers outlaws.Footnote ² To the contrary, one finds in these sources an almost concerted effort to justify what they did. Gabriel Piterberg argues in his recent book and in earlier work that the narrative of the regicide that eventually came to have the largest impact on seventeenth-century historiography is based on a certain version of a short chronicle written by a retired janissary, Hüseyin Tûghî.Footnote ³ The present piece explores the making of the chronicle of Tûghî, a “primary source” in the parlance of historians, and ends with a suggestion as to how to interpret this chronicle politically.

This study examines the formation of Tûghî's chronicle and shows how, within the course of the year following the regicide, Tûghî's initial attitude, which recognized the collective responsibility of the military caste (kul) in the murder of Osman, evolved into a claim of their innocence. Fortunately, the chronicle of Tûghî reached us in successive editions of his own that provide the historian with an invaluable opportunity to witness the evolution of a “primary source”. A careful examination of these editions makes it possible to follow the evolution of Tûghî's narrative on the regicide in response to the historical developments in its immediate aftermath. Thus this study is an exercise on the question of how history, in the sense of past events, changed history, in the sense of their record, within a period of a year, affecting the construction and then re-construction of a chronicle that later historians treated as a “primary source” in its final form.

The first section is the main pillar of the study. I will argue that the author was not just a janissary but also a folk poet and, most probably, a storyteller, both of which are important in understanding the dynamic nature of his chronicle. This section will also provide an overview of the versions of Tûghî's chronicle that make it possible to follow the evolution of his text. The following section will focus on the earliest extant version of Tûghî's text and will show that its main purpose was to lay the regicide to rest and channel public attention to Sultan Mustafa whose enthronement Tûghî cast as a long-awaited salvation preordained by God. The last version of Tûghî's chronicle will be dealt with in the third section. I will argue that the reactions against the regicide made Tûghî rewrite his chronicle with a new emphasis on the murder of Osman, calling it the “Book of Calamity”. This time, however, rather than God's predetermination, Tûghî's presentation pointed towards the treachery of man as the main cause of the regicide. In conclusion, I suggest that the way in which Tûghî's chronicle evolved is an indication of the political maturation of the janissaries.

Tûghî and his chronicle

The full name of the man whom I prefer to call by his pen name Tûghî is Hüseyin bin (son of) Sefer bin Abdullah. His father Sefer must have been a devshirme, a Christian boy recruited for royal service and who converted to Islam.Footnote ⁴ Hüseyin himself is from Belgrade, and probably inherited his father's position in the military establishment, or entered it with his father's help. After taking part in a few campaigns in Anatolia against the Jalâlîs,Footnote ⁵ and in Persia against the Safavids, he was promoted to the solakân, the elite corps among the janissaries charged with protecting the sultan in campaigns and outings. In these corps he served for eight years and then chose to retire, keeping his salary. Tûghî states that he served three sultans altogether. Therefore one could assume that he entered the janissary corps during the reign of Ahmed I (1603–17), which would dovetail with his reference to the Jalâlî campaigns. He must have become a solak around 1612, witnessed the short first reign of Mustafa I, and retired around 1620, before the military campaign of Osman II against Poland in 1621, which he does not count among the campaigns he took part in.Footnote ⁶

Tûghî, however, was not only a janissary. His pen name and the poems that one finds in his chronicle suggest that he was a folk poet as well. I call him a folk poet to follow the much criticized but still useful distinction in the study of Ottoman literature between the dîvân poets, who are usually from the well-educated elite and cater for their tastes, and the folk poets who represent the life experiences of commoners and write for their consumption.Footnote ⁷ There are a few folk poets in early seventeenth-century Istanbul who are members of the janissary corps, such as Kayıkçı Kul Mustafa and Koroğlu, whose names, incidentally, were mentioned in the context of the murder of Osman.Footnote ⁸

One of Tûghî's pieces, his dirge on the death of Osman, became quite well known thanks to its inclusion in the Fezleke of Kâtib Çelebi (d. 1657), the most prominent Ottoman historian of the seventeenth century. Na'îmâ (d. 1716) copied it into his chronicle alongside many other things he adopted from Kâtib Çelebi. Since the latter's work was one of the first printed books in Turkish and went through a number of reprints, Tûghî's dirge enjoyed a wide circulation. But no one knew that the dirge was authored by someone with the pen name Tûghî because its particular variant in the chronicle of Kâtib Çelebi – and hence Na'îmâ – was a slightly corrupted one that did not include the pen name at all. Cahit Öztelli, who studied another corrupted version of the dirge with the pen name Nev'î, suggests that the piece was written in the semâ'î form of folk poetry and was meant to be sung. Since such poetry was usually sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument, such as the saz, one may imagine that Tûghî played such an instrument as well.Footnote ⁹

Incidentally, the dirge in question is also a significant artifact in following the trajectory of Tûghî's evaluation of the regicide. It can be argued that Tûghî composed this dirge before he ever wrote down any of the versions of his chronicle and sang it among his comrades, lamenting the murder of Osman. The basis of this assumption is that the piece suggests a direct connection between the members of the military caste and the murder of Osman that does not fit very well into Tûghî's general portrayal of events in any of the versions of his chronicle. Even if Tûghî did not compose this dirge prior to his chronicle, I believe the piece should be quoted in full, for it tells us a great deal about the ambiguous nature of Tûghî's personal attitude towards the regicide:

This dirge does not necessarily mean that Tûghî was fond of Osman. Another janissary folk poet, Kayıkçı Kul Mustafa, who was much better known for his poetry than was Tûghî, also wrote a dirge on Osman. Yet the very same person was also known to have been involved in the murder of the sultan.Footnote ¹¹ Thus writing a dirge about the dead sultan does not make one a supporter. However, this particular dirge attests to the fact that at the time Tûghî composed it, he regarded his caste, the janissary corps, as being at least indirectly responsible for the murder of Osman. The key expression in this regard is the third line in the sixth quatrain: “This is the age of our remorse”. It is telling that one of the few variants one encounters in later copies of this dirge, in manuscripts that are Tûghî derivatives, is the substitution of the word kula (for the kul) for bize (for us) at the beginning of this line.Footnote ¹² The revised translation would read “this is the age of remorse for the kul”, i.e. the members of the military caste. Öztelli, a scholar of Turkish folk poetry, interprets these alternative words in a way to suggest that the janissaries would read the dirge with the word bize and the commoners would recite it with the substitute kula. According to Öztelli, the dirge clearly points to the janissaries as the murderer of Osman.Footnote ¹³

Whether or not one supports Öztelli's judgement, it is clear that Tûghî establishes a connection between the murder of the sultan and the members of the military caste. What is even more important to note is that there is no trace of a divine hand or fate in this dirge: some unidentified people murdered Osman and “we” should regret that we were accomplices to this murder, or at least, we should regret that we did not do anything to stop it. Tûghî is facing the regicide directly, without any excuses, without an effort to create a culprit, or to explain away the incident by referring to divine causes. I will come back to this important point below while discussing why Tûghî may have composed his first chronicle the way he did.

As well as being a folk poet, Tûghî also refers to himself as “Mullah Hüseyin, the meddâh of the janissary corps”.Footnote ¹⁴ The title mullah (monlâ) may sound unusual since it was a title used by the members of the learned class, who served in the legal and religious establishment. Tûghî has several references that have a Sufi sound to them,Footnote ¹⁵ so he may have been an active member of a brotherhood, perhaps the Bektashi order, which was becoming the default tarîkat of the janissaries during the seventeenth century. His title mullah may have come from such a connection. Or perhaps his peers called Hüseyin a mullah because being a meddâh required, to say the least, a familiarity with the Islamic literary tradition. His text indeed suggests that he was quite familiar with this heritage.Footnote ¹⁶

Meddâh has two meanings. Literally it means a eulogist, so a poet who writes panegyrics for the sultan could be referred to as his meddâh. The word, however, evolved to mean a “public storyteller” as well. I believe that Tûghî was both. That he was a panegyrist is most evident in the conclusions of two manuscripts of his work. These two manuscripts both end with eulogies of janissary officers whom Tûghî approaches with demands for favour.Footnote ¹⁷ In conjunction with being a panegyrist, he was also a storyteller. The most telling clue of this is his pen name, tûghî in proper transliteration, which is the adjectival form of tûgh that usually refers to a horsetail attached to a helmet or flagstaff as a sign of rank. Besides being a military insignia, however, tûgh, in the sense of a flag attached to a stick, is one of the six fundamental tools of a meddâh. By posting his tûgh into a certain spot, the storyteller delineates his space on a crowded public square where others may be trying to gather crowds around themselves as well.Footnote ¹⁸ It is hard to imagine that Hüseyin would adopt the pen name tûghî with reference to the military tûgh because he did not have a rank that would entitle him to carry one.Footnote ¹⁹ Thus the tûgh to which his pen name refers is most probably a storyteller's tûgh.Footnote ²⁰

What we see in at least some of the Tûghî manuscripts is, then, most probably the text of a performance executed by the author himself. The “author” may well be assumed to have performed his “text” on different occasions with small alterations that would be called for by the specificity of the moment or by a recent gossip. Therefore it is only to be expected that the various manuscripts representing different performances have variants as well. If one were to see the successive Tûghî texts in connection with successive performances, then the rendition of an episode that is in prose in a particular version into verse in the next one, which one observes in the manuscripts of Tûghî, may easily be explained.Footnote ²¹ This perspective could also explain the successive updates that one finds in the manuscripts of Tûghî: the storyteller brings his “story” up-to-date with a selective addition of the most recent developments, as I demonstrate below.

Whether or not Tûghî himself was a storyteller, it is certain that he wrote his chronicle to be read aloud to groups, a point also noted by Piterberg.Footnote ²² The formal conclusion of the earliest version of Tûghî's chronicle includes a supplication asking for God's mercy for the author of the “story (hikâye)”, its copyist, its reader and its listeners. The same version and others also include notes taken down on the manuscript by readers who read the text aloud to others. In fact there are some clues in one of the manuscripts suggesting that Tûghî's text may even have been adopted by other performers/readers, the records of whose performances would bring unique additions to the text. Tûghî's performance-text apparently remained a janissary hit for a long time because there is evidence to suggest that such readings continued to be performed for at least 150 years.Footnote ²³

While one might expect to find a number of variants in a text that changed hands so many times, some variants in the manuscripts are qualitatively different from occasional additions or subtractions. It is these that allow us to follow the crucial stages of the reconstruction of the text. In order to keep the discussion of these stages of the reconstruction within the confines of an article-length study, I will not discuss all of the manuscripts related to Tûghî's text in detail. Instead I will compare the earliest and the latest versions authored by Tûghî. However, to provide the reader with a sense of the complicated evolution of the text, a brief overview of the available versions and the manuscripts that represent them is in order. This overview includes the “afterlife” of Tûghî's chronicle in so far as it is necessary for the analysis that follows.

Two manuscripts represent the earliest extant version of Tûghî's chronicle: İzzettin Koyunoğlu Library (Konya), 13316; and Cambridge University Library, Dd. 11.18. The Konya manuscript dates from the eighteenth century, and the Cambridge ms., which has a missing folio at the beginning, is most probably from 1623. The text in the two manuscripts is practically identical with only minor differences but neither is a copy of the other. Thus they must be based on a common original that seems to have been composed in August 1622.

Two far from identical manuscripts represent the first revised version. The first is in Leiden University Library, ms. Or 917, and the other was at the library of what is today the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales when M. A. Danon edited and translated it into French in 1919 (Danon ms.). A romanized version of this edition was published in 1972. The Leiden manuscript presents a serious problem regarding authorship as it includes an additional name, Osman bin Dervish, alongside Hüseyin Tûghî, as the author. Osman could be the name of Tûghî's source, or he could be someone who adopted Tûghî's text for his own storytelling performance. The Danon ms. includes a minor problem, the pen name of Hüseyin bin Sefer reads Nev'î as opposed to Tûghî, which must be the result of an orthographic error as in Arabic script the two names are represented with letters that have the same shapes and are distinguished only with diacritics. The Leiden ms. is probably the oldest extant manuscript as it seems to have been copied in 1622. However, its contents suggest that its text must have been composed after the earliest extant version, probably in late September 1622. As for the Danon ms., it was composed in October 1622 on the occasion of the appointment of a new general of the janissary corps. The Leiden and Danon manuscripts share a number of revisions, some of which are related to the internal organization of the text, which led me to categorize them together. Yet there are also several differences.

The final version, authored by Tûghî himself, is represented by three manuscripts. The first is in the French National Library, ms. suppl. turc 871: it was copied and translated into French by Philibert Deval in 1733. The second is ms. HO 74 at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The third is ms. turc 227 at the French National Library, which was translated into French in 1678 by Antoine Galland. The text of the Deval ms. was probably composed in February 1623, and the Vienna ms. a month later. The two texts are quite close to each other, the latter updating the former and converting certain parts of the narrative into verse. The Galland ms. is somewhat problematic since the period it covers ends in June 1622, some twenty days after the regicide, making the text it represents appear to be the earliest version. However, numerous indications place its text in the same group as the other two in this version; thus its end must be missing or left out in copying.

The two final texts that I would like to mention do not seem to belong to Tûghî directly. One is a pseudo-Tûghî text that must have been used by the chronicler Solakzâde (d. 1068/1657–58) but is no longer extant. A slightly corrupted version of this text with no references to Tûghî's authorship may be found appended to the end of some Hasanbegzâde (d. 1046/1636–37) manuscripts that represent an early version of the chronicle of Hasanbegzâde. The text of pseudo-Tûghî is based on the Vienna ms. but the two are not identical. It most probably belongs to someone from Tûghî's milieu, not unlike Osman bin Dervish of the Leiden manuscript mentioned above.

Finally, there is an anonymous text, which I call a Tûghî derivative. At the very beginning of the reign of Murad IV (1623–40), an anonymous editor, or perhaps another storyteller, wrote a digest of Tûghî's chronicle and brought it up-to-date with the last months of the second reign of Mustafa and the enthronement of Murad IV. This text is represented by three manuscripts. Mithat Sertoğlu published a romanized edition of a copy in a private collection in 1947 and Fahir İz edited the Dresden manuscript in 1967. The third copy is at the Beyazıt Library, ms. Veliyüddin 1963. Both scholars believed that the text they were editing was authored by Tûghî himself. Fahir İz was aware of other Tûghî manuscripts but he thought the variants one comes across in a comparison between the texts were simply copyist interventions. As I discuss briefly below, however, the text of the Tûghî derivative actually presents some radically different views from those held by Tûghî himself on some of the key issues involved. Thus its author must be someone other than Tûghî. As for the texts Tûghî authored himself, the differences between them are far from being copyist interventions as the rest of this study intends to show.Footnote ²⁴

The earliest text: the “deliverance” of Mustafa

While all stages of the development of Tûghî deserve attention, this study will focus on the radical differences between the first version of the text, represented by the Cambridge and Konya manuscripts, and its latest version represented by the Deval and Vienna manuscripts. This comparison will deal with some significant deletions and additions which together create a far more consistent story about the righteousness of the members of the military caste in the latest version. I will also point to the shift in the overall meaning of the text that Tûghî seems to intend to convey in both cases, by focusing on a number of sections that are critically important in constructing this meaning.

As stated above, Tûghî had probably composed his well-known dirge, and perhaps a few of the pieces of poetry that one finds in the earliest version, before he ever wrote anything in prose. He may have recited these poems in the company of janissary friends who in turn may have asked him to tell the story of what happened during the deposition and the regicide. Then he may have prepared a performance for the Eid-ul-fitr, which in 1622 started on August 9, less than three months after the regicide. Whether or not this is the case, the text of the earliest extant version recounts the events that brought about the regicide and continues the historical narrative until the morning of the Eid.Footnote ²⁵

In this first version of his chronicle Tûghî seems to be trying to deal with the implications of his own dirge: the collective responsibility of the military caste in the regicide. In order to make peace with himself, his comrades, and the rest of the public, Tûghî looks for an angle that could provide an alternative story which presents the murder as a secondary issue. He needs a miracle, the presence of which will somehow justify the regicide or compensate for it. Alternatively, one could say that Tûghî needs to divert attention from what happened to Osman. That is why Tûghî makes an effort to create an alternative focal point in the person of Mustafa. This effort is most visible in the opening lines of the eulogy Tûghî composed for Mustafa and the way in which he used them in this earliest version of his work. He inserted his eulogy of Mustafa right after his well-known dirge on Osman. Thus one reads the final verse of the dirge, “they did not spare the king of the world”, referring to the murder of Osman, and continues by the opening verses of Mustafa's eulogy: “If our Osman Khan is gone, may Sultan Mustafa live long! (Gitdiyse Osman Hân'ımız – sağ ola Sultân Mustafa!)”.

The first version of Tûghî's chronicle, or his story if you wish, was an attempt to channel people's thoughts and feelings away from the “dreadful event” that happened to Osman and towards the enthronement of Mustafa, which is cast as a fortunate occasion.Footnote ²⁶ That is why, I believe, Tûghî tells us that he sat down to tell the story of Mustafa. Hence his introduction:

As is clear from this piece, the story is presented as one in which Mustafa is the main character. It is not about the deposition or the murder of Osman, but rather the enthronement of Mustafa, “His Majesty Sultan Mustafa Khan who manifests divine perfection the way Joseph did” (or: who has the beauty of Joseph, Sultân Mustafâ Hân-ı Yûsuf-cemâl). Joseph has a very strong resonance in Islamic culture as it is only his story among the prophets who preceded Muḥammad that the Quran relates in full (chapter 12). There are several literary renditions of the story, some of which are in Turkish and were quite popular at the time. Thus even mentioning the name of Joseph could easily bring the whole story to people's minds, including the long years Joseph suffered and his final deliverance. That is why, I believe, Tûghî continually likens Mustafa to Joseph. One of the adjective compounds that he uses most often to describe Mustafa is the one used in the introduction, or a derivative of it. Every time Joseph is invoked in relation to Mustafa, the reader is implicitly invited to build parallels between the life of the prophet and that of the sultan; Tûghî exploits their similarities to the full.Footnote ²⁸

While Ottoman sultans used to kill their brothers in order to avoid the possibility of civil wars that could be caused by other claimants to the throne, Mustafa became the first Ottoman prince who was intentionally left alive during the reign of his brother, Ahmed I (1603–17). Yet he did not spend these years in princely fashion as governor of one of the provinces as the sons of Ottoman sultans usually did until the late sixteenth century. There are no references whatsoever to him during the reign of Ahmed. His existence only becomes apparent when his brother dies and he is enthroned in 1617. It could be argued that he had not left the palace for fourteen years and remained under house arrest in his chamber. He was enthroned in 1617 upon the death of his brother, only to be deposed after a few months. It was said that he was mentally unbalanced, and thus not capable of rule. During the reign of his young nephew Osman II (1618–22), he must have been back under house arrest at the palace. While all of these episodes are significant for Ottoman history, the most important factor for this study is that except for a few months in the winter of 1617–18, Mustafa had spent almost twenty years at the palace more or less under house arrest. Thus we have a prince, Sultan Ahmed, the younger brother who is ill-treated by his older brother and is practically imprisoned for twenty years, which readily brings to mind Joseph's brothers, his stay in the well, and then his imprisonment in Egypt. Thus Mustafa could easily be compared to Joseph who spent many years in prison only to come out and rule Egypt eventually.

Just as Joseph's life was the manifestation of divine intervention, Tûghî claims that, once the members of the military caste had entered the third courtyard of the palace in the afternoon of Thursday 19 May, they were moved by divine guidance. One of them, whom no one could identify, shouted: “In accordance with the law, we want Sultan Mustafa” (şer'ile Sultân Mustafâ Hân'ı isterüz)! After repeating this call three times, it was adopted by all of the soldiers “with [the guidance of] divine reason and power” (hikmet-i yezdânî ve kudret-i sübhânî birle).Footnote ²⁹

The way in which Mustafa was brought out of his chamber on Thursday 19 May fits well with the analogy of Joseph. The soldiers in the third courtyard of the palace climbed up to the roof and dug a hole on the dome of the chamber where he resided. Then they extended a rope down to the floor of the chamber, descended into the room, and lifted the prince up. Thus he came out of his chamber in the same way as Joseph was brought out of the well into which his brothers had thrown him. Tûghî made the soldiers who met him in his chamber address him with a poem that includes the following verse: “be a Joseph for the hearts that are, like Egypt, in ruins because of the drought”.Footnote ³⁰

While Joseph/Mustafa is being rewarded for his suffering, others are punished for their deeds – with divine sanction, of course. Hüseyin Pasha, the grand vizier of Osman during the crucial two days of the rebellion, is murdered by the soldiers on Friday 20 May. Tûghî has two stories to narrate about him, the first of which relates how he did not care about the lives of the soldiers dying during the siege of the fortress of Khotin (in modern Ukraine) in 1621. The second portrays Hüseyin Pasha as someone who does not respect the Quran. During the march from Istanbul to Khotin, Hüseyin Pasha was apparently riding in the company of some musicians playing a stringed instrument called a chashdeh right next to the banner of the Prophet where people were reciting the Quran. Keepers of the banner who were themselves descendants of the Prophet warned him that he should either ride ahead with his musicians or stay behind, but he did not bother to move anywhere. Tûghî comments that the murder of Hüseyin Pasha was his punishment and adds a quatrain, the first half of which reads: “God takes His revenge from His servant [i.e. the human being] with yet another servant; those who do not know the mysteries of the Divine nature (ilm-i ledün) hold the servant responsible…”.Footnote ³¹

The mysteries of the Divine nature seem, however, to be accessible to Mustafa. First of all, the epithet Tûghî uses for Mustafa is velî: Mustafa the Saint.Footnote ³² Then there are a number of examples that manifest the power of Mustafa to see the future or make things happen. The first is related to his first deposition. Mustafa had succeeded his brother Ahmed in 1617 and was then deposed a few months later in 1618. At the time of his deposition he was apparently told that the members of the military caste did not want him. Tûghî makes Mustafa respond by saying that “there will be a day when those members of the military caste who, you claim, do not want me, will look for me and find me”.Footnote ³³ Thus the re-enthronement of Mustafa in 1622 was nothing but the realization of his own prophecy.

Another prophecy takes place in the late afternoon on Thursday 19 May, when Mustafa is brought to the Orta Jâmiʿ, the mosque within the janissary barracks. Osman is still at the palace. As Mustafa gets off the wagon, Tûghî makes him pray to God, who brought him there, to bring Osman there as well. Osman first tries to enlist the support of the newly appointed general of the janissaries and therefore goes to his residence. Tûghî comments that whereas Osman takes refuge at the house of a kul, thinking that the deposition is brought about by the kul, Mustafa takes refuge in the house of God. Tûghî is using the word kul skilfully to refer to both of its meanings, the members of the military caste, and a servant of God, a mere creature. And he concludes by stating that the one who takes refuge in the house of God became victorious. Not surprisingly, the course of events brings Osman to the mosque where Mustafa is present, fulfilling the latter's prophecy.Footnote ³⁴

During his second reign, which started with the deposition and murder of Osman, Mustafa continued to show signs of his connection with the divine. On the morning of Friday 8 July 1622, Mustafa foresaw the arrival of the representatives of the members of the military caste who, later that day, were to demand the removal of the incumbent grand vizier. Around the same time, the general of the janissaries related how Mustafa had once correctly identified a grave in which a sheep was buried alive. Once the sheep was saved, Mustafa himself untied the knots that tied its feet. Mustafa, the competent shepherd, was saving his sheep, which must be an allusion to his subjects.Footnote ³⁵

Just as the introduction of Tûghî centres on Mustafa, his conclusion is meant to celebrate the new sultan. In the first section of the tripartite conclusion, there is an attempt to lay the “dreadful event” to rest. Tûghî explains that on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, 5 August 1622, Ibrahim Efendi, the sheik of the Jerrah Mehmed Pasha mosque in Istanbul, touched upon Mustafa's connections with the other world in his sermon: “It has been four days since our Emperor entered a room where he is alone, praying and crying endlessly. He neither eats, nor drinks, nor speaks. Muslims, keep yourself busy with prayer! The mystery of this is only known to [Mustafa] the Saint”. Ibrahim Efendi concludes with the news that Mustafa had a revelation about Osman in his dream. Apparently the former sultan held a high-ranking position in the other world. Thus not only are the readers of and listeners to Tûghî's text reminded of Mustafa's connections with the divine, they are also assured that their former sultan will have a very high rank in Heaven. Most importantly, however, the high rank of Osman in the next world is revealed to Mustafa, who replaced the murdered sultan. Thus Mustafa and Osman are at peace with each other, and society should follow their example and move on. Tûghî concludes this section with a prayer in which he begs God both for compassion for Osman and protection of Mustafa from mistakes.Footnote ³⁶

After this prayer, in which everyone is asked to pray for both Osman and Mustafa, the conclusion continues with the Eid ceremonies. All important members of the administrative, judicial, military, and educational elite came to the imperial palace on the morning of Tuesday 9 August 1622, in order to pay their respects to the emperor. Tûghî claims that by standing up during the ceremonies, as opposed to sitting on his throne, Mustafa was following the tradition of the first four caliphs of Islam. Then Tûghî reminds us that the oath of allegiance was sworn at a mosque during the reign of the first four caliphs, and the same thing happened with Mustafa, by which Tûghî must be referring to Mustafa's stay at the Orta Jâmiʿ. Thus Tûghî is establishing a parallel between the reign of Mustafa and the last period of the Golden Age of Islam that followed the death of Muḥammad and was followed by the rule of the Umayyad dynasty. In Islamic history the Umayyads are usually regarded as usurpers who turned the caliphate into a dynasty. Mustafa is a monarch in the long Islamic tradition that began with the Umayyads, yet his rule is very different from that of any other monarch because he follows the caliphal tradition of the Golden Age.Footnote ³⁷

Finally, in the very last section of the conclusion, we observe Mustafa at the special ritual prayer for the Eid which he performs at the Mosque of Sultan Ahmed in the vicinity of the palace. Tûghî emphasizes that Mustafa left the mosque in “astonishing magnificence”. Implicit in this remark is a comparison with Osman who wore simpler clothing and shunned pomp, thus discontinuing the tradition of his forefathers in this regard.Footnote ³⁸ In the tripartite conclusion, Tûghî shows us that the rule of Mustafa was superior to that of Osman on three counts: first, Mustafa is a saint who has an ongoing connection with the divine; second, his rule takes its legitimacy from the traditions of the first four caliphs whose rules represent the Islamic Golden Age; and third, Mustafa's projection of the royal image is much more closely aligned with the Ottoman custom of splendour than that of his predecessor.

Tûghî's earliest text is, then, an attempt to lay the murder of Osman to rest by bringing Mustafa into the spotlight as an exemplary sultan who was meant to rule the empire in the way Joseph was destined to rule Egypt. Osman's deposition in this context becomes a preordained event to bring about the rule of Mustafa.Footnote ³⁹

The “Book of Calamity”

When one reads Tûghî of early 1623, however, one finds a different portrayal of the same event. References to divine intervention as an explanation of the regicide abound. But it seems that even for Tûghî these references were not very persuasive. In the last version of his chronicle one notices a conscious effort to distance the military caste from responsibility for the regicide, and also to present a more consistent picture of the deposition that portrays the military caste in a more positive light. One sees, for instance, the disappearance of several unpleasant details that were provided in the earlier versions. Those janissaries in the company of prostitutes, for instance, or those who harass the public during the holy month of Ramadan cannot have a place in a story that is gradually presenting the soldiers in a more positive light.Footnote ⁴⁰ Most importantly, however, the text no longer focuses on the celebration of Mustafa's new reign, although every word said about Mustafa in the first version is also present here. Instead the murder and murderer of Osman become the focal points of the narrative. In parallel to this shift, divine intervention is supplemented by more worldly causes at the centre of the historical stage.

In contrast to previous versions, this one does not have a formal introduction with praises to God, the Prophet, and the four Caliphs, and the identification of the author. Instead it starts with a poem of nineteen couplets by Tûghî, which is an elegy for Sultan Osman with a critical stance regarding the murder of the Sultan, but which does not carry a sign of responsibility on the part of the members of the military caste in the way that Tûghî's well-known dirge does. The expression musîbetnâme, the “Book of Calamity” comes up in the eighth couplet, “it [would] be a book of calamity if I were to write what I have seen in 1622 from end to end”.Footnote ⁴¹ This poetic introduction signals the shift in the main emphasis of the text from the celebration of Mustafa to an investigation of the murder of Osman.

Part of this investigation has to explain how the members of the military caste are not responsible for the murder of Osman. One way of doing this is to portray them as guardians of the law who base their actions on legitimate means. This new portrayal becomes most evident in the scene where the soldiers demand from Sultan Mustafa the execution of some additional high-ranking officials on the third day of the rebellion. The way in which this scene is depicted in four manuscripts that represent earlier recensions is quite straightforward:

The last version, however, provides a quite different atmosphere:

This latter portrayal of the scene places the demand of the soldiers who asked for the head of Ayas Agha in a legitimate context. Now they are not simply asking for someone to be murdered. Their primary concern is legal: new customs introduced into the body of the Ottoman kânûn should be annulled, and those who introduced these new practices should be killed. Moreover, they also present quite innocent demands, such as the prohibition of bribery. Thus their request for Ayas Agha to be punished became a part of their effort to rectify the Ottoman kânûn. This new representation provides the actions of the soldiers with a legitimate ground and creates the impression that the state of affairs during the reign of Osman was not legitimate.

Another scene that Tûghî rewrites portrays the members of the military caste as eager followers of legitimate means of political decision making and as people who care for the life of Osman. On the third day Osman is brought to Orta Jâmiʿ. Mustafa, the new sultan, is also there. In the four manuscripts of the two earlier versions, a large crowd surrounds the mosque:

When one looks at the same scene in the final version, however, it reads quite differently:

Now all of a sudden, the soldiers are depicted as extremely attentive to Osman's life. Moreover, they no longer insisted on the sultanate of Mustafa. It is the high-ranking statesmen who should decide whom to enthrone. The soldiers are ready to recognize Osman once again as their sultan, if he were found to be more deserving. The legitimate political procedure is represented as the consultation of jurists and viziers among themselves. The members of the military caste are depicted as being ready to follow whatever the legitimate political processes may yield.

Thus in the final version of Tûghî's chronicle the members of the military caste guard the law, base their actions on legitimate means, and want to make sure that Osman is kept safe and alive. Yet this is not sufficient explanation for how Osman was murdered. The regicide has to be accounted for in a way that would leave no doubt about the innocence of the soldiers. On the murder of Osman the earlier versions simply state: “The soldiers dispersed from Yedikule (where Osman was imprisoned). That night they made Sultan Osman join his God [or alternatively: reach what he deserves]”.Footnote ⁴⁶ Yet the final version specifically explains who Osman's murderer was:

Apparently the question of the identity of Osman's murderer had not been an important issue when Hüseyin Tûghî wrote the first two versions of his chronicle. Whether or not it was Davud Pasha, this question must have become important only after the completion of the second version. In this new version, Tûghî not only names the murderer, but also explains the motive. When Tûghî introduces Davud Pasha for the first time in the first two versions of his chronicle at the time of his appointment to the grand vizierate by Mustafa on Friday 20 May 1622, he has nothing to say about him. But in the third version Tûghî informs us that Davud Pasha was married to Mustafa's sister and was favoured by him during his short first reign. That is why, we are led to believe, Davud Pasha experienced dismissals and demotions during the reign of Osman.Footnote ⁴⁸ This information is recalled when Tûghî comments at the scene of the murder of Osman that Davud Pasha was not treated well by the former sultan, and that is why he did not spare him. Thus it was not God's will but rather a man's revenge that killed Osman.

That the question of the murderer of Osman became a serious one may also be observed from another significant intervention in the final version. The earlier versions state that on Sunday 22 May the cavalry troops received their donations due to the enthronement of Mustafa. They were also given registers of non-Muslim poll tax, the collection of which was a lucrative business. The final version, however, adds something new:

The purpose of inserting this news of interrogation of Davud Pasha by the soldiers is in parallel with the aim of the insertion of his name as the murderer of Osman above. Tûghî is doing his best to distance the soldiers from the allegation that they are responsible for the murder of an Ottoman sultan. He also makes an effort to create the impression that the soldiers actually looked after the matter. Yet since they were told that the murder was committed upon the orders of Mustafa, the reigning sultan, there was nothing they could do. Thus Tûghî reshapes the past he had recounted some four months previously.

Each successive version of Tûghî's narrative, by virtue of including a continuation of the earlier one, makes it possible to place his revisions, or his historiography on the deposition of Osman, in the context of the most recent developments. The most important event of the period between 14 October 1622, the date of the last event mentioned in the second version, and February 1623, the approximate date of composition of the third, is the “Abaza rebellion”.Footnote ⁵⁰

Abaza Pasha is known to have initiated a formidable uprising against the military caste, basing his power on the mercenaries he recruited from Anatolia. His activities, which concentrated on attacking the members of the military caste stationed in various towns of Anatolia, started after the murder of Osman and continued well into 1628. Abaza justified his cause by assuming the role of avenger of the murder of Osman, for which he held the members of the military caste responsible.Footnote ⁵¹

Apparently Abaza was not alone in holding the soldiers responsible for the murder of Osman. According to the third version of Tûghî, on Sunday 1 January 1623 the members of the imperial cavalry divisions demanded the capture and execution of Osman's murderer. The reason for their sudden interest in the apprehension of the murderer, some seven-and-a-half months afterwards, was the complaints they had heard from their fellow soldiers in the provinces. Their comrades stationed in the Anatolian countryside were molested by the public, who called them “the murderers of Sultan Osman Khan”. The demands of the soldiers in Istanbul, which were a response to public pressure and the “Abaza rebellion”, soon bore fruit and Davud Pasha, together with some of his close associates, was killed within a week for having murdered Osman.Footnote ⁵²

Hüseyin Tûghî updated the previous version of his work within a month of the punishment of Davud Pasha. Now that the murderer of Osman was personified in Davud Pasha, Tûghî re-wrote accordingly, paying particular attention to clarifying that the soldiers did not have anything to do with the murder of their sultan, and that they actually wished him to be kept alive. The longest account in verse in all of the versions of Tûghî is the one that narrates how the members of the military caste demanded in January 1623 that Osman's murderer be found. This account in verse also narrates the search for Davud Pasha, who goes into hiding after he hears about the soldiers' demands. In this four-manuscript-pages long narration in verse, one reads how the soldiers had asked Davud Pasha to keep the sultan safe, and how the latter betrayed their trust. What is quite significant is that in the first example of Tûghî's last version, the Deval ms., which is written soon after the execution of Davud Pasha, this long narration in verse is actually much shorter and is in prose. Its conversion into a very long narration in verse shows the importance Tûghî attached to this section of his chronicle.Footnote ⁵³

Later in his chronicle, after reporting the execution of Davud Pasha at the Seven Towers, Tûghî presents this execution as an unfair compensation (kısâs) for the murder of Osman because a snake would not be appropriate compensation for a peacock.Footnote ⁵⁴ By presenting the execution of Davud Pasha as a reprisal for the murder of Osman, Tûghî is once again declaring that Osman's death was not a matter of God's will after all. It was Davud Pasha who killed Osman and now he is being punished.

For many, God's will was not a satisfactory explanation for the murder of Osman. The anonymous author of the Tûghî derivative text referred to above claims that the members of the military caste were in a position to decide where Osman was going to be kept during the second reign of Mustafa. It was clear that the imprisonment of the sultan at the Seven Towers was going to lead to his death. Therefore the soldiers could have demanded that the former sultan be kept at the palace. The author concludes that the reference to predestination on the part of the janissaries does not make any sense.Footnote ⁵⁵

Given the reluctance of many to see God's will as an explanatory factor in Osman's murder, Tûghî's efforts to unload the responsibility of the regicide on the shoulders of one man, Davud Pasha, makes a lot of sense. A contemporary of Tûghî, whom I called pseudo-Tûghî above, takes this effort further. The one major addition pseudo-Tûghî makes to the text of Tûghî as represented by the Vienna manuscript is the Islamic version of an ancient Persian story. This story illustrates the calibre of the viziers of the past by relating how a vizier of a Sassanian king did not hesitate to castrate himself to ensure the well-being and the future of his king and the dynasty.Footnote ⁵⁶ This is what one should expect from a vizier. Davud Pasha had also been a vizier of Osman, yet instead of working for his well-being and that of the dynasty, Davud Pasha does not hesitate to murder Osman. Before introducing the story, pseudo-Tûghî uses the harshest words possible about Davud Pasha. It was not enough to kill the former vizier, he tells us, Davud Pasha's filthy body should have been burned and his ashes scattered in the air, which would be a heavy insult in Islam. The “treachery and betrayal” of Davud Pasha was simply unprecedented.

Thanks to the existence of different versions of Tûghî's chronicle, then, one is able to follow the trajectory of the evolution of a regicide narrative within the year that followed the murder of Osman. Tûghî first cast the murder of Osman as an incident preordained by God to secure the salvation of Mustafa, the Saint. When, however, this representation proved not to be sufficiently persuasive to deal with the “Abaza rebellion” and other critics of the regicide, the military caste started looking for a culprit, whom they identified in the person of Davud Pasha. Tûghî then recast the regicide as a calamity inflicted upon the Ottoman dynasty by its own vizier. The will of God was not enough to spare the kul once Abaza Pasha started his attacks against them in Anatolia, so Tûghî turned to the treachery of man to account for the regicide. Throughout these stages, however, he kept his dirge in his chronicle as a token acknowledgement of responsibility. After all, some of Tûghî's comrades, janissary poets like himself, whose names he never mentioned in his chronicle, were Davud Pasha's closest associates,Footnote ⁵⁷ something that must have troubled his conscience all along.

In conclusion, I should add that the evolution of Tûghî's chronicle between August 1622 and March 1623 not only offers historians an opportunity to observe the evolution of a “primary source” but also suggests that the janissaries were developing a sophisticated political consciousness in the early seventeenth century. The evolution of Tûghî's text during the seven months between the first and last versions of his chronicle is more nuanced than the account provided in this article-length study.Footnote ⁵⁸ Yet the general direction of this evolution is clear. Tûghî started his first version as a janissary poet and storyteller and ended his last version as a successful janissary propagandist, or a political pundit if you wish. He was sympathetic towards his comrades from the start. But as the janissaries came to have an unprecedented degree of influence in the political stage of the imperial capital in 1622–23 and had to deal with a strong opposition movement centred in the Anatolian provinces of the empire, Tûghî adopted a more sophisticated language on behalf of his comrades that included powerful references to law and legitimacy. In 1622 his comrades had made history by deposing a sultan. During the following months, Tûghî was moulding the way in which that history was going to be remembered. In so far as “[h]istorical narrative is a way of thinking about politics, and a species of political thought” – because it is, after all, “a characteristic of the political that it leads to the re-narration of its history” – the “riffraff of Ottoman Istanbul” were becoming mature political actors in the early seventeenth century.Footnote ⁵⁹