Book Review: The Enemy at the Gate by Andrew Wheatcroft

In 2004, when Turkey’s admission to the European Union was being debated, Frits Bolkestein, a Dutch member of the European Union's executive committee objected on the grounds that Europe risked becoming "Islamized" and the Battle of Vienna would have been in vain.

The Battle of Vienna took place in 1682. At that time, the Ottoman Empire had crossed the zenith of its power and glory. Almost 600 years ago in 1071, at a place called Manzikert in Turkey, Turkish forces had defeated the Byzantine troops of the Eastern Roman Empire. It was the beginning of the end for the Eastern Roman Empire, which had outlived the Western Roman Empire by almost 6 centuries. The Ottomans considered themselves to be the heirs to the Roman Empire, though other western powers did not share that opinion. The Ottomans moved from one victory to another. Murad I and his Christian vassals defeated Lazar, the Prince of Serbia at Kosovo Polje in 1389. Serbia became a vassal state until 1521 when Belgrade was captured. At the Battle of Mohács in August 1526, Sultan Suleiman I (Suleiman the Magnificent) defeated King Louis II and occupied southern Hungary. Vienna blocked the Ottoman route into the heart of Europe. At the height of its glory in 1529, the Ottoman troops led by Suleiman the Magnificent tried to capture Vienna, but the siege failed.

Andrew Wheatcroft’s book The Enemy at the Gate chronicles the second attempt by the Ottomans to capture Vienna, this time in 1683. Wheatcroft is uniquely positioned to describe this conflict since he is an expert on both the Habsburgs, the then most powerful ruling power in Europe with control over Vienna, and the Ottomans. Wheatcroft’s previous works include books on both the Habsburgs and the Ottomans. In clear, lucid style using limpid prose, Wheatcroft builds up the battle settings, giving us an inside view of the players and politics involved. The Thirty Years War had got over just a few decades earlier and there was not much warmth between the Habsburgs and the Protestant powers. It was even said that Protestants living in Ottoman Europe were treated better than Protestants under the Habsburgs. Even Catholic France was not very supportive of the Habsburgs. The Ottomans too had a major enemy in the form of the Persian Empire with whom they were constantly fighting The main difference between the European wars fought by the Habsburgs and the Persian wars fought by the Ottomans was that the Habsburgs learned a lot from their experiences. Their armies had an organisation and chain of command which the Ottoman armies lacked. The art of generalship was well developed. The Ottomans relied on individual bravery and skills, while the European forces relied on teamwork, organisation and methodical preparation.

There were so many areas where the Ottomans were much superior to the Habsburg forces. Their supply chains were much better, with Ottoman soldiers on the battlefield put up in much more comfort than the average Habsburg soldier, though the Ottomans were so far away from home. The biggest advantage which the Ottomans had was that there was a central authority in command, usually the Grand Vizier, who acted in the Sultan’s name. In the case of the European forces, the soldiers were supplied by many nation states, some of whom were reluctant to do so and all of whom required payment or other rewards.

The Ottomans lost the battle for Vienna, one of the most intense battles ever fought. There were various reasons for this loss, the main one being the incompetence of the Turkish Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa. Do read the book to find out the various mistakes which the Ottomans committed. Both sides were charged with zeal, religious and nationalistic. Wheatcroft cites quite a few examples of bravery, but I don’t want to describe them here and spoil the fun. Wheatcroft’s descriptions of battles and troops are second to none. For example, when Wheatcroft describes the Polish hussars who arrived just in time to relieve the siege, he says:

The Polish hussars were heavy cavalry par excellence and they had no equivalent in 17th century Europe, In effect a holdover from the great age of medieval chivalry, man and horse together were a missile with their lance or wielding their long spear like triangular swords more than four foot long – they existed only for the charge. Facing the disciplined volley fire of western armies, they had largely become a liability, but against the Janissary infantry of the Ottomans or their loose flowing formations of sipahis, they could be as devastating as artillery fire.

Wheatcroft does not stop after the Battle of Vienna. He goes on to describe how the Europeans capitalised on their victory and went on to win more battles. Hungary was freed from Ottoman power, though the initial attempt to take Budapest was a failure. As the Ottomans became weaker and weaker, they began to be regarded as just another European power. The Habsburgs and the Ottomans discovered various mutual interests. After Napoleon was defeated by Czar Alexander I, the Russians became stronger and this led to the Austrians and the Ottomans growing closer. During the Crimean war, the Turks fought on the side of France and Britain against Russia. Finally, in the First World War which resulted in the destruction of both the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires, the Habsburgs and the Ottomans were on the same side.

Book review: The Stone Woman by Tariq Ali

The Stone Woman is the third book in Tariq Ali’s Islam Quintet. Set at the turn of the twentieth century as the six hundred year old Ottoman Empire slowly flickers out, the Stone Woman revolves around the family of Iskander Pasha, who live in a remote palace ‘not too distant from Istanbul’. Iskander Pasha is a retired diplomat who had once graced the French court and the salons of Paris and is the descendent of Yusuf Pasha, a courtier at the Ottoman court.

The novel derives its name from an ancient rock in the palace garden, roughly shaped like a veiled woman, probably once worshipped by pagans as a goddess. Ali has each of his main characters make their way to the Stone Woman and pour out their feelings and emotions. In that sense, the Stone Woman is a collection of various personal tales of the various members of the cast. Unlike the first two books in the Islam Quintet, the Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree and the Book of Saladin, there is no single strand of storyline that runs from beginning to the end.

The Stone Woman gives its readers a feel of Ottoman society as it existed then. Iskander Pasha’s family cannot be classified as commoners, and just as in the case of the Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, aristocrats and their servants form the main cast. Ali tells us of a dying empire where the Sultan and the mullahs or the ‘beards’ are in control and where innovation is frowned upon. Not just the printing press, but even clocks have been banned. The muezzin’s call to prayer is the only means of knowing the time. The reader is forced to wonder, can this be the same Ottoman Empire which in 1453 captured Constantinople (or Istanbul) from the Byzantines using the most advanced cannon of those times? The Ottomans were definitely the masters of innovation then. Tolerant Sunnis, they managed to run an inclusive empire where Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Bedouins, Greeks and Slavs were all invited to the party.

In the course of telling his tale, or rather collection of tales, Tariq Ali makes references to various historical events. The increasing animosity between the Kurds and the Armenians (which would later lead to the massacre of 2 million Armenians during the First World War) is brought out very well. To start with, it’s a simple case of the Armenians having some of the best land and the Kurds coveting the land. The inception of the Young Turks movement is also built into the storyline. A young officer named Kemal Pasha makes a few cameo appearances. The Young Turks have contempt for the decadent Ottomans. They want to create a pure Turkish state where there will be no place for Armenians or Greeks. Some of the minor stories are not really relevant to this story, but they are interesting as well, such as the rivalry and differences between the Ommayads and the Abbasids and the reasons for the defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683.

The main or rather only the problem I have with this story is the same problem I had with the Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree and the Book of Saladin. In this story, Ali’s cast lead a life that would be called ‘liberal’ by even modern-day standards. Iskander Pasha’s brother Mehmed and his gay partner, a German Baron, have an open relationship. Iskander’s third wife is Sara, a Jewish woman. Sara was in love with Suleman, another Jew, but could not marry Suleman. After she was betrothed to Iskander, she made sure she became pregnant with Suleman’s child before marrying Iskander. Iskander eventually gets to know of this, but does not really mind, because he is a man for whom ‘blood relations don’t matter in the least’. Iskander loves Sara’s daughter Nilofer as much as any of his biological children. For the same reason, when Iskander gets to know that woman he had an affair with in France (during his diplomat days) had his child, he does not particularly want to meet that child.

Nilofer is allowed to marry Dmitri, a Greek school teacher. Nilofer’s love for Dmitri cools after a few years and she abandons him for her father’s palace. When Nilofer is at the Palace, she has an affair with Selim, the family barber’s son. At that time, Dmitri who is alone in Konya, is killed by Turkish fanatics. Very soon, Nilofer marries Selim (who made an officer in the army by her brother, a senior army officer) and they seem to be all set to live happily ever after. One of Nilofer’s brothers marries a Coptic Christian in Cairo and another brother marries a Shia Muslim. Also, in the course of the story, when Iskander Pasha loses his voice (please read this book to find out how and why) and later regains it, he thanks August Comtẻ and not Allah.

I am not too sure if families as liberal as the one described in this story ever lived in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth century. May be they did. If they did, Ali would have done well to have told his readers the source of his information.