An Interpretive Essay


by Richard Greydanus

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This paper begins where it shall end; that is, considering the significance of a presentation on 15 April 1683 of a draft manuscript by a Genoese political refugee, Giovanni Paolo Marana, to Louis XIV, a man who has become synonymous with foundations of modern political absolutism. This guiding consideration frames an analysis of uses of the image of the “Turk” as a mode of critical engagement of culture in late 17th and early 18th century France to assess the political ideology of the eight volumes of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in the broader context of the its Enlightenment narrative.  Titled L’esploratore turco e le di liu pratiche segrete con la Porta Ottomana. Scoperte in Parigi nel regno di Luiggi [sic] in Grande, L’anno 1683. Tomo primo, the manuscript contained 30 letters purportedly written by a Turkish spy who had lived in Paris undetected for some 45 years. All the while this mysterious figure had carried on a voluminous body of correspondence with family, friends, and figures of note throughout the Ottoman Empire. Marana claimed to have happened upon the letters lying in a pile in the corner of an abandoned lodging purely by chance; the author by all accounts had mysteriously vanished sometime during the previous 12 months. The originals were said to have been composed in Arabic, and thus were in need of a translator—the role in which Marana cast himself. He claimed to have immediately recognized their significance: “that they treated of affairs of state: That they contained relations of war and peace; and discoursed not only of the affairs of France, but those of all Christendom, till the year 1682.”[1] Towards the conclusion of 1683, Marana published the first collection by permission of the king in Italian and French. Shortly thereafter the publications of a second and a third collection, delayed for a short time by royal censors, followed in 1684 and 1686, respectively. Bound together, these three collections comprised the first volume of L’espion du Grand-Seigneur or Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, which all of the subsequent translations, whether English, French, or other, share in common.[2]

Brief discussions of the authorship and the content of the Turkish Spy will serve as an entry points into an analysis of its use of the “Turk.” Virginia Aksan has asked, “Is There a Turk in the Turkish Spy?”[3] The straightforward answer to this question must be negative. Marana’s claim to have discovered the letters by chance is a fiction, nothing more than a literary strategy aimed at convincing the reading public of the validity of the perspective forwarded by its contents via the illusion of the author’s origin. But it is a useful fiction. Mahmut the Arabian, the Turkish spy, is endowed with the mantle of “objectivity” by virtue of his cultural distance from the Occidental object. By styling himself a translator instead of author, however, Marana gifted historians with the problem of establishing the authorship of the subsequent volumes, of which there are seven in the English or five in the French. The total number of letters in the eight English volumes which are examined in the essay is 634. Universally acknowledged as the author of the original French version of the first volume, Marana is replaced by an anonymous English translator (or author?) in volumes two through eight of the English edition. The unidentified translator of the later volumes claimed to have gained direct access of the letters in the original Arabic, thus doing away with the need for an intermediate. The purpose of the fiction of the Arabic originals remained the same as that of Marana in the first volume—to preserve the illusion of authenticity. C.D. Lee believes that “it was decided to suppress the identity of Marana, the original writer, altogether, but to retain the fiction of the discovery of the Letters in an attic in Paris.”[4] Something like this seems to have been necessary to maintain the fiction since the literary pedigree of the Turkish Spy is such that the later volumes appeared in English before they did in French. Thus the question of whether Marana had anything at all to do with the composition of the last seven volumes must be posed. Lee’s conclusion that the author of the later seven volumes was an Englishmen aside, the documentary evidence available to the present author makes it unwise to decide either for or against Marana.[5] Regardless, it is indeed an historical irony that the authorship of the entirety of the Turkish Spy should be lost in an illusion of Marana’s own creation.

Cases for and against Marana’s authorship of all eight volumes of the English version of the Turkish Spy all utilize its content as evidence to bolster their claims. Given the presence of conflicting, though inconclusive, claims, recourse to demonstrating the continuity or discontinuity of ideological perspective between the first and second through eight volumes is entirely appropriate—even if not in any sense absolutely compelling. A comparison of two treatments yields some rather surprising results: historians not only disagree on the authorship, but the ideological bent of its content as well. For instance, William H. McBurney lists among his arguments for Marana’s authorship of the entire work “the pro-French bias of all the Turkish letters; and the continuity of design characterization, and style throughout the contested work.”[6] The aforementioned Lee, by contrast, holds that after “work began on the second and subsequent volumes, the stories showed a more robust anti-French and anti-popish stance” in addition to a markedly difference in character and style of the prose.[7] To be sure, the reader will notice a transition between the first and second volume. McBurney dismisses this as inevitable due to the difficulties attending any translation.[8] The anti-popish stance is unmistakable; but what about it views of the French? Considerably more ground will be gained for mediating between these two characterizations, however, if the appraisal of the French political culture in the Turkish Spy is paid closer attention.

The historical significance assigned to the Turkish Spy typically is that of being the inspiration behind Montesquieu’s highly critical parody of what he considered to be an increasingly despotic French monarchy in his The Persian Letters (1720). In such assessments the form and narrative structure are emphasized, but the content of Turkish Spy’s political and cultural commentary are paid little attention. A fuller account is developed by Aksan, who argues that it had an appreciable role to play in the formation of an “emerging social consensus about non-Western governments in general, part of “a conscious act to change the common way of thinking, by comparison and contrast with European monarchies.”[9] To qualify exactly how “appreciable”—my characterization—was that role is difficult, but one should consider the tremendous popular success the collection of letters experienced; it was translated into many of the major European languages and republished through a number of editions.[10] (More will be said about the relation to Montesquieu in the conclusion.) A second major reason for assigning historical significance is found in the Turkish Spy’s relationship to the career of Reason through the Enlightenment, the intellectual genealogy of an anti-clerical tradition of free-thinking. Marana seems the prefect candidate to author such a work. As a Genoese political refugee living in Paris, his life symbolically spans two periods of the traditionally conceived progress of Reason through Renaissance Italy to Revolutionary France. C.J. Betts finds Mahmut vacillating between a sort of universal theism, that is, not specifically Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, and a rationalist deism, and so labels the Turkish Spy a forerunner of later French deist thought.[11] As valuable as this approach may be for intellectual history, the difficulty encountered here is that of assigning the work significant as a commentary on contemporary cultural and political issues. Robin Howells, who draws on the work’s “enlightened” content, claims to find in the secret life of Mahmut in Paris a “growing resistance, initially aristocratic but increasingly bourgeois, to the monarchical order.”[12] As this paper will demonstrate, however, this sort of anti-monarchical conclusion is historically premature by at least a half a century, if not more. The Turkish Spy’s shares much more in common with Voltaire’s high praise of the 17th century French political order in his The Age of Louis XIV (1752) than it does with a later generation of French revolutionaries.

After a lengthy introduction, we return briefly to the scene with which we began: that of Marana’s presentation of a sample collection of the letters to Louis XIV in 1683. Notable parallels may be drawn between Marana and his creation Mahmut. The former, a political and military historian, eagerly sought royal patronage; while the later lived in the shadows of the royal court, claiming to have had personal contact with both Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Indeed, for evidence of an intimate connection with the Sun King, one needs look no further than the date attached to the first letter. Mahmut reports his arrival in Paris on 25 October 1637, a little less of a year prior to Louis’ birth in 1638, giving himself enough time to familiarize himself with his new surrounding before reporting on that momentous occasion. (I.i.28.) The range of topics on which Mahmut discourses in the letters that follow is cosmographic in scale, even if the fragmentary epistolary medium prevents the pretentious synthesis of the entire corpus of human knowledge typically associated with cosmography. The result is a work of cultural criticism in the widest sense of the word cultural—an attempt to engage all facets of human life deemed relevant to the construction of society. Sensitivity to the unfolding narrative in the letters, however, allows the reader to discern a several themes and an underlying thematic unity at the center of which may be found a portrait of an enlightened monarch. By way of comparison and contrast, the France during the reign of Louis XIV through to 1682 is measured against the ideal rule of a regal potentate directed by the final authority of Reason.

The voice of Reason throughout the Turkish Spy is the voice of the fictional Mahmut through whom the author (or authors) is able to speak. This essay will examine how Mahmut’s “Turkishness” is used by the author to gain a critical distance for Reason to arbitrate between a variety of cultural irrationalities. Looking forward a few decades to the composition of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, Rebecca Joubin argues “the philosophes established a subgenre of Orientalist discourse in 18th century French literature that used the topos of the Oriental as Other as a lens through which to provide an indirect, albeit potent, means of cultural self-criticism.[13] It will be argued here that the literary strategies of the philosophes have an intellectual god-parent in Marana’s Turkish Spy, for the protagonist’s identity as an outsider, a “Turk,” lends credibility to the critical lens of Reason through which Mahmut’s views French and more broadly European affairs. But something more must be added. Viewed as a whole, the narrative trajectory of the correspondence may be described as an ascent to Reason, a journey on which the reader is invited to join. The voice of the Oriental as Other become the Self the reader ought to aspire to be, Mahmut is recruited by the Occidental author to lay the groundwork for an alternative social order in which those things which divide humanity are reasoned away. In short, the reader is encouraged to make Mahmut’s struggles and solutions their own. The role of the “Turk” in constructing the vision of the Turkish Spy will be explored through an analysis of several different themes running through the letters. Mahmut’s spiritual journey from a skeptical Muslim faith to enlightened rationality—albeit a rationality pious enough to skirt around the condemnation of religious censors—drawn from the biographical portions of the letters is a narrative of the triumph of Reason. Through continuing commentary on various features of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, Mahmut plays the role of a reasonable arbiter in religious matters while laying the foundations for a universal monotheism. A seemingly naïve defense of Turkish despotism by Mahmut, “vilest of the Grand Seignior’s slaves,” (I.i.1.) [14] plays foil to the policies and practices of European states to accentuate the ideal of enlightened monarchy. Finally, the entire narrative of the Turkish Spy can be found building towards the novel composition of a universal history culminating universal peace which can for the first time embrace the whole of humankind through Reason’s triumph over superstition and dogma, not only among Christians, but Muslims and Jews as well.

 

I. Finding Comedy in a Life of Tragedy

 

My whole life has been but one continued tragedy, wherein the various change of scenes has not relieved me from the least real evil hid behind, but only amazed my senses with some new pageantry, some fair idea of honour, pleasure, or profit ; when before the ACT was done, I found myself cajolled, and overwhelmed in fresh calamities; misfortunes which I never dreamt of.

            VII, i, 1           

 

Bound up with difficulties identifying of the Turkish Spy’s author may be added a question about the relationship between an underlying meaning the author (or authors) intends to convey and the perspective held by Mahmut. That is, to what extent does the voice of the creation represent the voice of the creator? Two very recent treatments have departed from McBurney’s defense of a single author for the entire corpus, and even called into question Lee’s conclusion that the eight English volumes are the brainchild of two authors, to posit the possibility of multiple authors.[15] That the letters present themselves as detached or semi-detached units lends itself such a multiple inference. Again, it lies beyond the ability of the present writer and the scope of this essay, which is based on the 26th English edition of the Turkish Spy published in 1770, to enter directly into the debate over authorship. What is of concern here is that the presupposition of multiple authors is wedded, not to ideological discontinuity as above—though that certainly remains a possibility—but to the absence of an underlying central narrative purpose. Pascal Nicklas, for instance, argues that the double life Mahmut leads while living as a spy in Paris renders him “crucially unreliable and thereby destabilizes the very act of establishing meaning,” which he adds, “testifies to the modern embarrassment over the solidity of meaning.”[16] If there exists no underlying meaningful unity, it would appear that the notion of a single author becomes inconsequential to the interpretation of the text. Whatever else might be said, however, one thing remains certain. Among the many things Mahmut certainly is—at times pious, at times skeptical, here fatalistic, there moralistic—he is not embarrassed over the presumed solidity of meaning. Nor is there any indication that the author (or authors) intend for the reader to ironically invert his lack of embarrassment to find a subversive criticism of perspective he holds. The first of the four themes, the spiritual journey of Mahmut, instead reveals how the confusion and inconsistencies of a spy’s double life prepare the stage for the construction of a meaning-full alternative,[17] a better life lived in accordance with the standards of Reason to which the reader ought to aspire. Implications inferred from the underlying narrative continuity for the question of single or multiple authorships must be left as implications. It is worth noting that an inference of many more than two authors lacks the plausibility of conclusions drawn on the surviving historical evidence, albeit scarce, available to McBurney and Lee.

With the spy’s arrival in Paris announced in a letter dated 9 November 1637, a sense of dislocation impresses upon the reader his capacities for critical self-reflection. Taking the name Titus the Moldovian and styling himself a Christian cleric, Mahmut is able to account for the color of his skin and his familiarity with the Arabic language and Turkish culture in a Parisian setting. But the duplicity necessitated by his new vocation compromises his basic convictions. As he writes,

I make two figures, being in heart what I ought to be, but outwardly, and in appearance, what I never intend…Although I have a dispensation from the Mufti for lying, and false oaths, which I shall be obliged to make ; yet I have still some qualm on my mind. (I, i, 1.)

 

Writing to a hermit years later, he says he finds himself torn between his allegiance to God and his allegiance to the sultan. His service to God requires unquestioning obedience to the sultan; but his service to the sultan demands that he violate some of the commands of God. (III, i, 15.) Herein lays the source of that original qualm; though it will take the Turkish spy eight fictive years to articulate and many more to articulate a satisfactory solution to the problem it presents. It is possible to claim, in fact, that one of the over-arching aims of the Turkish Spy is to reconcile the demands spiritual and political forms of authority.

Soon after his arrival his guilt compels him to request from the Mufti, “Prince of the Religion of the Turks,” either an absolution or some rite of penance to ease his conscience. (I, i, 9.) The collection of letters that make up the Turkish Spy are only those written by Mahmut, thus the reader must glean from responses the content of whatever correspondence he claims to have received. In this particular case, the Mufti’s response leaves Mahmut painfully confused and unsure of the security of his eternal salvation: “So that I only live in the certainty of having no certitude ; and my soul, which is encompassed with fear, will be in dread till death.” (I, ii, 12.) At face value, Mahmut’s declaration could be dismissed as mere piety. The formulaic “certainty of having no certitude,” however, is reminiscent of the resolution to doubt all that can be doubted in order to establish a rational basis for truth laid out in Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method (1637). Indeed, several of the letters are dedicated to discussing Descartes philosophy (II, i, 12; IV, iii, 1.) and Mahmut even claims to have had a long conversation with the French philosopher. (II, i, 32.) Thus it may be called into question whether the declaration is prompted by piety or a skeptical spirit of inquiry—or both. In a letter written five years later, having received absolution from the Mufti, Mahmut writes, “My doubts are vanished. I am no longer racked with torturing scruples about my conduct” (II, i, 24.) and questions about the state of his eternal soul cease. At face value, the Mufti’s absolution appears no more than a pious prescription for a doubting Thomas. But consider that to know anything with a comforting certainty, Mahmut must believe something. A comparable act of conceptual absolution—which is admittedly weak—is made by Descartes, who reasoned that he could not trust knowledge derived through the senses if he did not believe that a good God had created the sensible world.[18] Reason thus might be said to contain its own stripped down forms of piety. When he reflects on the nature of religious faith per se after his encounter Descartes, Mahumt writes,

Superstition renders a man a fool, and Scepticism is enough to make him mad. To believe all Things is above Reason ; to give credit to nothing is below it : I will keep the middle path, and direct my Faith by Reason. (IV, iii, 1.)

 

But faith in whom, or what? In the course of sorting out that qualm on his mind, Mahmut has moved further away from a faith in the historical revelation of Allah to Muhammad towards some version of the philosopher’s God. In a letter defending deism against the charges of atheism, he claims as much; deists have no faith in historical religion, but they honour God as Creator, a belief Mahmut comes to find most satisfactory. (V, iii, 1.)[19]

            With his arrival in Paris, Mahmut thus appears more rationalist and less traditionally religious and more European and less Arabic or Turkish. The Islamic faith he claims to profess bears quite a number of traits better associated with Roman Catholicism, for instance, like his request for absolution or a rite of penance. One should not downplay, however, Mahmut’s claim to be Muslim, for they play a vital role as the means by which he arrives at his profession of a universal monotheism. Over a protracted period of time, the hard lessons learned of necessity in a life of espionage brings him to shed the historic roots of his native faith; and the Qu’ran, which had formerly been the final revelation of God, is reduced to being one possible revelation among many possible truths. Mahmut resolves from the beginning to make “a mosque of my heart,” (I, iii, 4.) though he never prays in the direction of Mecca (I, ii, 10.) and conforms to the religious practices of Christians. In a letter to the Vizir Azem, he recounts how he fell so ill a priest visited him to administer Last Rites, which he accepted without hesitation— if only to maintain the subterfuge of being a Christian. (I, iii, 14.) On another occasion, Mahmut describes how, being seized and searched by Cardinal Marazin’s men, he was discovered with a Qu’ran. To excuse himself, he claimed it helped him brush up on his Arabic. Upon searching his dwelling, works by Plutarch, Tacitus, Livy, Averroes, and Saint Augustine were also discovered by the French authorities; and Mahmut concluded that he might just as easily have been a pagan or Christian. (II, iii, 34.) Detained by the Cardinal’s men, he ate “swine’s flesh, and drank freely on wine,” violating traditional Muslim practice because, he believed, “God is the Merciful of the Merciful, and that he requires not unreasonable performances of his creatures.” (II, iii, 35.) The practice of his faith grows markedly more syncretistic with age; and experience teaches him that this is a better, a more reasonable, way to live. He writes to ask the Mufti whether it would be acceptable for him to observe Ramadan during Lent—again, to maintain the subterfuge of being a Christian. (V, i, 1.) To his young cousin, he imparts this wisdom: “The law of nations, and the particular commands of our holy Prophet, oblige us to treat such with all humanity and tenderness…Despise no man on the score of his Religion ; for there are no factions in Paradise.” (V, iv, 6.) Having established his credentials as a keen observer of humanity over a period of 33 years, Mahmut comes full circle, claiming to encounter God, not in the outward forms of religious observance, but in mystic contemplation, which he believes common to all religions. (VII, iii, 11.) The true faith in God shared by all humanity he professes to find exactly where he had been forced to conceal it when first coming to Paris, in the privacy which a mosque of the heart affords the believer. Seeds for a rejection of the historic Muslim faith are therefore planted by Marana in the duplicity necessitated by Mahmut’s true purpose in Paris; and the authenticity of his profession of faith can thus be legitimately questioned. In the context of the eight volumes of the Turkish Spy, however Mahmut’s coming to articulate the wisdom of a lifetime of living incognito is a rhetorical device meant to draw the reader into agreement with its underlying vision of an ascent to Reason.

             Periodic bouts with loneliness breaks into the continuing story of Mahmut’s ascent to Reason. On a number of occasions, his correspondents are petitioned for answers why so little correspondence has been sent to him, whether personal or official. To friends, he extols the virtues of friendship even when separated by such great distances. Writing to the ministers at the Divan in Constantinople, he speculates that they believe him compromised by the beliefs of the infidels in Paris because he has often written favorably of European rulers. The feelings of isolation are only amplified further. In protest he writes, “If we ought to give the devil his due, as the Christians say; in God’s name let us not rob men of theirs, though they be our enemies.” (VII, iv, 5.) These petitions seem to bring temporary relief; but even as his letters grow more verbose and visionary, so does his longing to return home to spend what remains of his life among family and friends. An extended visit from his mother, comes to see her son one last time before she dies, also lightens his mood—she remains in Paris and dies there some 14 years later. (V, i, 10; VII, ii, 5.) Complaints of his advanced age and the length of his service to the sultan are made and he freely speculates about what would happen if he exposed what he truly was to the French government. (VII, i, 6.) The initial disconnect Mahmut experiences as a Muslim living secretly among Christians only grows more pronounced with the passage of time. It is both ironic and tragic that this prophet of Reason who bears a message of religious reconciliation for all humankind should find himself so isolated while living in a city populated by so many. In the final letter of the Turkish Spy, Mahmut writes that he fears another spy has been murdered by order of the Divan because his advancing age has become a liability. “And if so,” he writes, “I may expect to be served so myself in a little time : For my turn is next.” (VIII, iv, 18.) Howells correctly notes, “Secrecy implies falsehood. But it also implies truth.”[20] Pious till the end, the spy places his trust in God and calls to mind the “eternal felicity” which awaits the faithful; the reader is left to make a comedy of his tragic end—the irony, the secret ought to be made public.

 

II. Retrofitting the Divine for more Human Purposes

 

Whatever various forms of religion there be in the world, we know there is but One True God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, Conservator and Governor of Men.

VII, ii, 10        

 

Nineteenth century historiography of the early modern period, tending to see an absolute divide between truths of faith and truths of reason, constructed a myth of a philosophic humanist rejection of even the slightest hint of religious dogma. It should be remembered, however, that Descartes retained a notion of God—as did Voltaire. Indeed, a number of articles in the Encyclopedie explicitly refute the errors of atheism;[21] hence Mahmut’s defense of deism against charges of atheism is entirely in step with the mood of the times. Nevertheless, the concept of Reason, as it becomes to be formulated—in particular, by the fictive spy—breaks with older notions of the truths of faith.[22] As will later be articulated by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1768), the faculty of human reason and the standard of truths, the potential to know and what may be truthfully known, which formerly had been guided by divine revelation, are collapsed into a single concept, Reason.[23] To guarantee the veracity of Reason the idea of God remained—both as the source of human reason and the Creator of a rational order of the world.[24] Understood to be humanity’s common heritage, Reason is common sense. Divine revelation, as the property of a particular group of people, is by this definition decidedly uncommon. From the second of the themes running through the Turkish Spy, that of an ongoing comparison of the tenets of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, emerges a universal monotheism from a process out of which the offending particular-isms of each faith are exposed and discarded.

            The common Hebrew source of these three Abrahamic faiths begs for such a comparative analysis to be made. Casting the protagonist in the role of a Muslim gives the author a considerable advantage given that all three claim to be historic revelations; namely, as the latter of the three, Islam is positioned to respond to the claims of others. Similar to how the Christian faith holds Christ to be the fulfillment of the Hebrew law and prophets—in a certain sense incorporating and transcending the beliefs of its Jewish parent—the Muslim faith sees Muhammad at the end of a line of prophets which include both Christ and Moses.[25] The Qu’ranic insistence of the truth of God’s transcendent unity also fits well with the author’s rejection of the exclusivity of divine revelation claimed by the three faiths. Divested of the particularities of its historic origin, the idea of God is transformed, in effect emptied of much of its significance, into something to which a believer can assent. The significance of this conceptual move should not be underestimated. Many of the confusions associated with formulating a concept of God are muted if the exact details of his actions in human history are ignored.

            The historical person of Christ occupies a considerable amount of Mahmut’s attention. The mantle of “objectivity” he assumes vis a vis Western Europe, being the Occident’s Oriental Other, similarly grants him insights into the inconsistencies of Muslim belief by virtue of seeing the Orient from an Occidental point of view. For instance, in a letter to Bederin, a dervish, Mahmut worries that Muslims inadvertently blaspheme Jesus of the Qu’ran when criticizing Christ of the New Testament. (II, i, 17.) Elsewhere, he writes to the same, “I honour Jesus, the son of Mary; and so I do all his Brethren, the Prophets of Paradise : This I am taught in the Alcoran.” (III, iii, 1.) Mahmut’s words are chosen so carefully that a reader educated in Christian doctrine in fact would only with the greatest difficulty be able to discern a denial of Christ’s divinity. Take, for example, his Muslim profession of the doctrine of the Incarnation: “That Word remains forever, and at a determined hour became incarnate in the person of Jesus, the son of Mary, as The Holy Alcoran informs us.” (VII, ii, 7.) He wonders how the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation differs from the Muslim belief that Christ was the breath of God. (II, i, 17.) But while the Word of God became incarnate, Mahmut is certain that it lost its divinity in the process; for Christ, a preacher the unity of the divine essence, would not claim to be God, and thereby divide divinity. (VII, i, 3.) Such a claim would offend every standard of rationality. As if to reinforce this point, Mahmut also enters into the 9th and 10th century debates over the nature of the Qu’ran—namely, whether it was created or eternal—asserting that it could not be eternal, for that would as well break up the unity of divinity. (V, iii, 22.) The central question of the debate shared with the question of Christ’s divinity—that is, if the Qu’ran is not eternal, how can it claim to be the only perfect revelation of God to humanity?—is carefully avoided by way of a foregone conclusion. The proposed alternative, a universal monotheism undercutting any of the particular historical claims made by each faith, he finds “more agreeable to humanity.” (VII, i, 3.)

            Christian, Muslim, and Jewish beliefs are played off against each other, their merits and demerits carefully assessed. On the pretension to have found a universally accessible source of truth in Reason, a system of this-worldly ethics is constructed alongside a religiously plural vision of the afterlife. For confining salvation to the Latin Church or the descendents of Jacob, which Mahmut calls “the severe arithmetick of the Western Religion,” Christians and Jews are condemned for their “superstitious narrowness.” (II, iii, 29)[26] In this same spirit he notes that “each Sect is so sure that their Way is the only Path to Salvation, that they spare for neither murders, sacrileges, nor treasons, to proselyte the rest to their opinion.” (III, iii, 4.) The solution he proposes is quite simple: of the sons of Abraham, Ishmael was no better than Isaac. (VI, ii, 26.) Though from his experience he knows this simple truth is little understood—and much less put into practice. The co-existence of the three monotheistic faiths in Constantinople, “the glorious center of the world,” is held up as an example, albeit imperfect, for the reader to see. (VII, iv, 18)[27] Indeed, Mahmut appears very conscious of humanity’s imperfection and of his own impossible idealism; but he is equally conscious of the need to dream of a better world than the one in which he lives. As a Muslim among Christians, his true self must remain hidden so long as one religion should exclude another.

            With a Muslim protagonist and a predominantly Christian audience, it is no surprise that the Jewish faith occupies considerably less of author’s attention. That which is said concerning Judaism is summed up in the character of two persons. The narrow bounds of the Jewish conception of the God’s people are parodied in Mahmut’s recount of the story of Sabbati Sevi,[28] a 17th century figure who claimed to be the long-awaited messiah. His following grew in strength until he traveled to Constantinople, met with the sultan, and promptly converted to Islam. Using the example of Sevi, Mahmut highlights for Nathan Ben Saddi, one of his Jewish correspondents, the weaknesses of the Jewish faith when compared to Islam. (VI, iv, 11.)[29] The second figure is drawn from the legend of the Wandering Jew, who periodically reappears in the course of the eight volumes. Mahmut tells how during a meeting with this similarly fictive person—now settled in Paris—the latter accused Muslims of imposture, that is, of presuming too much about their particular corner on the truth. (II, iii, 1.) From him Mahmut learns that the Ten Tribes of Israel, exiled to Assyria and lost to history, have made their home somewhere in northern Asia, preserving the practice of the true laws of Moses. The land is a philosopher’s paradise where all manner of scientific enterprise pursued. (VI, iv, 4.) As the eight volumes of the Turkish Spy nears their completion, the Wandering Jew is celebrated for having taken up his former occupation to wander the world preaching the immanent arrival of a universal religion. (VII, iv, 9.)

 

III. Measuring Up to the Ideal

 

For they spare not to call him The Most Christian Turk, by way of mockery…I swear the King of France is a great Hero, a deserves the Honour which these infidels have unfeignedly done him, in likening him to the undoubted arbiter of the earth.

            VII, iii, 8         

 

            Fearful of the division of sovereignty between political factions, the political perspective of the Turkish Spy bears a characteristic mark of 17th century French absolutist political theory. A period of unprecedented religious warfare followed in the wake of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, which mark the entrance of Christianity in Europe into the early modern period. In the process, political theory was torn form its firm sacred foundation; whether the sacred origins of the secular order were entirely done away with, however, remains to be seen. Thinkers like Jean Bodin, a major influence on political theory in 17th century France, responded to the problem of divided confessional loyalties within a single polity to construct an alternate foundation on which to build a unified state. Again, historiography derived from a 19th century conception of an absolute divide between the truths of faith and the truths of reason characterizes this period as the birthplace of a wholly secular state. If this were the case, however, France of Louis XIV could be seen as no more than a throwback to medieval notions of divine right monarchy. French absolutism certainly had medieval precursors; nevertheless it developed out of a response to religious pluralism, a modern phenomenon without significant precedent in Western European history aside from the continuing presence of small but resilient Jewish communities. A place for God and religion in some form or other remained part of the raison d’etat. Even Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), for example, preserved the notion of a Christian commonwealth, which was based on the truths of faith, but entirely in agreement with Reason.[30] Nor can these theorists be said to be advocates of tyrannical despotism, but rather a despotism of an enlightened variety intended to, as Daniel Engster argues, allow rulers to simultaneously meet the demands of political necessity and Christian morality.[31] Though a ruler had every right to defend their absolute authority, they did so because that authority was prescribed by divine law; actions taken in defense of absolute authority were likewise subject to divine law.[32]

            Literature surveying the use of the image of the “Turk” in European political discourse has, while noting numerous exceptions to the rule, by and large concluded that portrayals were overwhelming negative.[33] Thomas Kaiser writes, “The image of the ferocious, ‘despotic’ Ottoman Empire had a second, primary domestic political function during the Old Regime—namely, to represent a regime against which the lawful absolutism of France could be sharply contrasted.”[34] This was the standard model, but it was not the only one in existence. An alternative was used between 1730 and 1770, especially by pro-royalist writers like Voltaire, who argued that religion “represented a true check on sovereign power rather than, as the standard model would have it, a mere tool of its imposition.”[35] The alternative model allowed for the Ottoman Empire ruled by the absolute authority of the sultan to be cast in a much more positive light, in particular because it could in theory meet the prerequisite requirement of countering political factionalism. The third theme running through the Turkish Spy examined in this essay, the construction of an ideal enlightened monarchy, places the work firmly in the tradition of this alternative model. Hardly surprising given that the protagonist is himself a Muslim, a sympathetic, and at times even unreservedly favorable, account of Turkish absolutism is given.

            The most significant 17th century challenge to the ideal of an enlightened monarch under whose sway the offending dissimilarities of religious faiths could be rationally reconciled were the claims to supervening political authority of the Roman Catholic Church over the states of Europe. Mahmut spares very few opportunities to castigate distinctive features of the Roman Catholic faith, calling, for instance, the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Host an act of natural magic or the veneration of saints an “inexcusable idolatry.” (I, i, 28.) Clergy who seem more inclined to take up arms and engage in politicking than provide pastoral care cause him to wonder whether they are not violating the oaths of their spiritual office. Upon his arrival in Paris, Mahmut immediately comments upon the lack of a royal heir and the question of succession, blaming Roman Catholicism for breeding political faction.

“It is not permitted to be inquisitive into the cause of this sterility. Hereby thou seest the weakness of those Christian Princes, who are subject to the laws of Rome, which think it a crime to give themselves heirs which are not born of lawful wedlock ; thought it often happens, that when such are wanting, this Kingdom is exposed to ruin, by the dissensions and civil wars, which on these occasions are always inevitable. (I, i, 10.)

 

In the mind of Mahmut, the dangers of political faction and spiritual tyranny go hand in hand. Nowhere in the Turkish Spy are the labels despot and tyranny more consistently applied than with reference to the pope or papal authority. An account of the cause of the Schism of 1054 between the churches of Rome and Constantinople and the Conciliar movement of the 14th century in a lengthy discussion on “the religion of these western parts,” calling these debates over questions of spiritual authority and infallibility a “circle of absurdities” (II, ii, 17.) ultimately meant to serve the purposes of the pope. Within the fold of the Catholic Church, France is reckoned “the noblest and freest kingdom…that it never would submit to the tyranny of the inquisition.” Admirable as this may be, however, Mahmut remains convinced that the virtues of the French still falls far short of the “justice of the Ottoman Empire.” (II, iii, 35.) Indeed, he considers it of great benefit that sultans may divorce infertile wives without being opposed by religious leaders, thereby ensuring political unity through a smooth regal succession between generations.[36]

            The noticeable increase in commentary on the English political scene after the first volume would seem to naturally follow from the change in prospective audience. A telling comparison is made between the execution of Charles I by order of the English parliament (1649) and the assassination of Ibrahim I by his Grand Mufti (1648). In the case of the former, Mahmut decries the English king’s public execution as an attempt to destroy the institution of monarchy itself. (III, iii, 22.) In the case of the later, Mahmut writes, “However it be, I cannot approve of their Treason. For whatever the Vices of the Sultan were, they had no right to punish him. He was accountable to none but God.” (III, iii, 21.) Not surprisingly, Mahmut’s opinion of the newly declared English commonwealth (1649-60) warms considerably after Cromwell is invested with the “Sovereign Authority” of Lord Protector, making him a king in all but name. (IV, iii, 20.) Mahmut is not, however, intransigent in his opinions. The sectarian tendencies of Cromwell’s Puritan beliefs will in time earn the commonwealth the inglorious title of “the usurpation of Oliver the tyrant.” (VIII, iii, 10.)

            With marked a consistency political tyranny in the Turkish Spy flows from the spiritual tyranny of the sectarian claims of historical religions. Political faction, on the other hand, can arise from one of two possible sources. The purely political source of faction arising either out of aristocratic or popular rebellion are exampled by France of the Fronde and Cromwell’s England, respectively.[37] The second source of faction, that of religious sectarianism, is exampled best by discussions on the presence (and later absence) of the Huguenot in France. (VIII, iv, 2.) In light of this, it appears obvious from the present perspective that Mahmut naively omits the possibility of a purely political form of tyranny to favor of his ideal enlightened monarchy—or the possibility that enlightened monarchy may in fact be its own form of tyranny. On its own terms, however, the political perspective of the Turkish Spy favors enlightened monarchy for its potential abilities to combat the factional impulse of religious difference. A monarchy may only be termed “enlightened” so long as it affirms basic religious beliefs which are common to humanity, and therefore not spiritually tyrannical. In the first volume, that ideal finds a concrete manifestation in the person of the sultan:

The most High, who has always protected the grandeur of the Ottoman empire, hath left the Infidels in these errors [being subject to the laws of Rome], to the end, that he might give our most mighty monarch, who is the avenger of the divine Unity, an eminence, superior to that of all kings. (I, i, 10.)

 

Of course, as Mahmut finds out, the real rarely conforms to the ideal; and the historical subject matter divides only with the greatest difficulty neatly between the categories of political or spiritual. As much as the structure of the sultan’s rule is admired, he is not given an unqualified endorsement. Actual ruling persons are measured against the ideal in terms some degree of conformity or deviance. Towards the final volumes, Mahmut turns to focus on the commonalities of the French and Ottoman kingdoms, alluding to a mutually beneficial alliance existing between them, and calling for common cause to be made towards the construction of ideal political order under the providential sway of the Divine Unity.

            It would be a mistake to label the Turkish Spy as pro-French or pro-English without an additional qualification that Mahmut quite willingly endorses anything that conforms to his ideal. He is pro-French only insofar as the French fit into the mould of enlightenment. Likewise, he is pro-English and even pro-Cromwell only so long as the English or Cromwell serve the ends of undivided sovereignty. He is even pro-Catholic insofar as he endorses the unity of the religious community against the sectarian tendencies of Protestantism. (VIII, iii, 10.)[38] The grand political vision of the Turkish Spy can be summed up simply: the ideal political order has not yet been constructed, but we know that it ought to be constructed on the sure principles of Reason.

            The principled stance against political factionalism and spiritual tyranny of the pope perhaps fits the mood of England after the Restoration (1660) better than it does France of the same period. But to say that the Turkish Spy took on a pro-English sentiment, however, misses the significance of Mahmut’s ideal enlightened monarchy and his belief that France remained the bright source of hope for Europe’s and for humanity’s future. The reestablishment of monarchical government in England under Charles II is met with approval, but Mahmut laments that the king is harassed by “domestic seditions, factions, plots, and conspiracies of his own subjects.” (VIII, iii, 12.) So while “Europe is a field, fertile in Rebellion,” he sees France making efforts to establish peace—in which Mahmut sees the potential for a “universal peace.” (III, i, 4.) The great potential represented by France is found in the exemplary characteristics of a few men, both of whom the protagonist claims to have a personal knowledge. The single fault found in Richelieu, “the polestar of statesmen,” (VII, iv, 13.) is that “he being a man consecrated to the service of the alter, should so often take to the field, divesting himself of the peaceful robes of religion, should clothe himself in steel.” (II, ii, 2.) Spared criticism for violating the boundary between political and spiritual, Julius Mazarin is described as “a most expert courtier, and dextrous agitant [conducting affairs] much to his master’s honour.” (I, iv, 3.)[39] And under their direction, France is said to have prospered.

In a word, this country is so inriched with every thing, that some historians and philosophers have called it the parent of plenty, others the fountain of earthly bliss, the most incomparable region of this globe, the epitome of the world, or rather a little world in itself. (VI, iii, 16.)

 

As bright as France’s prospects appear, work still remains to be done. Each cardinal is advised to reclaim the Charlemagne’s crown for their respective masters from papal control.[40] The confidence in the France’s future potential, however, is unwavering.

In a word, Henry IV began the design. Lewis XIII carried it on, and this present King has so far improved it by his matchless fortune and courage, that, in all probability, this or the next age will see it brought to perfection. (VII, iv, 7.)

 

Something must be added about the earlier characterization of Mahmut’s religious perspective as a universal monotheism before proceeding to the final theme. His defense of deism and rejection of historic revelation would at first glance place in league with 17th deists. The clockmaker deity who winds the cosmos up and steps back to let nature run its course, however, is not to be found in the Turkish Spy. Mahmut objects to the absolute certainly inspired by divine revelation in the faithful, but he remains convinced that God acts in history. Namely, God has sent prophets to all people; the divine guides great men (and presumably great women, though humanity’s better half receives comparatively little commentary[41]). Certain acts of God remain beyond the realm of human comprehension, to be sure. These are interpreted as innocuously as possible to satisfy the requirement of being “acceptable to all humanity.” As the series of letters progresses explicit references to divine works are toned down and right action in accordance with Reason—which is undoubtedly of divine origin—takes up the slack. On purely human terms, God acts in history in accordance with Reason; and France provided an exemplary model of rationally constructed social order. In effect, the exaggerated descriptions of France’s future potential reflect a confidence that first language with which God speaks to humankind is or soon will be French.

 

IV. Reading the Turkish Spy as History

 

I congratulate the honour thou hast, in being made supervisor of that noble work, an Universal History of the World. I with thee and the other undertakers, a whole Hegira of happiness ; whose date may commence with the finishing this illustrious Volume.

VIII, iv, 11

 

It has been necessary to pass quickly over the Mahmut’s description of the numerous historical events of which he claims to have first-hand knowledge to examine the vision which animates his story. A few brief comments should be made about the potential for reading the Turkish Spy as a popular history of 17th century Europe disguised in the grab of fiction. When surveying the numerous pieces of political or social commentary found therein, the stream-lined presentation of the subject matter makes it readily apparent that the author (or authors) uses the letters to advance a particular interpretation of that historical period. It is possible, of course, to object to the extent to which ideological biases infect the history presented in the letters or to the biases themselves. That should not, however, detract from their status as history. Telling history necessarily involves interpretation. Allowing for the reader’s subjective judgement, there is no real trouble with saying that there is a spectrum from good to bad on which particular histories may be placed. Popular history, however, tends to confuse the distinction by virtue of its being popular—that is, simplified and streamlined for public consumption. But does that necessarily make it bad history?

In the first volume, Marana’s training as a 17th political historian is made apparent through Mahmut’s reflections on history as a discipline. Namely, history is for the education of statesmen. To that end, a lengthy treatise written by Mahmut to Cardinal Richelieu encouraging him to take up Plutarch’s Lives (circa 1st c.) more than likely informed by Marana’s professional training. A product of his age, he knows the principle subject matter is the lives of great men. He also recognizes significant gaps in historical research of the time means that many of those great men will be forgotten, their lessons left unlearned by succeeding generations. So he proposes a grand synthesis drawing on the historical records “from the Emperor Trajan, to Lewis the Just, of those that have excelled in arms, learning, affairs of state, and those who have held first rank in the church in parts of the world.” (I, iii, 2.) (This suggestion is made under the pretext of deflecting Richelieu’s grasping gaze away from the Ottoman Empire.) His proposed history is a history composed in the Renaissance mode—that is, a heroic history—with an added, though not an unexpected, twist. Where scholars can be found studying the lives of great men, there will also be found “the tranquility of a well-established peace.” (Ibid)[42] History, then, is a study of greatness, in which may be a source of peace if applied in the life of humanity. (Anticipating the speculative turn of the later volumes, one is tempted to say, “Humanity.”) This model informs Mahmut’s discussion of the European history of which he claims to have a first-hand experience. Nothing out of the ordinary here. But for being grandiose and grossly impractical, if not ultimately impossible to complete, nothing about Mahmut’s methodology steps outside of the acceptable bounds of a 17th history.

A variation of the initial question is posed: In terms of the contemporary scene, is the Turkish Spy a good popular history? Over time, Mahmut’s thinking increasingly turns towards metaphysical speculation; the historical portions of the letters similarly come to more and more obviously bear the imprint of the abstract, though a case has been made here for finding its seeds already in the first volume. Perhaps calling the Turkish Spy a popular history misses the overall narrative purpose of the eight volume series; the label of a popular philosophy of history might better apply. By the seventh and eighth volumes, the proposal to take up Plutarch’s work appears modest by comparison to Mahmut’s new vision of a Universal History encompassing the four Universal Monarchies which have walked across the world’s stage.[43] These are the Assyrian, Persian, (Hellenic) Greek, and Roman; and Mahmut seems to expect that France will soon join their ranks. From the perspective of the 17th century, it should have been obvious that none of the four could have laid claim to being truly universal in geographical terms. Mahmut draws on Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 of four kingdoms and Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions to gives them divine sanction and therefore a certain sense of theological universality. (VIII, iii, 3.) In a series of letters to the Grand Mufti, he lays out a framework for the proposed Universal History.[44] The product remains a history of great men, though the role ascribed to scholarly study (now Reason) is markedly larger. Mahmut sends his congratulations to Ibro Kalphafer, who is identified as “a Man of Letters at Constantinople,” for being assigned the project of composing his proposed Universal History along with a discussion of the pitfalls to be encountered along with way. Establishing a standardized dating system is of great importance as each of the religious traditions has its own “hegira,” an epoch defining moments like Christ’s birth for Christians, Muhammad’s Hegira, or the Exodus from Egypt for Jews, in terms of which dates are reckoned. These must be treated with great sensitivity:

For they do not all commence in one and the same moon, but vary their dates from the beginning of the year to the end. The want of due are therefore in this point, would breed a great confusion in an Universal History; and would render its chronology intricate and obscure. (VIII, iv, 11.)

 

The role of Reason in mediating between the particular hegiras of each faith is not explicitly stated in the letter. Even so, an “objective” viewpoint or religiously neutral space, one “more agreeable to humanity,” from where the historian can mediate between the different systems of dating is required. Thus the role of Reason in this proto-scientific study of history is clear. The confidence which Mahmut ascribes to the abilities of Reason, however, extends much further to the initiation of a radically new epoch of world history, “a whole Hegira of happiness.” Reason functions both as a means and an end of enlightenment. It is both the road traveled and the destination; and all that is left is to convince others to make the journey.

            There is a very real sense that when Mahmut hands his project over to the Man of Letters from Constantinople, his life’s purpose has been served. The foundations for a universal hegira have been laid down and others have been brought in to take up the project. Its distinctive characteristics are no doubt have a distinctively French flavor—the appeals to rationality in conjunction with a changing notion of how humankind relates to the divine, the positive evaluation of monarchical absolutism, etc.—but its animating vision attempts to transcend the particular circumstances from which it was born. At one point Mahmut writes the Grand Mufti, encouraging the translation of history belonging to the Western canon of classical literature for Muslim consumption. (VII, i, 21.) The purpose is to reclaim a common heritage from which humanity can learn. Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that Mahmut should bequeath his grand project to a Muslim. If the Turkish Spy as fiction is set aside and instead read as reflective of the author’s (or authors’) perception of the Muslim world at large, an underlying message of a shared human potential that cross cultural boundaries and the importance of making common cause with one’s co-religionists emerges. In effect, there are many roads to God; but wouldn’t the journey be a whole lot simpler, less treacherous, and more fulfilling if we traveled together?

 

V. An Impossible Task

 

In his classic Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (1966), Peirre Goubert calls us to consider carefully the impossible task summed up so well in the simple dictum l’etat et moi which the king and his agents took it upon themselves to complete.[45] How much more impossible, by comparison, must the vision of a universal order governed by the precepts of Reason, guided by an enlightened monarch subject only to a God who is reasonable, be as well? The story of Turkish Spy is the story of one man’s life writ large, a melding of fictional biography and philosophy of history—an ascent to Reason—meant for popular consumption. Its relative success through the 18th century, particularly in the English book-buying marketplace, indicates that it must have struck a chord. Perhaps it is too much to suppose that its readership bought into the entire vision of Mahmut; indeed, the fragmentary and evolving character of the work would seem to allow for selective reading and interpolation of meaning on the parts of educated readers. Nevertheless, I have operated under the assumption that treating the Turkish Spy as a literary whole before proceeding to analyze its parts better allows historians to set the work in the context in which it was written.

Consider, for example, Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, alluded to earlier on in the paper, for which the Turkish Spy is considered significant as being a stylistic prototype. In light of the previous thematic analysis, much more can be said about the relationship between these two works. Montesquieu does not spare the Turkish sultan from being accused of tyranny, a stark contrast to Mahmut, who patterns the ideal form of government on the rule of the one he praises as the avenger of divine unity. Parallels may be drawn; though they extend only so far. Montesquieu is well aware that the ideal monarchy is exactly that—an ideal. Instead of striving after the ideal as Mahmut had done, however, he resigns himself to the uncertainty of whether in fact there has ever been (and by implication, could ever be) a true monarchy[46] before proceeding on to discuss the virtues of liberty engendered by republican governments.[47] Though similar in style, the political message of either work differs fundamentally, producing distinct perceptions of Oriental forms of government—as a legitimate absolute monarchy or as an oppressive tyranny. Implications drawn for how the reign of Louis XIV is appraised in either work are drawn accordingly.

Nothing about Reason as it is portrayed in the Turkish Spy presents itself as inherently rational. (It is perhaps more accurate to say that any claim inherent rationality is exactly like Marana’s creation: nothing more than a fiction.) Rather, there are standards like those set by the fears of spiritual tyranny and political faction against which rational is defined. As was noted much earlier, the story of Mahmut’s ascent to Reason may be interpreted as an attempt to reconcile the conflicting demands of spiritual and political authority. His vision fulfills this goal by combating both fears simultaneously; stretching the bounds of true religion as wide as possible and setting the newly enlightened monarch over his kingdom within those redefined boundaries. The Turk is portrayed in a much more positive light than present historical wisdom under the influence of the thesis of Edward Said’s Orientalism is given to consider. Even so, the Turk in certain respects also fails to measure up to the ideal, for example, where Islam lays claim to exclusive truth or its failure to adopt the methods of modern science.[48] Praise is only given insofar as there is conformity with the standards of Reason. This is the vision of the Turkish Spy; and if its implications may be drawn out with due consideration to the tenuous nature of drawing historical inference, this is the vision held up by its author (or authors) for European monarchs to see. The ideological unity of the Turkish Spy is unmistakable. It is the truth, the way, and the life of Humanity; one of the Enlightenment’s many incarnations, but Enlightenment nonetheless. Even a man so great as Louis XIV could not come to it but through Reason. Present academic sentiment, however, does not agree. More likely, the tragedy of Mahmut’s life will be found much more instructive than the comedy of his vision.

Works Cited

 

 

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