(Introduction by Professor Arminius Vambery)
Thebook of the Turkish Admiral Sidi Ali Reis, entitled "Mirat ul Memalik" (the Mirror of Countries), is in many ways interesting. In the first place, on account of the personality of the author, in whom we see a man of many varied accomplishments; a genuine type of the Islamitic culture of his time, and a representative of that class of official and military dignitaries to whose influence it is chiefly due that the Ottoman Empire, extending over three continents, attained to that eminent height of culture which it occupied during the reign of Suleiman the Great. Sidi Ali is the descendant of an illustrious family connected with the arsenal at Galata, in whom love for the sea seems to have been hereditary, and hence, as the Turkish publisher points out in his preface, Sidi Ali, being thoroughly acquainted with the nautical science of his day, excels as author on maritime subjects.
As a man of general culture, he was in harmony with the prevailing notions of his time, as mathematician, astronomer, and geographer; and also as poet, theologian, and in all branches of general literature; sometimes wielding his pen in writing lyrical or occasional verses, at other times entering into keen controversial disputes upon certain Koran theses or burning schismatic questions.
Besides all this he was a warrior, proving himself as undaunted in fighting the elements as in close combat with the Portuguese, who in point of accoutrement had far the advantage over him. But what stands out above all these accomplishments is his glowing patriotism and his unwavering faith in the power and the greatness of the Ottoman Empire. He boasts that he never ceases to hope to see Gujarat and Ormuz joined to the Ottoman realm; his one desire is to see hisPadishah ruler of the world, and wherever he goes and whatever he sees, Rum (Turkey) always remains in his eyes the most beautiful, the richest, and the most cultured land of the whole world. The Turkish Admiral has, moreover, a singularly happy way of expressing himself on this subject of his preference for his own Padishah and his native land; and this required no small amount of courage and tact where he had to face proud Humayun or Thamasp, no less conceited than the former.
With regard to the things which he saw and heard in non-Mussulman circles and districts in India, his accounts are poor compared with the descriptions of Ibn Batuta and other Moslem travelers. Sidi Ali has had hardly any intercourse with Hindus, and his route lay almost entirely through districts where the ruling caste, with whom he principally had to deal, were adherents to the Mohammedan faith. It does appear somewhat strange that he had such unbounded reverence for the Sultan of Turkey, and upheld him as the legitimate Caliph, although the caliphate had only fallen into the hands of the Ottoman rulers a few years previously with the overthrow of Tuman Bey by Selim II; and this seems the more strange, as Asia is so tenaciously conservative that even to this day the Turkish claim to the caliphate is a disputed point.
The authoritative and executive power of Turkey, formerly the terror of the Christian world, could not fail to exercise its influence upon the Moslem lands of Asia and their unstable governments, torn and harassed as they were by internal strife and petty wars, while the sultans of Turkey basked, not only in the glory of spiritual preferment, but also in that of temporal superiority. The picture which our author draws of the government of India and the East is certainly a very sad one. Civil wars and mutinies against the rulers of the land are every-day occurrences; the roads swarm with highwaymen, and even during the reign of the much-extolled Humayun, all intercourse with other lands was fraught with every imaginable kind of danger. Their rulers all suffer from a peculiar form of conceit, like the ruler of Bokhara,"who asked me, pointing to a ragged, motley crowd of ruffians, whether the army of the Sultan of Turkey were not exactly like this." Humayun, Thamasp, and even Borak Khan of Bokhara, all delighted in drawing parallels between themselves and Sultan Suleiman.
One thing, however, in the account of the Turkish Admiral is certainly surprising, namely the few facts by which he illustrates the Sultan's policy in Moslem Asia. We have always been under the impression that the Turks, during the era of their supreme power and universal sway, directed their attention more toward the Christian lands of the West, than toward the Moslem lands of the East, and that as a matter of fact their campaigns were nothing short of marauding raids, and empty conquests, while they might have utilized the many means at their disposal and the high prestige in which they stood toward the consolidation of their power in Asia, which would have been comparatively easy. This reproach is neither unfounded nor unmerited, for although the finest of the Ottoman rulers, Sultan Selim, did direct his attention chiefly toward the East, as proved by his campaigns against Persia and Egypt, most of his predecessors and successors have occupied themselves solely in making war in the West. Asia, which offered little to tempt the mercenary janissaries, was meanwhile left pretty well to its own devices, without any fixed form or plan of government. But, as in this narrative the threads of the policy pursued by those sultans, one by one, come to light, we are struck with the fact that, after all, they were not quite so short-sighted as we gave them credit for, and that now and again they have given a thought to the bringing about of a better state of things.