Travelers Jews wear yellow turban, and Armenians, Greeks, Maronites,
Copts and all other nations of the Christian religion are people or variegated;
because only the Turks wear the white ..
They speak three languages [...] Who are common to people.
One Spanish for Jews and one Greek and the other Turkish, which is the most common.
There are also some Arab and Armenian families.
Pierre Belon, Observations (Travel Turkey, 1553)
In 1453, some years before the fall of Granada (January 1492) which marks after 7 centuries, the end of the Reconquista against the Hispanic presence in the Arab Peninsula and the expulsion of Jews (March edict of the same year) begins with the capture of Constantinople by Mehmed II, the great division of the Mediterranean between Christian nations and the Ottoman Empire.
"The indignation does not allow me to shut up nor pain to speak. It is shameful to live again. Italy, Germany, France, Spain are the most flourishing states, and now (oh shame) we let take Constantinople by the Turkish voluptuous! "These dramatic words of Cardinal Piccolomini, reflected the general sentiment in the West after the fall of the capital Byzantium. Everywhere was called to unite to retake the city, and soon elected in 1455, Callistus III (Alfonso Borgia) proclaims the crusade against the Turks. She did not take place due to lack of resources and unity of action between the Christian kingdoms and the city thus became the capital of the Ottoman Empire and home to Islam, without ceasing to be together an important center of Orthodox Christians. We will not forget as long as the circumstances of alliances and commercial treaties between those who remained bitter enemies. But the most surprising novelty of this second half of the fifteenth century was the letter sent in 1461 by Pope Pius II Piccolomini to Sultan Mehmed II. Missive doubly unusual, it is sent at the same time he is working on a next crusade against the Sultan and the pope gives the sworn enemy of Christianity to recognize him as emperor on condition that he be converted to Catholicism. Now, the champion of the struggle against the Turks intended to legitimize the conquests of Sultan, to recognize him as the successor of Constantine, if he accepted baptism; "If you want to expand your empire Christian peoples, he wrote to him, and make thy glorious name of all, you do not need gold or weapons or troops, or ships. A little thing is enough to make you the biggest, most powerful and most illustrious men living today: a few drops of water to baptize you, introduce you to the Christian rite, and faith in Gospel. If you do this ['] we will call you Emperor of Greece and the Orient, and the land which thou hast seized power and you hold today without any legitimate rights will then become your property. "
To understand this we must remember that regularly suggests in the Western world that the Turks are the heirs of the great empires of the past. They have not only absorbed most of the known kingdoms of antiquity, but they still inherited the virtues of the Roman army. Having taken one by one the countries that were in the orbit of Rome, the Ottoman army seems revive the imperial program; best, it seems that she can raise the limits even further. We have not given up in the fifteenth century, the imperial hope. An emperor must be established, which will prepare the second coming of Christ. It is characteristic, for example, that Charles VIII entered Naples in 1495, should have been cheering as King of France, Emperor of Constantinople, and King of Jerusalem.
It is indeed to bring East and West. During the sixteenth century, a biblical text enjoys great popularity and is seen subject to various interpretations, the prophecy of Daniel. We know the story: the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which no one on earth seems able to understand the meaning. Brought before the king, the young Daniel solves the riddle. From this text, according Lucette Valensi (Venice and the Sublime Porte), is based the design of the four monarchies like sequences in the history of the world. Pagan monarchies Babylonian-Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman 'was to succeed the ultimate establishment of the kingdom of God on earth. This is the Rabbi Isaac Abravanel who, from the late fifteenth century, the Ottoman Empire identified as the last monarchy. Relying also on the Book of Daniel, Francesco Meleto son of a Florentine merchant-Bolognese and a Russian slave, spreading Florence prophecy. He draws inspiration from conversations he had in Constantinople for business trips with Jews and Muslims. He announced at the same time the conversion of Jews, the Muslims, and the renovation of the church. After that will come the universal salvation and an era of peace and happiness. Finally, there was the very famous book of Guillaume Postel, of the Republic of the Turks, in which, after a description of the remarkably rich Turkish Empire, it is in Turkey a model of universal monarchy which he seeks to understand the success exceptional. The testimonies of the time still continue to Istanbul as Constantinople appoint tirelessly compared to Rome, and we continue to see in it the ancient capital of the Roman Empire. She not only an obviously privileged strategic position, but a vocation to govern the East and the West, to be the capital of the world. In 1503, Andrea Gritti raved about the beauty of the city: "It is estimated that the city site, by the temperatures, the two seas that keep it from both sides, by the beauty of the neighboring countries, the most beautiful and the most happy not only in Asia but in the world. "Nearly a century later, Dona echoed, also describing the advantageous position of Istanbul between Asia and Europe," the rare beauty "of its website and accepts that the spectacle of the city" is really the most beautiful thing that we can see the world. " But his long description of the city, while it betrays an obsession with universal monarchy that the Turk could achieve, refracts the image that the Sultan himself wants to give his position; he is master of the two seas and the two lands 'formula is also stamped on the imperial currency', it is above all the men and all the crowned heads, it is the shadow of God on earth. Its capital, the Porte, he calls it "the seat of bliss."
The "Voices of Istanbul", with vocal music and instrumental music (Ottoman, Greek, Sephardic and Armenian) about "The Sublime Porte" (or the Ottoman court of the "Door of Bliss"), follow our first recording dedicated to instrumental music of the Ottoman Istanbul, Sephardic and Armenian time of the publication of the "Book of the Science of Music" of the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir. During multiple research we have done on music, culture and history of the Turks, we have become increasingly aware of the amazing ignorance that was in the West about the history and Ottoman civilization .
As noted in so Jean-Paul Roux in his History of the Turks "We know more about the Turks that we imagine, but nothing connects our knowledge." From school, we keep the memory in 1453, they took Constantinople that Suleiman the Magnificent was an ally of Francis I against the hegemony of Charles V, or that in 1572 the fleet of the Christian nations inflicted a terrible defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto. The great Miguel de Cervantes, who lost his left hand in Lepanto, masterfully evokes for us the Ottoman world in La gran sultana (1615). For we know Racine Sultan Bajazet; by Molière and his Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the "turqueries" that will still fashionable in the eighteenth century. The list of authors who made us dream about the world and the Ottoman legends is long; Théophile Gautier to Anatole France, from Lully to Mozart, Pierre Loti to Victor Hugo, without forgetting the sentences Lamartine or Nerval, some paintings of Ingres and Delacroix 'and Bellini carpets, Lotto, Holbein produced in Turkey to fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many references from lifestyle and Turkish objects are part of our daily lives; kiosks, small houses that Turks call kö'k. The tulip, imported from the Bosphorus by the Dutch, takes its name from its shape tülbent turban. We often Turkish, not just eat skewers that Turks call 'i' kebap (shish kebab). The taste of coffee and croissants (with the shape of the emblem that adorned the flag of the besiegers) became fashionable after a siege of Vienna by the Ottomans, and yogurt (yo'urt), defined as "national dish Bulgarian mountain "has always been known among the nomads of the steppes and its name derives from the Turkish expressions yo'un" dense or thick "or Yo'unluk" density "and yo'urtmak" knead ". In our imagination there is also the word harem harem odalisque, scimitar, tables orientalists, wind sand 'Thus do we spend a directory poorly made known to a succession of unreal visions, more or less transformed according to our fantasy '
But the reality is different. The Turks, two thousand years of history, stretching from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, from Beijing to Vienna, Algiers, in Troyes. They mixed their fate to that of all the peoples of the ancient world, or perhaps from it: Attila and the Huns, the empire of Tabghatch in North China; a Jewish kingdom in southern Russia; the foundation of Samarra, the Abbasid capital; the peaceful coexistence of all the major religions in Central Asia Uighur; Seljuks of Iran; Genghis Khan and the Mongol hegemony; the Mamluks of Egypt; vassal of Russia for two centuries by the Golden Horde; Tamerlane; Renaissance Timurid Samarkand, Herat; the Ottoman Empire first world power in the sixteenth century; Babur Shah Chab and the founding of the Indian Empire; Atatürk and national revolution in Turkey.
Since the beginning of the sixteenth century to his death, the empire of the sultans was involved in European policy. In life as in music in Turkey and Europe were not separate worlds, folded on themselves impervious to each other. As Jean-François Solnon (The turban and stambouline), first indifferent, the two worlds have become curious one another, seduced, even fascinated, finally open to reciprocal influence. The Sublime Porte has played the card of Westernization in the eighteenth century and Turkey Mustafa Kemal completed it by systematizing the work undertaken, erecting Europe model without disowning its own roots.
The message of these wonderful and fascinating vocal and instrumental music Ottoman, in dialogue with those of Greek, Sephardic and Armenian musicians around "The Sublime Porte", reminds us that in the Ottoman Empire there was a large religious freedom for non-Muslims: Greek Orthodox, Christians and Jews were able to continue to practice their faith in Islam, in the same way that the multiplicity of languages spoken transformed the Ottoman cities in as many towers of Babel.
JORDI SAVALL
Basel 19 September 2011
