Sanjakbey Yusuf
Selim prepared to leave at once, as though he had only been waiting to see his true face once.
Perhaps because he had already packed and been waiting, he had been bustling about since dawn, and by morning he had finished all preparations to depart. More than a hundred people were waiting only for the order to set out.
“Brother, it is truly regrettable that you are leaving like this. I wish we had had a chance to talk a little more.”
“I have seen my brother’s face, so that is enough. Those who must leave are meant to leave without lingering attachment.”
So someone who knew that was the one who behaved like that yesterday.
Selim gently patted his shoulder, and Yusuf, contrary to his true feelings, weakly nodded.
To someone who did not know them, they would have looked like brothers who could not live without each other.
‘For two people itching to kill each other, this much is more than enough.’
Having skillfully wrapped his murderous intent toward Selim in brotherly affection, Yusuf turned his head.
“Suleiman, it was good to meet you. Stay healthy.”
“Yes, sir.”
After placing a hand on the small head in farewell, Yusuf said to Selim,
“Brother, you should be on your way now. The road ahead is long.”
“Yes, I shall go now. May Allah be with you.”
“May Allah be with you.”
Today was the last day the two brothers could at least meet with smiles, but both spoke their farewells without any lingering attachment.
With Selim, mounted on horseback, at the head, the long procession departed, and Yusuf watched them leave as he offered a farewell in his heart.
‘I’ll send you off nicely, so go and fight hard to your heart’s content, Brother.’
There was a reason he had sent Selim to Teke, out of all the many sanjaks.
In truth, three years later, another prince, Korkut, would be sent to Teke, which was much farther from the capital than his former territory, Saruhan.
Afterward, Korkut demanded his previous post, but the Sultan refused, and he fled to Egypt under the pretext of making a pilgrimage.
In the end, he was forgiven by the Sultan and returned to the Ottoman realm, but by then he was essentially too late to participate in the succession war, and he was killed by Selim after Selim ascended the throne.
‘That can’t happen this time. The more horses there are to dance in the succession war, the better.’
One might point out that deliberately changing the future would make his knowledge useless, but the more he distinguished himself in Trabzon, the more the future was bound to turn into a complete mess anyway.
If the future was going to be unpredictable regardless, then turning it into a mass of variables was also a method.
‘Still, Selim will survive to the end.’
He had not seen his other brothers, but that Selim did not look like someone who would go down easily.
As Yusuf watched the departing procession with such thoughts, a system window popped up before his eyes.
[Sanjakbey of Trabzon, score +15]
“…Is this for real?”
Yusuf roughly wiped a hand down his face.
It would be truly troublesome to think, ‘Wow, our system has come to its senses and gotten generous!’
Hadn’t it given him a mere 1 point yesterday for avoiding assassination?
Right now, the system was basically saying, ‘Wow, your territory is truly hopeless.’
“This neighborhood won’t be easy either.”
Letting out a light sigh, Yusuf turned around.
He had survived even in the capital, that den of demons. Surely he would not die here.
∗ ∗ ∗
Trabzon Castle had once been used as a royal palace, and as such, its scale was anything but ordinary.
Compared to the detached palace he had lived in before, its size went without saying, and the antique atmosphere that carried traces of Rome was not bad either.
It was a residence distinctly different from the one he had known in the capital, but he had no time to take interest in such things.
In the office, Fatima, Hassan, Şemsi, and Yusuf gathered, making four in all.
First, Yusuf spoke to Fatima.
“Mother, please focus on the soup kitchens and donations as planned.”
“Of course I must pay attention to that.”
Charity was the traditional work of a concubine who accompanied a prince.
Through charity, one could win the hearts of the people, gauge public sentiment, and it also served as a pastime for the concubine.
For this purpose, a concubine received as much as 50 akçe every day.
“And if possible, please pay attention to the children’s education as well.”
“Education?”
He was not talking about implementing public education when he had not even become Sultan in this era.
“You only need to try teaching them the basics. If there are any promising children among them, please let me know.”
What else could he do when he did not have a talent appraisal trait? Troublesome as it was, this was the only way.
It was a move laid for the distant future rather than the immediate present, and Fatima nodded without the slightest sign of annoyance.
“It seems I will not be bored. Your mother shall go and make preparations now.”
“Thank you.”
Saying that she would withdraw from the discussions going forward meant she would not interfere in territorial administration, and that she trusted Yusuf enough to leave it to him.
Fatima merely smiled softly at his thanks and left the conference room. Yusuf then turned to Hassan.
“Hassan, did you bring the documents regarding the hass?”
“Here they are.”
The documents listed how many head of livestock there were, what was being grown in the orchards, how extensive the farmland was.
All sorts of such details were written at length, but none of it mattered. Yusuf checked only the very last number.
The number that said 150,000 akçe.
“So last year’s income was around two thousand five hundred ducats. That is a large sum.”
A hass could be thought of simply as an annual salary.
If one thought about it carefully, paying an annual salary required a great deal of administrative power.
Money had to be allocated according to position and sent to the person in question. It went without saying that various problems such as omissions, corruption, and theft could not be allowed to occur in the middle.
The easiest way to solve this was to let people take care of their own income, and a lord granting a fief to a knight followed the same logic.
If things were like that next door, would it be any different here?
‘That’s how timars, zeamets, and hasses came about.’
It was not a difficult concept.
If the annual income was 20,000 akçe or less, it was called a timar; if it was 100,000 or less, a zeamet; and if it was 100,000 or more, a hass.
The difference from the West was that ownership of the land belonged to the state, and it was land from which one could only receive income.
In particular, a hass was land that only those of very high office or royalty could receive.
‘In modern terms, would it be something like owning a building in Gangnam that lets you indulge in moderate luxury as much as you like?’
If only that utterly insane fratricide law did not exist, he would have been satisfied living with just this much. But that was impossible.
Looking at the documents, Yusuf asked Hassan,
“You received this from one of Brother Selim’s men, correct?”
“That is correct.”
Well, there had not been time to investigate it personally.
He handed the documents to Hassan, who was watching his expression, and said,
“Check it yourself. Find out thoroughly whether there are any problems. There is definitely something.”
He had a belief more solid than any document he saw with his eyes.
The belief that this brother of his could not possibly have handed over the territory cleanly and left.
‘If he really left it to me cleanly, then I’ll put the truly magnanimous Selim in a flower palanquin and carry him straight to the Sultan’s throne.’
In other words, there was no chance of that.
Once Hassan, having received his orders, left as well, only Yusuf and Şemsi remained in the spacious conference room.
‘He really is an impossible person to figure out.’
Even now, Şemsi’s face was a perfect expressionless mask with not a trace of emotion, and he was probably the sort of person who would not so much as twitch an eyebrow even if someone stripped naked and danced right there.
That poker face was so remarkable that the method of concealing emotion Yusuf had learned by observing and imitating him had done its job even during his sudden confrontation with Selim.
If something he had learned only superficially was this effective, how impressive must the original be?
‘If he were merely a man with an expressionless face, I would have found him unsettling and gotten rid of him, but on top of that, his abilities are excellent.’
Swallowing him was worrying for fear of trouble, but spitting him out felt like a waste.
He was the very definition of a chicken rib.
In any case, he had no choice, and since Şemsi had at least not tried any tricks so far, he had no option but to trust him and entrust him with work.
“Pasha, did you speak enough with the qadi and the sipahis during the banquet?”
The qadi was a judge and an official who governed a kaza, while the sipahis were the provincial standing cavalry.
One could say that one side supported the territory with the pen, and the other with military force—the two pillars that held it up.
“The qadi of Trabzon was a gentle man with much experience. The regrettable point was that he seemed to have firm convictions of his own. As for the sipahis, they deeply regretted Shehzade Selim’s departure.”
In simple terms, the qadi was an old fogey, and the sipahis were widows unable to forget the one who had left.
Just hearing the explanation was enough to make him feel suffocated by these two great mountain ranges.
“If it were you, Pasha, how would you have acted?”
“I would have held banquets or the like and built personal connections.”
It was the textbook course of action, and the method that would cause the least damage, but it was a long-term project.
The core figures of the territory were Turks, and from his first appointment, Selim had favored the Turks and won their hearts.
There was no way turning that around in a short time would be easy.
‘There is no way Şemsi doesn’t know that.’
Yusuf instinctively realized that this was a kind of test Şemsi was giving him.
It was a chance to evaluate his ability and method of rule, so perhaps it was only natural.
‘If he wants to see, then I should show him.’
No matter how excellent a person was, if they did not work well together, they could not remain together.
Thinking that this matter would be a good test for both of them, Yusuf gave his instructions.
“We should hold a banquet. We cannot work with people without even seeing their faces. While the banquet draws attention, Pasha, gather some information for me.”
“What sort of information do you mean?”
“Hm… let us start with the sipahis. The state of the timars they hold, and in the case of older sipahis, who will inherit them.”
At Yusuf’s words, Şemsi twitched an eyebrow, showing a rare expression of emotion.
That was how serious the matter was.
“If things go wrong, the backlash will not be insignificant.”
“I know. If we touch matters of inheritance, of course they will react that way.”
Even in the modern era, inheritance disputes routinely turned into complete chaos. How much worse would it be in this era?
It was not that he did not understand the concern, but Yusuf spoke casually.
“But is that a problem? That is the inherent authority of the sanjakbey.”
The sipahis, who could be compared to European knights, were allocated timars just as knights received fiefs, and when wartime came, they had to participate in war in return.
However, as mentioned earlier, what they had received was only the right to collect taxes, so they could not pass it down as they pleased. And because it was a matter related to military power, the Ottomans managed it strictly as well.
The ones who primarily filtered that out were the sanjakbeys who led the sipahis.
“…Understood. I will take charge of the investigation.”
Shemsi, who had turned as if to say he would watch and see what result came of it, stopped after a few steps and spoke.
“Your Highness, I hope you will not forget: haste is the work of Satan, and Allah delights in what is done slowly.”
After leaving that counsel behind, Shemsi disappeared, and Yusuf leaned back in his chair.
The more urgent it is, the more you should take the long way around. As if he didn’t know that common saying.
“I don’t have that kind of time, so there’s no helping it.”
Would it have been better if he had not known the future? It might have been frustrating, but at least he would not have been this impatient.
If he used conciliatory measures by the book, how long would it take? Three years? Five?
If he was going to do nothing but watch the countless incidents that would occur in the meantime and weep tears of blood, he would rather take the risk now.
“There’s no such thing as a standard path in life anyway.”
There were only straight roads in different directions.
Yusuf calmly shook off his fear.
∗ ∗ ∗
Only a few days had passed since he came to Trabzon, so no one recognized Yusuf as he walked around the city, and Yusuf was able to observe Trabzon in its raw state.
It had been less than forty years since the Empire of Trebizond, which had made Trabzon its capital, had fallen.
‘For that, the mood isn’t bad at all.’
One might say it was because the average lifespan was low and generations had already turned over, but the reason the average lifespan differed from modern times was the high infant mortality rate.
Just because the average lifespan was twenty did not mean twenty-year-olds were shriveled up like old men and on the verge of death.
There was still time enough for those who had witnessed the scars of a defeated nation and seen the emperor and crown prince beheaded to be alive, and even those who must have grown up hearing stories of the Trebizond era the way one heard Korean War stories from veterans did not seem particularly dissatisfied under Ottoman rule.
There was everyday weariness on the faces of the men busily at work, but no despair, and it was not hard to see children running about the streets.
Yusuf gave a small wave to a child who was hiding behind his mother and sneaking glances at him.
Watching the child hurriedly hide with a reddened face, Yusuf smiled faintly and turned away.
It had been brief, but for now he had confirmed everything he wanted to see.
“Your Highness!!”
When he returned to the castle, the first to greet him was Hasan, his face pale as death.
It seemed something had gone terribly wrong with the hass estates, but Yusuf responded calmly.
The guards, servants, and maids working in the castle were people who had been there from before, and they would surely serve as someone’s eyes and ears.
“Hasan, calm yourself.”
At the utterly composed tone, Hasan flinched, and only then realized, under the subtle gathering of gazes, that he had made too much of a fuss.
It was an obvious mistake, but Yusuf did not mind.
Sometimes a subordinate’s mistake made his superior shine all the brighter.
Yusuf led Hasan into the office and sat down.
“It must be something related to the hass estates, yes? Did Brother Selim build a cemetery in the farmland before leaving?”
At the very thought of that dizzying example, Hasan hurriedly shook his head.
“It is not that, but first of all, much of the farmland has been exhausted. At this rate, most of the fields will have to be left fallow.”
“And?”
“There were serious problems with the livestock as well. It appears that many of the animals being raised were sold off.”
Well, would you look at that. Such deep brotherly affection between us.
Had he not gone out of his way to press the reset button for the brother who would inherit after him?
It was not as if an older brother moving out had cleaned the room before handing it over; he had neatly cleared out an entire fief before leaving. Yusuf could truly feel the warmth of fraternal love.
‘I trust you are living well, Brother. I’ll return this love a hundredfold someday.’
He cursed Selim, but he would have done the same in his place.
If anything, it felt rather lukewarm.
“If that’s all, he left rather mildly. If it were me, I would have scattered poison or something before going.”
“Y-Your Highness?!”
What? Why? Brothers could exchange a little poison between them, couldn’t they?
Yusuf shrugged at the horrified Hasan as if to say it had been a joke, then sank into thought for a moment.
‘If I assess it coldly, there’s no need to take it too seriously.’
It was fine, since he had not turned the hass estates into unusable land.
“Let’s think of it simply. Brother must have taken all of this year’s harvest, and next year’s crop is ruined. There aren’t many livestock left either.”
“That is correct.”
“Then at worst, we’ll lose a few thousand ducats. Isn’t that right?”
“…Pardon?”
Hearing him speak so lightly of a sum that could buy Hasan dozens of times over, Hasan felt almost faint.
It was an amount that would make even Yusuf, whose pockets had grown full thanks to the sultan’s support, tremble, but if he looked at it the other way, it was only that much money.
“We won’t die just because we don’t have that money. It’s simply a pity.”
Selim probably had not pulled this trick in order to deal him a serious financial blow.
‘He must have been aiming at the mental side. It would feel just like losing a winning lottery ticket.’
For an ordinary person, the shock would be enough to leave them a wreck for quite some time; all the more so for a mere eleven-year-old brat.
He would have wandered about in a daze, left a bad impression on the key figures, and started off on the wrong foot from the very beginning.
Selim had probably thought he could deal a sufficient blow before meeting him in person.
‘Though he must have realized he failed when we met.’
A mind tempered by repeated threats to his life was not so fragile that mere money would shake it, and Selim must have sensed that clearly enough after facing him directly.
And if Selim had made one more mistake, it was that Yusuf could sincerely welcome a fief that started from zero.
He had been planning to overturn everything anyway.
“If Brother sold off that much livestock, the price of livestock should have fallen, but it hasn’t dropped much, has it?”
“It has not.”
Hasan, who had rolled around in commerce, seemed to know the reason as well; his face darkened.
“The bastard who colluded with Brother must be holding out, trying to get full price.”
If they investigated, it would obviously come out, and one might wonder who would dare do something to offend a sanjakbey, but once greed for money took hold, fear vanished.
He had probably also looked down on Yusuf because he was a young prince.
Under normal procedure, they would still fill the livestock first, but Yusuf merely gave a soft snort of laughter.
“Don’t purchase any livestock. Let’s see how long he can keep holding on to them.”
If he had taken that many animals, the other party’s pastures would soon reach their limits, and he would have no choice but to sell the livestock nearby or slaughter them and sell the meat.
In the former case, it was good because livestock prices would fall; in the latter, it was good because meat prices would fall.
In other words, either was fine.
Hasan looked shocked by this unconventional course of action, but it was too early for him to be surprised.
“If they were raising a lot of livestock on the hass estates, then besides the fallow fields, they must have set aside separate pastureland. We’ll plow that up and plant barley in the spring.”
In this era, there were no chemical fertilizers, so unless the land was blessed like the areas around the Nile, where the river flooded periodically and replenished nutrients, fallowing was essential.
The farming method most commonly used was the three-field system: spring fields where crops were planted in spring, autumn fields where crops were planted in autumn, and fallow fields.
Farming was done by dividing land into those three categories.
Normally, livestock were raised on fallow fields, but according to the documents, the number of animals had been high, so there should have been separate pastureland.
Up to this point, Hasan could understand.
“On all the land where the soil has been depleted, plant clover—no, yonca.”
“Yonca, you say?”
Hasan’s eyes went round.
Clover was just something like a weed; it was not a grass one went out of one’s way to plant.
To Yusuf, who knew of four-course crop rotation and the restoration of soil fertility by legumes, it was only natural, but by the common sense of this era, it would be difficult to understand.
Fortunately, he did not have to rely on future knowledge and insist on it without logic.
“It’s written in an agricultural textbook published in the days of ancient Rome. Clover restores the soil’s fertility. The book is so old and rare that almost no one knows of it.”
“Is that so? If it is from an ancient Roman text, then it can be trusted.”
It could be considered a case similar to cement.
Turnips, barley planted in spring, clover, and wheat planted in autumn. Four-course rotation, in which these four crops were cultivated in rotation over a four-year cycle, had been forgotten after Roman times and would only be revived in the sixteenth century.
And four-course rotation would bring about an agricultural revolution before the Industrial Revolution.
‘It’s a method that nearly doubled productivity in Britain and the Netherlands after they introduced it, so it’s absolutely necessary.’
Even in the future, the Ottoman Empire would be a country with a population lacking in comparison to the size of its land, and for population growth, two things were essential: improved sanitation and an agricultural revolution.
Of course, four-course rotation was knowledge in his head, so it needed to be tested before large-scale application, and since Selim had set the stage for him, he only had to take advantage of this opportunity.
“I will handle the hass estates as you instructed, but does this end here?”
“You mean a lawsuit?”
Since Selim had inflicted serious damage on the hass estates before leaving, it would be possible to file a suit.
But even if he did, people would only laugh at him for being a prince and still proceeding with a lawsuit over mere money.
“Forget it. I’ll collect it from him myself later.”
With his life, that was.
Was this not true Ottoman-style brotherly affection?
After Hasan left with a bow, Yusuf lightly loosened his neck.
Now that he had become a sanjakbey himself and looked around, there was not just one or two places that needed attention.
He had to introduce four-course rotation, and he had to lower infant mortality through improved sanitation. On top of that, since he had to fight Ismail I, he could not neglect the military either.
There was a mountain of work to do, but.
“Let’s start slowly with what’s urgent.”
First, he had to be acknowledged as the master of the sanjak.
∗ ∗ ∗
Groups of men and horses came streaming into Trabzon one after another.
The sipahis mounted on snorting horses were so imposing that simply meeting their eyes made one’s knees weaken, while the qadis leisurely guiding their horses carried a deep air of profundity.
They had not caused a disturbance within the castle, yet their arrival alone was enough to send the castle’s atmosphere surging.
Those who gathered at Trabzon Castle voiced their dissatisfaction with the sanjakbey, who did not show even the tip of his nose despite their arrival.
“A prince is still a prince, it seems. How can it be so difficult to see his face?”
“Not all princes are the same, are they? If it were Prince Selim, he would have welcomed us, who came all this way, with a pleased face.”
Only the warlike, fearless sipahis voiced their dissatisfaction outright, but even the kadis who remained silent gave off a strong air of agreement.
Naturally, the mood among those gathered in the vast banquet hall grew even more murderous.
Thirteen kadis, rulers of the thirteen kazas.
Thirteen subaşıs, commanders of the castles and chiefs of police—positions open only to sipahis who held timars yielding profits of more than fifteen thousand akçe each year.
Since only those who had reached the pinnacle of civil and military affairs in each castle had gathered here, their presence was markedly different.
“Subaşı Burak, you saw the prince in person. What sort of person was he?”
Burak, the subaşı of Trabzon, spoke in a gruff voice.
“What sort of person? He’s only eleven years old.”
“So it was as expected?”
Just as an air of disregard for the new sanjakbey began spreading at Burak’s disparaging assessment, a low voice resounded through the banquet hall.
“If that is truly how you saw him, then it is certain your eyes are of no use except when you are swinging a sword.”
“What?!”
Burak glared at the other man, his eyes wide.
“Ömer Efendi. Say that once more.”
“I said your eye for people is atrocious.”
Efendi was a title roughly equivalent to “sir” in English, and Ömer was the kadi of Trabzon.
The two glared sharply at one another, but no one found it strange.
The sipahis were in charge of military force and had the duty and right to apprehend criminals, but it was the kadi who handed down judgments.
Conflict between the two was a common part of everyday life.
Creak—
The door to the banquet hall, where the grim atmosphere made the word banquet seem ill-suited, opened with a soft sound, and the one everyone had been waiting for appeared.
His brilliant green eyes shone with depth, and dignity and confidence permeated his etiquette-trained stride.
Crossing the banquet hall in a manner that dared anyone to belittle him as an eleven-year-old, Yusuf took the seat of honor.
To the two groups who had watched, as if bewitched, the mere act of him walking, Yusuf offered a greeting.
“It is a pleasure to meet you all. I am Yusuf, sanjakbey of Trabzon.”
It was the young prince’s declaration of intent.