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MEHMED II and the HISTORIANS: the Reception of Babinger’S Mehmed Der Eroberer During Half a Century

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MEHMED II and the HISTORIANS: the Reception of Babinger’S Mehmed Der Eroberer During Half a Century 2015-09_Turcica40_13_Heywood 02-07-2009 09:27 Pagina 295 Colin HEYWOOD 295 MEHMED II AND THE HISTORIANS: The Reception of Babinger’s Mehmed der Eroberer during Half a Century INTRODUCTION I n a stimulating and brilliant article devoted to a particularly intriguing aspect of one of the great ‘what ifs’ of European history, the German church historian Manfred Eder has examined in forensic detail the Nazi plans for church and religion in the Endsieg, the time after their ‘final victory’.1 In justifying his use of the tabooed possibilitative form in the writing of history, Eder lays down various circumstances in which it may be employed, one of these being, ‘in favourable circumstances’, ‘hypo- thetical alternatives which attain a high degree of certainty’. Eder sup- plies in reverse ranking order three examples of historical ‘might have beens’ which meet this condition. The third example is that, without the Second Vatican Council, the history of the [Roman] church since 1965 would have been very different∞; the second that, without the approval of Hindenburg, Hitler would not have become Reichskanzler on 30 January 1933. In first place, however, he instances that ‘without the attack of the Turks, Constantinople would have remained Byzantine beyond 1453’.2 Colin HEYWOOD is Honorary Fellow, Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull, Blaydes House, 6 High Street, Hull, HU1 1HA, United Kingdom. E-mail∞: [email protected] 1 Manfred EDER, ‘Wenn der “∞Tausendjährige Reich∞” mehr als ein dutzendjähriges gewesen wäre…∞: Nationalsozialistische Pläne und Visionen zu Kirche und Religion für die Zeit nach dem “∞Endsieg∞”’, Saeculum lvi/1 (2005), 139-169. 2 EDER, ‘Nationalsozialistische Pläne’, 141∞: ‘… dass ohne den Angriff der Türken Konstantinopel über 1453 hinaus byzantinisch geblieben …. All dies [i.e., the examples cited above, CH] ist so gut wie sicher, obwohl es sich um Ungeschehenes handelt’. Turcica, 40, 2008, p. 295-344. doi: 10.2143/TURC.40.0.2037142 © 2008 Turcica. Tous droits réservés. 2015-09_Turcica40_13_Heywood 02-07-2009 09:27 Pagina 296 296 COLIN HEYWOOD Eder’s linking of the possibilitative, never to be fulfilled reality of the ‘Third Reich’ with the actuality of the Ottomans’ own triumphantly achieved Endsieg, the final victory and ‘eloquent conquest’ (Fath mubîn) of their overthrow in 1453 of an actual thousand-year empire, is a bold and brilliant stroke, albeit one which perhaps was not considered by Eder within the context of Ottoman, rather than Nazi history.3 For contemporary observers of the events of 1453, and for historians of the late Byzantine Empire, just as for Ottoman historians, the possibilitative as well as the eschatological aspects of the Fall of Constantinople have always been present, either at the time or subsequently, even if the for- mer elements have remained underdeveloped.4 What if — Bayezid I had not been distracted by the approach of Timur and had taken Constan- tinople in 1402∞? What if — Mehmed II, late in May 1453, had faltered at the last, had been forced to abandon the siege, and had then fallen vic- tim to the thwarted fury of the besiegers∞? Such thoughts out of season — of an Ottoman state already an imperial power in 1402 — or of a Byzantine state — in some form — continuing in existence into (let us say) the sixteenth century, are not to be dismissed lightly. One thing is certain∞: we may agree with Eder that, without the events of 1453, the reign of Mehmed II would have taken a very different turn. Eder’s fruc- tifying approach to history, when taken together with the apocalyptic and ‘Endsieg’ overtones of the Fall of Constantinople, serves as an anti- dote to the dry positivism — the teleological impression, fostered by certain strong traditions in both western and Turkish scholarship — that whatever happened in Ottoman history was bound to happen. Coupled with a pronounced spirit of étatism, it has tended to predominate as a historical attitude in our field. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mul- tiple possibilitative elements in Ottoman history have failed to attract attention from the writers of counterfactual alternative history (or allo- history), a field which has in many ways burgeoned in recent decades.5 3 Paul WITTEK, ‘Fath mubîn∞: “∞An Eloquent Conquest∞”’, in∞: Steven Runciman, Bernard Lewis et al. (eds.), The Fall of Constantinople. A symposium held at the School of Oriental Studies 29 May 1953 ([London∞;] School of Oriental and African Studies, 1955), 33-44. 4 Some possibilitative themes may be discerned here and there in contributions to the 1953 SOAS symposium on the Fall of Constantinople. 5 See further Gert TELLENBACH, ‘“∞Ungeschehene Geschichte∞” und ihre heuristiche Funktion’, Historische Zeitschrift cclviii/2 (1994), 297-314∞; Gavriel ROSENFELD, ‘Why do we ask “∞What if∞?∞”∞: Reflections on the Function of Alternate History’, History and Theory, Theme Issue 41 (Dec. 2002), 90-103, and the stimulating possibilitative studies 2015-09_Turcica40_13_Heywood 02-07-2009 09:27 Pagina 297 MEHMED II AND THE HISTORIANS 297 In this respect, as in others, Ottoman historians should perhaps be more mindful of developments elsewhere, where historians have moved on in a way that they perhaps have not. I. SOME PARALLELS∞: BABINGER, KANTOROWICZ AND WITTEK One may search in vain for possibilititative, allohistorical treatments of the fall of Constantinople, although it is perhaps worth recalling that the nineteenth-century American novelist Lew Wallace (1827-1905), the author of the Hollywood epic-spawning novel Ben Hur, also wrote a now forgotten two-volume work entitled The Prince of India, or why Constantinople fell (1893), in which the legendary Wandering Jew, in the guise of a prince of India, assists in bringing about the downfall of the City and its empire by giving aid and advice to Mehmed II.6 At the opposite pole to Wallace’s fictionalised fantasies, it might be thought, stands the work which forms the subject of this paper. In 1953, with remarkable precision of timing, the Munich publishing house of Friedrich Bruckmann put out a lengthy biography of Mehmed the Con- queror. Mehmed II, der Eroberer, und seine Zeit∞: Weltenstürmer einer Zeitenwende, to give the work its full original title, was an almost 600- pages, entirely unfootnoted work from the pen of the Bavarian Ottoman- ist and South-East Europe specialist, Franz Babinger (1891-1967). In a search for parallels, it may be worth beginning with the fact that Babinger’s work, which was hailed by rather more than one reviewer as a triumph of dedicated scholarship, appeared without the benefit of a single line of critical apparatus or source references. It is true that a sec- –bringing in to the fold Chinese but not Ottoman history– gathered together in Philip E. Tetlock, Richard Ned Lebow and Geoffrey Parker (eds.), Unmaking the West∞: ‘What- If∞?’ Scenarios that Rewrite World History (Ann Arbor, 2006). The ‘mammoth bibliogra- phy’ on the internet website, Uchronia (www.uchronia.net, accessed 9 October 2006∞; cf. ROSENFELD, “∞Reflections’, 90, n. 1) also appears to have little or nothing to offer the stu- dent of Ottoman allohistory. For an exhaustive bibliography of recent scholarship on the ins and outs of counterfactual / allohistory see ROSENFELD, ‘Reflections’, 91, n.2. 6 Some other fictionalised, although non-allohistorical, accounts of the Fall of Con- stantinople may be mentioned briefly∞: Friedrich DONAUER, Das sinkende Kreuz (Stuttgart, c. 1920)∞; Luigi MOTTA, Fiamme sul Bosforo∞: La fine di Bisanzio (Milan, 1939)∞; Lothar SCHREYER (1886-1946), Der Untergang von Byzanz (Salzburg, 1940∞; repr. Lewiston, NY, 2001)∞: this short list is not meant to be exhaustive, and further research would no doubt uncover many more titles in a variety of languages. 2015-09_Turcica40_13_Heywood 02-07-2009 09:27 Pagina 298 298 COLIN HEYWOOD ond volume, a true Ergänzungsband, was promised by the author∞; and of that, more anon. But from this fact one such parallel, dyschronic but fruitful, with Babinger’s Mehmed der Eroberer does emerge, in the shape of the German — later American — medievalist Ernst Kantorow- icz (1895-1963),7 and the work for which he is most remembered, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite.8 This work, a biographical study of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (1197-1250), was very much con- cerned with portraying Frederick not only as a charismatic ruler, but in messianic and eschatological form, as an ‘emperor of the last days’.9 Also published entirely without footnotes, it made the name of its author amongst a reading public in Weimar Germany which was more than receptive to Kantorowicz’s passionate and apocalyptic approach to his subject. In equal measure, in the intellectually overheated final years of the Weimar Republic, it brought Kantorowicz himself into direct colli- sion with the dominant figures within the country’s historians’ guild.10 Kantorowicz repaid the attacks made on him in full measure∞: an Ergänzungsband for Friedrich der Zweite, fully documenting every statement in the book, appeared four years later, in 1931. Kantorowicz’s subsequent career∞: briefly an academic in Germany∞; a transient but compelling figure at Oxford∞; a refugee scholar in America, first at Berkeley and then at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, reflected in its sudden turns and unexpected developments the uncertain temper of the age. Taken together with the earlier stages of his life as a member of the George-Kreis, the circle of devotees gathered around the charismatic figure of the German poet and seer Stefan George (d.1933), under the spiritual aegis of which his biography of Frederick II was writ- 7 On Kantorowicz see David ABULAFIA, ‘Kantorowicz and Frederick II’, History, lxii (1977), 193-210∞; Eckhardt GRÜNEWALD, Ernst Kantorowicz und Stefan George. Beiträge zur Biographie des Historikers bis zum Jahre 1938 und seinem Jugendwerk ‘Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite’ (Wiesbaden, 1982)∞; Robert L.
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