From Levy & Loot

It was not without good reason that Sultan Selim I of the Ottoman Empire, dope addict though he was, was called The Inflexible, and never did he have greater need of his stubbornness than when he marched on Persia. For 116 days the wily Shah of Persia dodged and retreated, laying waste the land as he did. But finally the two hosts met near the town of Caldiran in what is now eastern Turkey. The Ottoman army had guns, the Persians did not; and at the end of that battle in 1514, 25,000 Persian horsemen lay dead. For the Shah, the defeat was particularly humiliating. Though he escaped with his life, he left behind not only his favorite wife, but also his Peacock Throne, covered with so many emeralds, rubies and pearls that no one has ever fixed on the exact total.

Today that throne is housed in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum of Istanbul, one of hundreds of treasures that the avaricious sultans of Turkey accumulated over nearly six centuries. Though regularly seen by tourists, the treasures have rarely been photographed (see color).

The Magnificent & the Sot. The metals and jewels for the sultans' baubles usually came from abroad. Selim's only son, Suleiman the Magnificent, was probably responsible for a good part of the collection. Under him, the empire stretched to the Adriatic Sea and gobbled up Rhodes. Suleiman's admirals could pillage the Mediterranean, and it was thought proper for a grateful admiral to shower his sultan with gifts.

Suleiman himself was a sulky Sultan. He was rightly called The Lawgiver, but he beheaded grand viziers right and left, even had his two ablest sons murdered. The one remaining son eventually became Selim the Sot, the first of a long line of drunkards and degenerates that ruled until after World War I, when the sultanate fell and the great Mustapha Kemal Ataturk took over the rule of Turkey.

The Topkapi Museum was originally a palace built in the 1470s for the retinue of Mohammed the Conqueror. As the empire grew, so did the retinue, until under Suleiman, it numbered more than 5,000. Attached to the imperial household, working in tiny studios scattered through the rambling palace grounds, were artisans and craftsmen whose job was to transform the raw plunder of war into objects that enhanced the glory of the sultan. The artisans also instructed the sultans' sons, for each young prince had to have at least one skill not connected with the throne. Suleiman was an expert jeweler; Abdul Hamid II was a fine woodworker; other sultans turned to calligraphy, enameling and miniatures.

The Young & the Old. At their best, the bejeweled objects have a kind of glittering splendor, though they are mostly gaudy and garish. Art aside, they have a haunting eloquence that speaks of centuries of death and torture. They came from loot and levy, from wars that saw men and women massacred by the thousands, and boys and girls swept off to slavery. As the Turkish Historian Sead-dedin wrote of the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed in 1453: "Having received permission to loot, the soldiers thronged into the city with joyous hearts, and there, seizing the possessors and their families, they made the wretched unbelievers weep. They acted in accordance with the precept, 'slaughter their aged and capture their youth.' "

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