The Case of Cem
“I cannot be a witness to what happened after May 5, 1481. They killed me at five o’clock in the evening.”
FEBRUARY 6, 2024
Foreword
Cem’s name is long-since forgotten, even though centuries ago it was on everyone’s lips. Back then — centuries ago — novels and poetry were written about Cem, they would have featured him in inserts, if in his day newspapers had existed and those newspapers contained inserts; as it was, wandering bards sang Cem’s praises. In the seventeenth century, there was no topic more loaded or exciting than Cem Sultan, or Zizim, as he was called in the West.
As is often the case, Cem was merely an excuse for writers and poets, the canvas upon which they embroidered their whims. To the seventeenth-century world, Cem was a hapless prisoner and the cruelly betrayed paramour of bored and similarly imprisoned noblewomen; to them, Cem was a victim of court intrigues — a crystal-clean young man duped by others.
This was not, in fact, Cem Sultan, but the hero of the seventeenth century. He could have borne any other name equally as well, but Zizim had an advantage: it was Oriental, shrouded in mystery, notorious.
The romantic victim Zizim’s fame came and went. The eighteenth century arrived with new kinds of heroes, while the nineteenth ushered in others more different still. What brings us back to Cem today?
The fact that Cem has not yet been discovered, for example. True, he was exhumed four years after his death, to prove that he was dead. But for us, what is important is not his death, but his life — the life no one wants to describe, the true one.
Let’s assume that the “Eastern Question” did not begin with Russia’s advance toward the warm seas and the West’s efforts to block this advance, but rather with attempts by that very same West to inhibit the development of the European East, leaving it behind, even condemning it to centuries of suffering.
We also return to Cem because he was not simply a pathetic victim. Cem’s fate demonstrates that certain truths are not new; they do not hold only for today — there are great and eternal truths that history continually illustrates. For example, the fact that a complex dependency exists between a person and their homeland, one that has not yet been precisely defined. (“A stone weighs heavily in its place,” one saying goes, while another counters it, “No prophet is accepted in his own country.”) This truth cannot be overcome; as long as there are people and homelands, the fate of the exile will always be a topic of interest.
We come back to Cem today for yet another reason. In the case of Cem, which unfolded over a whole decade and a half at the tail end of the fifteenth century, the politics of the East and West were sketched out with utter clarity, with naked simplicity. Later some would call this “the beginning of the Eastern Question” and they might be right …
Let’s assume that the “Eastern Question” did not begin with Russia’s advance toward the warm seas and the West’s efforts to block this advance, but rather with attempts by that very same West to inhibit the development of the European East, leaving it behind, even condemning it to centuries of suffering. The liberation of the newly conquered Balkans would never again be as easily achievable as it was during the time of the case of Cem. The West did not fumble this opportunity by accident. Some think it resulted from bad strategy. That’s not true, the strategy was actually rather good.
We owe quite a lot to this. In the most general terms, we owe to it our delayed development; let’s not even mention the suffering, as sentimental considerations have no place in history.
Now this is the main reason we keep coming back to the case of Cem. We have long been told that what happened in the Balkans, and ended in their “Balkanization” (a term, which, if not offensive, is at the very least condescending), is a question of historical fatalism. “What can you do?” they like to say. “Who’s to blame that the Balkans are on the doorstep of the East and take the full brunt of all those barbarian invasions?” We understand your pain,” they love to say, “but geography is geography, beyond human will.”
We know as well as others that history plays no favorites.
They really do understand us. But why should we keep quiet about the fact that we understand a few things ourselves as well? For example, that in the case of Cem (as in all historical cases), we should not look for either historical fatalism or geographic predestination. Beyond those, human will truly was at play — the human will of a series of people who were guiding the Eastern Question in its very beginnings. They were more than happy to welcome both geography and fatalism — and to use them very skillfully.
Actually, the whole business is not so complicated. We know as well as others that history plays no favorites. Since we have been doomed to all that which has euphemistically been called “historical determinism,” we have no need to accept such euphemistic speech. Our sad advantage is that we can discover the truth about the case of Cem.
The witnesses in this case are long dead, but thanks to contemporary legal proceedings it is not difficult for the dead to speak, especially where a major suit is concerned. They will hardly resist; their part is easy. They must merely await the judgment of history. Such a sentence harms no one, as it is suspended and in absentia.
Join The Case of Cem translator Angela Rodel and Dial Executive Editor Linda Kinstler in conversation on Friday, February 9th in Washington, D.C.
Testimony of the Grand Vizier Nisanci Mehmed Pasha about the Events that Occurred Between May 3 and 5, 1481
A voice awoke me before dawn. I raised my head, frightened — they don’t wake up the grand vizier over trifles.
Now sitting up, I tried to see who had barged in. In the darkness I could barely recognize him: one of the sultan’s peiks, a halberdier from his bodyguard.
“What is it?” I asked the peik. Mehmed Khan often beckoned us at the oddest of hours, as if he himself never slept.
“Pasha,” the peik replied. “Mehmed Khan has gone to his eternal rest in the bosom of Allah this night.”
My heart sank. We all know fate follows its own path and brings a man that which he least desires, but this was too much: Mehmed Khan could not have chosen a more unsuitable hour for his death.
Everything that pushed me to do one or the other thing that I did between the third and fifth of May — at that time it was not yet exactly a thought, to say nothing of a decision. Right then I only knew Mehmed Khan should not have died, that his death would change too much in my life, in the lives of all of us, of the empire and the world. This series of still-groggy concerns led me to order the peik, “Be silent! As the grave! Who else knows about Mehmed Khan?”
“Me… and the sultan’s valet,” the peik said, white as a sheet. He knew that his admission had doomed both of them to death.
“Stay here!” I called to him over my shoulder. Because I had to take care of the valet.
I gave orders to Yunus, my Sudanese mute.
As I dressed, the mute returned with the other man. He was holding him by the collar.
“Finish them off right here, right now, in the tent! Just roll up the carpet so you don’t stain it. Then hide them under my couch; we’ll bury them tonight.”
While I was wrapping my turban around my head and tightening my sword belt, Yunus killed the two men and hid them as I had commanded.
“Come on!” I signaled to him to follow.
I recall being surprised that day had not yet broken. The short time between the peik’s news and his death had seemed like hours to me. I looked around. The camp was sleeping. Good thing it’s asleep, I thought. The tents were staked one after another in the distance, as far as the eye could see. Two hundred thousand men — gathered from Serbia to Persia, some followers of the true faith, others not, mobilized of their own free will or by force — had hurried to steal a final hour of sleep before the campaign. Yes, rumor had it that we would march today of all days.
Where to, you ask? I don’t know, and clearly you don’t either — in the intervening five hundred years you have not managed to learn where exactly the Conqueror had planned to lead his troops on that morning, which he did not live to see. I notice that this blank spot in your knowledge irritates you. But we were used to it, uncertainty did not alarm us, because the great Sultan Mehmed II always found his way through it. The man whose battle luck never deserted him.
I nodded again to Yunus, and we slipped between the tents. Through the canvas I could hear the soldiers’ deep and calm snores in a hundred different voices. All of these men, who had grown up and gone gray in battle, gladly left their fate in the Conqueror’s hands. And now he was gone.
I won’t even attempt to explain to you what his death meant to us. The time of the Conqueror was unlike any other time and you, who supposedly know the sultan’s empire so well, cannot imagine that once — even if only for a short time — things were different.
Broadly speaking: in our time and in our part of the world, people swore by two prophets — Muhammad and Jesus. But Mehmed Khan had his own prophet: victory. In its name, he stopped at nothing. Even our blessed clerics, before whom great ones such as Osman and Orhan had paused, could not stop him. The Conqueror took all their lands with a single word and turned them into estates for his sipahi, his cavalry, so as to have an army such as the world had never seen before. And so he got his army — but along with it the undying hatred of our clerics.
But Mehmed Khan was so powerful that he could turn his back on such hatred; even his back — which was as broad as it was tall — inspired respect.
For the Conqueror, there was no such thing as believers and nonbelievers. Everyone who wanted to serve him, who could serve him, was accepted in Stambul, what you know as Istanbul, and Topkapi. Mehmed Khan — when Rhodes held out against him — announced to the entirety of the Old World that he sought a great master who could design a successful siege of the knights’ island. Out of the dozens of Germans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen (it was amusing to see them in Topkapi, fawning with their scrolls of paper, pandering in their clownishly bright clothing and feathers, shouting over one another in all imaginable tongues), some Master Georg from Prussia won the prize. Mehmed Khan followed his sketches, sparing no gold, and showered as much gold again on Georg himself, whose last name no one ever learned — there was no need.
The Conqueror had succeeded in convincing us (or at least forcing us to swallow our objections) that victory must be prized above all, and that we would never reach it if we kept stumbling over prohibitions, fear, or pangs of conscience. Unprejudiced — that was your word for Mehmed Khan. During his time there were many unprejudiced people (contrary to your opinion of us), but no one took this quality to such heights of perfection as the Conqueror. And so, in that early predawn they slept in our camps in two neighboring tents, or even in one and the same tent, our men, believers and heretics — only the name of Mehmed Khan had brought them together.
Would there be a victory without Mehmed Khan? I thought, confused. I still didn’t know what I was going to do, but I needed to decide quickly.
The two baltaci axe men standing in front of the sultan’s tent moved aside — I had the right to see the sultan even uncalled.
The tent was filled with a faint glow. The light inside was red due to the carmine canvas. I walked the dozen steps to the curtain, behind which lay our master’s bed, on my tiptoes — as if I were coming to steal or worse. I pulled the curtain aside in the same way, like a thief.
Mehmed Khan was lying motionless on his tiger skins, but even at first glance it was clear that his stillness was not sleep. There was something strained, tortured, and alarmed in his face, as if in his final moment Mehmed Khan himself had realized he was leaving us at such an inopportune time.
I leaned over him.
In the pictures you showed me just now, Mehmed Khan did not look much like himself. You can see that the painters, since they could not astound you with the sultan’s beauty, at least wanted to portray him as imposing. But he was not at all like that, I can assure you.
Indeed, a clever man can never be completely ugly, it’s impossible.
Above all — he was laughably short. They say such men, the laughably short ones, are terribly touchy. Mehmed suffered on account of his diminutive stature. In my every meeting with him, I noticed how he — the ruler of half the world and a threat to the other half — always sat up ramrod straight on his couch, keeping his counselors on the floor in order to tower a whole head above them.
There are short people who are well apportioned, their petiteness passes as exquisite. But my master was not one of them. He was freakish — may his soul rest in peace! As if Allah had taken the flesh needed for a tall man, yet had made him small, squashing him from top to bottom. Mehmed Khan could not interlace his fingers across his belly; his feet never touched the floor, they would swing in the air during every one of his frequent, sultanesque outbursts of anger or mirth. Because in this man, one emotion would most suddenly replace the other — sometimes it seemed to me that in his stocky body there was too much blood, it blustered in its insufficient vessel, causing spasms that were completely impossible to foresee.
Our lord’s face would have also been freakish — may God forgive me! — if the Conqueror’s terribly agile, sharp, deep mind had not animated it. Indeed, a clever man can never be completely ugly, it’s impossible. In fact, even though God had granted our sultan a face that was wider than it was long, despite the fact that beneath it hung a flabby gullet that sagged down to his torso, even though on this face the overly thin and hooked nose and mouth, with its upper lip as thin as the lower was fat, looked disproportionate, while his eyes looked like holes in a target — despite all of this, Mehmed Khan was not ugly in the face.
That morning, stretched out on the tiger skins, his head thrown back and his thin, wire-sharp reddish beard jutting out, Mehmed Khan looked terrifying to me. Likely because of his expression.
I took his hand — I still did not want to believe the worst. It was heavy and moved in its entirety, without bending. Then I became frightened I had stood there too long. With difficulty I pulled my thoughts together, and with even more difficulty I focused them in one direction.
“Yunus,” I said when I was again outside, noticing in horror that the camp was stirring awake. “Bring me Mehmed Khan’s porters.”
They soon arrived with the sultan’s gilded litter. I made them go into the tent while I muttered some nonsense about Mehmed Khan’s illness and how it hit him harder if he tried to get on his feet. Their faces only fell when we got inside, and I, trying to project ironclad calm and decisiveness, ordered them to load Mehmed Khan into his litter as if seated.
It was torturous. The corpse was twice as heavy, and Mehmed Khan even without this doubling had never been light. We somehow shoved him through the little doors, but he resisted; he had already gone cold. And so, bolstering him around the middle, with his filigreed robe tossed over him, we pulled aside the curtain. But not all the way. Through the crack I wanted the sultan’s face and one hand to be visible.
His hand bobbed slightly with the porters’ first steps and — seen from afar — it looked as if Mehmed Khan was greeting his troops.
I would not wish for anyone to be in my shoes that May morning. I rode to the left of the litter; from time to time I bent toward the little doors, as if reporting something or taking orders; the sultan’s baltaci rode in front of the litter — I deliberately chose all of those who perhaps suspected the truth — and behind it came two battalions of Janissaries.
Passing through camp was nevertheless the most dangerous moment. Here were those who would rise up in rebellion as soon as they learned of our ruler’s death. I passed between the tents as if on embers. Those thousands of tents felt like an endless canvas city and filled me with fear. Up ahead, an hour away, the minarets of Skoutari gleamed white, and beyond them — on the hills on the opposite bank — Stambul itself swam up out of the morning.
“Allah, give me strength today!” I called.
After such fear, I let myself slump in the saddle as if crushed; I felt exhausted. But then I startled: What past danger was I talking about, when the real danger was only now beginning?
You will object that for a first adviser and a second-in-command of the empire, such a day is always hard — the day when one power gives way to another. You are right to a certain extent, but in our case this process was more peculiar and much more difficult. Here, as a rule, the army rebels after every sultan’s death; here, everyone who has dreamed of donning the vizier’s robes spreads his entire worldly wealth among the Janissaries and the clerics so as to win them over, predisposing them, using this very day of interregnum.
Few of our grand viziers have survived such a day; they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. No matter how I tried to keep up my courage, I didn’t believe I would be among them. Not hope, but something else now urged me toward Stambul. In the few hours I had for myself, I, Nisanci Mehmed Pasha, had the power to decide the future of the empire. More precisely: to protect and continue the work of my great lord.
I was not the only one who suspected the danger that threatened his legacy; it was widely known. I could not count on someone else (besides myself, begging your pardon) deciding to sacrifice his life to avoid the inevitable: a return to the times before Mehmed Khan.
As I already said — our clerics were hard-hit by Mehmed Khan’s laws. They would take advantage of his death. And they had just the thing to wager on. Perfectly legally, without any violence. They were betting on Şehzade Bayezid, Mehmed’s eldest son.
I am glad that history has confirmed my opinion of Bayezid, I never dared to utter it aloud. Incidentally, you know more about Bayezid than I do; I never saw him on the throne. But he seemed off to me even as Şehzade. I couldn’t say why I felt loathing for him; he behaved perfectly well with both me and all the other pillars of the state. Much was said about his talents — he was an excellent bowman, unsurpassed; he had a deep mastery of theology and astronomy.
Rumor also had it that while the Şehzade’s talents were plain to see, indeed almost on display, their flip side — his vices — remained hidden. But no one would ever guess they were there. That then-young man had one great quality: self-control. He never let loose his anger or foolish mirth in front of others, as his father liked to do; Bayezid never let on what he preferred and what irked him. This oily perfection was precisely what disgusted me about him. Not only me, of course, even though history has painted me to be his one and only opponent.
Shortsighted, that was what I thought of them all — the Janissary aghas, mullahs, some of the old or deposed viziers — who were in awe of Bayezid. A fellow like him — as I saw it — would betray even his own mother (incidentally, I should note that she is unknown to this day; Bayezid never showed her any respect, never named her, while Mehmed Khan himself had long forgotten his youthful dalliances). The clerics clearly hoped that a devout believer steeped in the theological sciences would raise them out of the humiliation and poverty the Conqueror had relegated them to. These hopes of theirs led me to believe that his piety, too — just like everything about Bayezid — was no accident.
My estimation of our future ruler is not something I have cobbled together today, with the hindsight of history. I held it even then, when Mehmed Khan sent his sons away as beylerbeys, or provincial governors, one to Amasya, and the other to Konya.
This has been interpreted in different ways: he was afraid of a sonly conspiracy and internecine war, or the sultan wanted his young sons to learn to govern. I suspect I have understood the real reason. Mehmed Khan was so firmly melded to life and to everything he took from it, everything he still meant to get from it, he did not want to have his final judgment always before his eyes: sons waiting for their father’s death so as to become rulers themselves. And here’s another detail for you: Mehmed Khan kept his grandsons as hostages in Stambul, which makes me believe the rumors to some extent. Mehmed Khan did not leave things to chance; he always took charge of his own fate and — even at the height of his powers — he never missed an opportunity to further secure himself.
Despite my loathing of Bayezid, whose ascension — I had no doubt of this — would set us far back, I was obliged to inform him of the day’s sorrowful news and to hold the capital until he could come to take up power.
Very simple, at first glance. Even if a revolt broke out in Stambul, I would be blameless; it was inevitable. So what worried me then? you ask. I can’t hide it; it came to light only a day later: I did not want Bayezid for a sultan.
You suggest it was not my business to choose a sultan for the Ottomans. I know this. But we were far too bound to the deeds of Mehmed Khan, we had given him our best years, our blood. Who could convince me that something that had cost me so dearly was not my business?
At the time, few civilians lived in Stambul; the city had not recovered from the long sieges and the conquest.
I also admit that on the morning of May 3, I was still struggling to outwit fate. The fact that I hid Mehmed Khan’s death should not be seen as disobedience to the Şehzade Bayezid. On the contrary, he should thank me for putting off the Janissary revolt until his ascension to the throne.
When we reached Skoutari on the Bosporus, I purposely made the porters and baltaci get on the barge along with the litter. The two battalions of Janissaries followed us in several large skiffs.
The streets were nearly deserted — the army was still encamped at Hunkar Cayiri. At the time, few civilians lived in Stambul; the city had not recovered from the long sieges and the conquest. The few passersby bowed low to the ground before the litter; the Conqueror’s heavy hand bobbed as if in greeting. Feeling faint, I led my horse and prayed for us to reach Topkapi as soon as possible.
The guards in front of the palace hurried to open the gates. We passed through the three empty courtyards — even the troops usually stationed at court were in Hunkar Cayiri — and finally I found myself in front of Mehmed’s private chamber.
In the third courtyard I was again alone with Yunus and the baltaci. I ordered them to unload the corpse and place it on the sultan’s bed. I felt as if a mountain had lifted from my shoulders when I turned the key twice in the lock of the sultan’s private chamber.
Outside, the porters, the baltaci, and Yunus were waiting for me. Without a word, I pointed them toward the new treasury. I knew there was nothing inside — Mehmed Khan had not succeeded in transferring his treasure from Yedi Kule. Now everyone who had accompanied the sultan on his final journey filed one after another into the dark vestibule of the treasury. I turned that key and hung it on my belt next to the other one.
Done!
Only then did I realize how my legs and arms were trembling. I was shaking. What had I gained with all this effort? A lot. Time. I had to use my winnings wisely.
I wrote the letters myself in the divanhane, the receiving hall. I had never written anything so long; there were scribes for this sort of work.
After I finished the first letter, I sat there for a long time in the twilight of the divanhane. I gathered my strength for the second letter, for my death sentence. Whichever of the sultan’s sons took the throne, he would not forgive me for writing both of them at the same time, for playing both sides.
I almost decided just to leave the first — to Bayezid. Why not just stop here? I thought, knowing very well that I would not stop. Bayezid’s success spelled my doom in any case. I was a member of the sipahi after all. Hadn’t I taken part in Mehmed Khan’s measures against our clerics? You might say that my decision was not so fateful; my song had already been sung.
When I realized this, I felt relieved. I quickly cobbled together the second letter. Short, only a few words. I tucked it under my turban and went out with only one scroll in my hand. I immediately found the messenger I needed: a trusted man, unschooled in letters. He needed to ride quickly, changing horses at every way station, to Amasya. “At every way station!” I repeated. According to my calculations, that would make an eleven-day journey.
The second messenger took me much longer to find. They all seemed unworthy of being entrusted with my life — until I realized that Yunus would be the best man for the job. I released him alone from the treasury, stripped him naked, and stuck my letter to his black skin.
“Dead or alive,” I whispered in Yunus’s ear, yet it felt like I was shouting and all of Stambul could hear me. “But better to make it to Konya alive. Don’t change horses only at the way stations, but every three hours. Avoid meeting anyone, hide as if the earth had swallowed you up! You’ll be in Konya in a week. Here is plenty of money; slip it to whomever you need to. Don’t you dare hint that I sent you, you hear? You don’t know me, you belong to no one! In Konya you’ll look for Cem.”
From the early morning I hadn’t dared to let that name (Cem!) even slip into my thoughts, even though I had wheedled Allah for help, for the sake of Cem, for the sake of Mehmed Khan’s great deeds. “God, watch over the black mute. Watch over your soldiers. What is the displeasure of a few hundred mullahs and kadis who have had their juicy bone taken away from them? You don’t need prayers, God, but rather victory for our faith. And we will give it to you.”
Truly, I have never prayed as fervently, with my whole heart, as I did that day. And immediately I must add: God did not hear my prayers. Perhaps Mehmed Khan’s audacities and our clerics’ destitution had indeed infuriated Him.
During the hours that followed, I was no longer alive — I had turned into a numb stick of wood. I walked around amidst people, I answered their questions, but I was not there. My entire mind was with Yunus.
God punished me, verily, for my meddling in these worldly events, but He also spared me something: the waiting. It ended on the evening of the very next day.
Shut away in my residence (I made sure not to be seen outside), I could hear the clamor rising from afar — almost imperceptible, you could mistake it for thinned silence. But I was already all ears, so it didn’t fool me: an army was entering the streets of Stambul? What army? The one from Hunkar Cayiri, there was no other. The camp had learned of Mehmed Khan’s death and they had hurried to the capital, so as not to miss out on the looting and burning. All my attempts to divide Asia from Europe were in vain — the day before I had already ordered not a single boat to cross the strait in either direction.
I anticipated that by evening I would find myself in a better world as the first victim of the revolt. But Allah wanted me to pay for my sins with yet another night of agony. All night I could hear the screams from the Jewish and Greek quarters; all night I watched the reflection of the fires on the Bosporus. Fleeing didn’t cross my mind — my residence was surrounded by Janissaries. But even if they had not been there, I wouldn’t have run. Why? Only to die a week later, on the orders of the new sultan?
I cannot be a witness to what happened after May 5, 1481. They killed me at five o’clock in the evening.
As unbelievable as it may seem to you, I did not attempt to escape for another reason as well: since things had taken this turn, I truly did need to go. Because I was part of Mehmed Khan’s time, because I would have no place in a differently ordered empire under Bayezid. They would not have tolerated me, and I would not have tolerated them.
I met my death — I daresay — calmly. My only regret was the thought that perhaps I had dragged in my fatal wake the one whose triumph I would have gladly perished for; I was afraid I had misled Cem, the hope of Mehmed’s soldiers. If you can convince me that it was not my deed that launched him on his journey, then I will not regret that I was called back from oblivion.
But you remain silent. It seems that you do not know who the prime force behind Cem’s revolt was. Or else you suffer no pangs of conscience over a long-dead old soldier.
I’m finished. I cannot be a witness to what happened after May 5, 1481. They killed me at five o’clock in the evening.
This article is excerpted from The Case of Cem, published by Sandorf Passage in January 2024.
✺ Published in “Issue 13: Order” of The Dial
IMAGE: Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II with a young dignitary, workshop of Gentile Bellini, c. 1481.
