Amir’s Reviews > The Ottoman Age of Exploration > Status Update

"Yet paradoxically, all of this had been accomplished not despite the Portuguese but because of them, for it was they who had first introduced a new kind of global politics into the world of the Indian Ocean, thereby creating the conditions that allowed the Ottomans to formulate their own globally informed political response."

"What Mir Ali may have lacked in personnel and supplies, however, he more than made up for in swagger and reputation. In January 1586, when he sailed into Mogadishu, his first port of call, he received nothing short of a hero’s welcome from the inhabitants of the city. Once informed of the reasons for Mir Ali’s visit, the town notables enthusiastically swore allegiance to the sultan..."

"Sokollu developed contacts in places like Transoxiana and Central Africa that were equally beyond the reach of any contemporary European power. Sokollu Mehmed and his soft empire were thus protagonists of the first order in the history of global expansion in the sixteenth century."

"Most important, the Ottoman dynasty’s authority as caliph of the universal community of believers was recognized on a scale never equaled before or since, receiving formal expression in the Friday sermons of Muslim houses of worship from the Horn of Africa to Indonesia."

"Finally, it should be emphasized that Sokollu’s imperial project was a truly global affair, and although his attention was often focused on the Indian Ocean, it was by no means limited to it. During his grand vizierate, Ottoman military operations stretched from Morocco to Sumatra and from Madagascar to Astrakhan. Diplomatic relations extended from England and Muscovy to Ceylon and Samarkand."

"This singular document provides a fleeting but invaluable glimpse into the bureaucratic infrastructure supporting Ottoman dynastic pretensions in the Indian Ocean. As it clearly shows, preachers in Calicut not only read the Friday sermon or ẖuṭbe in the name of the Ottoman sultan but also were paid to do so by regular shipments of gold from the Ottoman treasury."

..Lutfi was thus able to confirm Sokollu Mehmed’s greatest hope: that the Muslims of maritime Asia were ready to.. adopt the concept of a universal Ottoman sultanate as a collective pan-Islamic political ideology. The grand vizier thus sensed an... opportunity to... extend Ottoman influence across the Indian Ocean and responded by directing all of his... energy, enthusiasm, and organizational acumen toward this goal.

"In other words, because of Ottoman control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the two Rumis (Hoja Bakhshi and Kara Hasan) claimed that the Ottoman sultan was already recognized, at least in some sense, as the de facto suzerain of Muslim communities even as far away as China—a status ostensibly confirmed by the Great Khan himself."

"This is a theme continually emphasized throughout the author’s[Seydi Ali] account of his travels, as he records vociferous expressions of 'inkıyād ve itā‛at' (“devotion and obedience”) to the Ottoman dynasty in various Muslim ports of call from the Hadramaut to Baluchistan to Gujarat."

"Sokollu’s genius was to combine an appreciation of the vast rhetorical potential of Ottoman claims to universal sovereignty with an understanding of the technical prerequisites of building and maintaining a global network of communications—the principal vehicle through which these claims could be expressed...