Free The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire by Alan Palmer

binding of books for the new libraries and many other forms of artistic expression made use of the tulip motif, as did the court poets. Every April the
Sultan held a tulip festival in the lower terraced garden, beyond the Fourth Courtyard, of the Topkapi Sarayi—the ‘Grand Seraglio’, as foreign envoys called the palace. The
festival was timed for two successive evenings, coinciding with the full moon. Turtles (or tortoises) with slow-burning candles on their shells moved around the tulip beds to provide illumination
at ground level. On shelves around the wall of the garden were ranged vases of tulips, carefully chosen so that their colours were in harmony when lit by candles in glass bowls among them. Ahmed
III received homage, enthroned in state outside the Sofa Kö ş kü pavilion, to the accompaniment of the twittering of song birds in an improvised aviary suspended from the branches of the
overhanging trees. The secondevening was always set aside for what was virtually a springtime party to entertain the ladies of the harem. The evening might include a
treasure hunt for confectionery or, if the Sultan was in a generous mood, for jewelled trinkets hidden in the garden.
    ‘The favour of the Grand Vizier increases every day,’ reported the Venetian bailo in January 1724. 12 Damat Ibrahim had taken
advantage of internal discord in Persia to occupy huge areas of the country on the cheap, militarily speaking, and rich booty and reward were flowing back to Constantinople, lessening the burden of
war taxation and encouraging free-spending extravagance at court. But intervention in Persian affairs was rash; feeling against the Ottomans rallied dissident Persian groups, sometimes acting with
Afghans who had moved into Persia from the west. By the winter of 1726–7 it was clear to outside observers that Damat Ibrahim was desperately trying to distract his sovereign from a mounting
crisis in the East, as well as from constant unrest in Cairo and the difficulties of raising taxes in outlying provinces, some of which were suffering from acute famine. ‘What can be expected
of a Sultan lost in the idleness of the Palace, a Vizar who has not seen the face of War, a Kapitan Pasha [admiral] who has never left the castles [defensive forts on the Bosphorus]?’,
wrote bailo Dolfin impatiently to the Doge in March 1727; and he added, ‘It is still possible to reverse the situation. The Empire lacks the head, not the arm.’ 13
    Rather surprisingly, Damat Ibrahim survived that crisis. He believed that he remained in touch with the public mood in the capital. Ordinary townsfolk in Stamboul and Galata had benefited from
the coming of cheap coffee houses, from the shoring-up of long neglected buildings and the provision of more fountains, and from the institution of the first Ottoman fire brigade, set up in 1720 by
Ahmed Gerçek, Louis David by birth, a French convert to Islam. Across the Bosphorus, too, Damat Ibrahim courted popular favour. In March 1729, when he was returning from further palace
building at Kandilli, famished peasants at Üsküdar begged him to help find them food. Next day, an ample supply of free bread arrived from the Stamboul bakeries; and the hungry of
Üsküdar gave thanks to Allah for the ready response of such a charitable Grand Vizier.
    But in the autumn of 1730, after twelve years in office, Damat Ibrahim misread all the signs of popular discontent. Rumour reached the capital that he had accepted a
compromise truce with the Persians which involved the surrender of Sunni Muslim villages to the Shi’ites. On 28 September 1730 Patrona Halil, an Albanian-born ex-Janissary who had become a
second-hand clothes dealer, began haranguing worshippers outside the Bayezit Mosque; five close companions supported him in denouncing the constant violation of Holy Law by the Grand Vizier and the
Sultan’s closest advisers. From the mosque an angry crowd of demonstrators surged towards the Topkapi Sarayi,