Sometimes the perspective seems to us very odd, since the emphasis seems to be placed on the unimportant part of the narrative, but in such cases we must seek in the Turkish mind for an explanation of why that phase, unimportant to us, is to the Turkish writer and reader, of importance. As an illustration of this, take the Turkish accounts of Ibrahim’s Egyptian expedition. The _Sulimannameh_ and later histories all give more space to the hardships of Ibrahim’s voyage to Egypt, and to the honor paid him by the Sultan than to the organization of Egypt, which occupied seven months. This seems, and doubtless is naïve, but we can see from it what a great effort a sea expedition was to this inland people, and also how above everything else in importance loomed the favor of the monarch, by whom all subjects rose to power or fell into disgrace. It further shows the stress laid on the lives of courtiers and officials rather than on the ordering of a province, in which, of course, it resembles all early histories. For details in regard to the sources used for this study, the reader is referred to the Bibliography. CHAPTER I IBRAHIM’S RISE Ibrahim was a Christian of base extraction, the son of a Greek sailor of Parga.[7] He was born in 1494.[8] In his childhood he was captured by Turkish corsairs.[9] It would seem that he was first sold to a widow of Magnesia, who clothed him well and had him well educated, and especially trained to perform upon a musical instrument resembling the violin, which he learned to play beautifully.[10] Whether it was on one of his expeditions to Asia Minor that Suleiman, son of the reigning monarch Selim I, met Ibrahim and was won by his charm and his musical ability, or whether Ibrahim was taken to Constantinople and there sold to the prince, cannot be determined from conflicting reports, but the fact that Ibrahim became Suleiman’s property is incontestable.[11] Ibrahim never forgot his origin or his family. In 1527 his father came to Constantinople to visit him, and later he had his mother and his two brothers at the Palace.[12] He was able to help his father substantially, giving him a _sandjak_ or governorship.[13] Of course Ibrahim adopted Islam, else there were no story to tell, for a Christian could have had no career in Turkey in that day.