The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

~ RELATING TO PILGRIMS AND OFFERING MEDIATION ~ 177
mous writer considered so reprehensible, he would have had no occasion to write
in the first place …
~ Was friendship between an Ottoman Muslim and a foreigner an impossible
proposition?
At first glance, the answer to this question would seem to be ‘yes’ in most contexts;
or phrased differently, only somewhat unconventional personages should
have been able to surmount the formidable social barriers preventing such friendships
in the normal run. Maybe things were somewhat different for women, at
least if the foreign partner was willing to learn Ottoman and was as gifted and
energetic as the eighteenth-century travel author Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 65
For it appears that, among highly placed Istanbul ladies, the requirements of
social position and polite behaviour did not limit contacts with female strangers
quite as stringently as was true among males. At least if Lady Mary’s letters are
at all realistic, her relationship with Fatma Hanım, the wife of the grand vizier’s
aide, the powerful kâhya, was what one would call a friendship. The two young
women apparently went visiting together, and Fatma Hanım seems to have introduced
Lady Mary to the wife of the grand vizier and even to female members of
the ruling house. Thus the English travel writer much admired the social skills of
this Istanbul lady, who she felt would easily have held her own at any European
court. 66 However, as no testimony of Fatma Hanım’s feelings has survived, these
conclusions must remain hypothetical.
Certain relationships between former foreign slaves, Islamized or not, and
their erstwhile masters also were described by the returnees in such a fashion that
we may well wonder whether the master–servant relationship had not evolved in
the direction of human fellow feeling. We will return once more to the Nuremberg
ex-soldier Hans Wild, who was not in the normal run of things a considerate
person. His book is full of the quarrels he got into with Muslims and non-
Muslims, that often ended in fisticuffs; and that Wild was often punished for
these affrays does not seem to have limited the zest with which he threw himself
into anything that looked like a good fight. 67 Yet when he speaks of the last of his
many masters, a janissary officer of Cairo, his tone changes. After the series of
disasters that ended with his close brush with death in Antalya, Wild decided to
return to the Egyptian capital and seek the aid of this personage, explaining that
he had no better friend than him. The janissary commander took Wild back into
his service and treated him well. As for the ex-soldier and ex-slave, he remained
for a year, working hard to earn his welcome, until he had saved enough to reembark.
Once in Istanbul, he entered the service of the Habsburg ambassador,
and this official gave him a testimonial that probably was meant to help him find
employment once he had returned home. In this text and also in a similar document
issued by the author’s former commander in the Habsburg army, the aid of