Suleyman’s favorite and principal advisor in government between 1523 and 1536, Ibrahim Pasha was the sultan’s other self in the matters of administration as well as his chief agent for the dispensation of royal patronage. Ibrahim Pasha was especially famous for his unprecedented kindness and liberality to the burgeoning community of poets of the imperial capital Istanbul. The primary objective of this paper is to examine the concentration of courtly patronage in the hands of Ibrahim Pasha in the early years of Suleyman’s reign (1520-1566) and the politics of the pasha’s cultural patronage by taking into account the broader political, social, and institutional developments that the Ottoman Empire underwent in the period following the conquest of Constantinople (1453). For this purpose, I examine the patronage relations that governed Ottoman society in Istanbul before Suleyman’s accession. I show that before Suleyman, royal patronage was exercised in Ottoman society collectively by the urban elites which, through their domination over the city in the post-conquest era, functioned as brokers of favor between the royal court and city population. I argue that the act of turning Ibrahim Pasha into the sole representative of the sultan’s favor was primarily meant to break down the control of these elites in the imperial capital and bring the monarchy into direct contact with the masses in the city. I further argue that this shift in royal policy was closely linked to two other major developments that characterized the first decades of Suleyman’s reign: first, the Ottoman pretensions to world rule that gained a new momentum in the 1520s necessitated the creation of a new royal authority that was to become the ultimate source of power, rank, and status in society; and second, the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century witnessed the emergence of a public sphere in the Ottoman capital that was largely beyond the control of the royal court, which in turn pushed the dynasty to seek legitimation for its universalist claims by turning royal patronage into a political tool to manipulate public opinion in Istanbul.

Although he stood at the helm of the Ottoman state during the last years of Sultan Süleyman’s reign and decisively shaped the trajectory of the empire in the immediate post-Süleymanic era, Grand Vezir Sokollu Mehmed Pasha remains one of the more enigmatic figures of the era celebrated as the Golden Age of Ottoman history. While many studies touch upon his political career, the profile of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha as a patron and axis of a social network encompassing a variety of social actors, ranging from artists, architects and historians, to dragomans, renegades of European origin, enterprising sailors and explorers has only recently come under closer scrutiny. This recent research has moved beyond the representations of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha as a nepotistic and shrewd Ottoman grandee and begun to reveal the portrait of a man with a complex, ambitious international political agenda. While it is often emphasized that Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was the key figure behind the re-establishment of the Serbian Patriarchate at Pec in 1557, his religious outlook and its relationship to his overall political agenda has not been closely examined. This paper will inquire into the scope and variety of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s patronage of religious causes and individuals with particular religious agendas. One of the particular foci will be Mehmed Pasha’s patronage of European, especially Protestant converts to Islam residing in Istanbul. These converts attached to Sokollu Mehmed Pasha’s household or dependant on him for stipends and work provided a variety of services, mostly in the domain of linguistic and diplomatic mediation with the Habsburg court. However, biographies of these converts, both official and ad hoc dragomans (tercümans) employed by the pasha, suggest that they were also involved, both in person and through their writings, in a more global religious debate that marked the early modern era, about the true religion and political regime that would guarantee spiritual salvation. Wholeheartedly supported by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, these converts argued for Islam as the most authentic religion and the Ottoman sultanate as the only worldly authority able to realize the divine plan on earth. Moreover, these converts experimented with anti-Trinitarianism, a Christian heresy that gained popularity throughout Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century and that shared with Islam the views about humanity of Jesus and unity of God.

The giving and receiving of patronage is a subject of renewed attention in the study of sixteenth-century Ottoman literary life. Thus far the focus has fallen on the patronage of Süleyman I, whose reign is virtually synonymous with the golden age of Ottoman poetry. Less attention, however, has been given to the activities of high-ranking officials, especially for the period preceding Süleyman I’s reign. One prominent patron at that time was the chief military magistrate Müeyyedzade. Praised for his learning and generosity to poets, he also was an avid collector of books and amassed a private library of around 7000 volumes. This paper examines the patronage of Müeyyedzade in the context of his book collection, a partial inventory of which has survived. A key question is whether a coherence of criteria informed the choices Müeyyedzade made as a patron and a collector. I argue that his choices reflected competing interests and emphases that were current at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

This paper will explore the strategies of an Ottoman author, Atai (d.1626), in finding and maintaining patronage in the late sixteenth century. Although we Ottomanists have begun to study the rich field of Ottoman patronage relations, we still know very little about the specific choices of our subjects and how patronage ties were established in a particular cultural milieu such as the late sixteenth century. For example, could we talk about a rupture in patronage during this period compared to the early sixteenth century as argued by Andrews and Kalpakli? Who did a late sixteenth century author choose as his patrons? Did profession, social background, or literary preferences play a role in his choices? And how did one talk about patronage, especially during tense moments such as the fight between patrons, death of a patron, or being neglected by a patron at a time of intense factional strife? To address these questions, I will focus on the life and work of the prominent biographer Atai who provides us with a colorful portrait of his circles in his poetry and biographical dictionary. I will argue that Atai sought his patrons from a group of the high ranking ulema who shared similar tastes in poetry and the same social background through their fathers among the sixteenth century learned elite. I will examine the specific strategies Atai pursued to receive the interest of these patrons and discuss them in the context of changing patronage relations from the mid sixteenth to the early seventeenth century.