The prince who wrote down the Turks' music

Years

1687 – 1710

Road on the map

600 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature work

The Divan (Iași, 1698)

Dimitrie Cantemir was born on 26 October 1673 at Silișteni, in Moldavia's Lower Country, son of Constantin Cantemir, enthroned in 1685, and Ana Bantăș. The father could not read, but schooled his sons thoroughly: Dimitrie learned Greek and Latin from childhood.

Between 1687 and 1710 he spent most of his time at Constantinople, as hostage and envoy of his father, then of his brother Antioch. He lived in the family palace in the Phanar, learned Turkish and Ottoman history at the Greek Academy of the Patriarchate. Meanwhile, he composed music.

At Tsargrad too he wrote his first books: the Divan (Iași, 1698), in Romanian and Greek, and the Istoria ieroglifică (1705), a coded political satire counted as the first novel in Romanian. He had already reigned once in between: on his father's death, in March 1693, he took the throne for three weeks, until the Porte deposed him for Constantin Duca.

Meanwhile: In 1697, as he learned Turkish in the Phanar, Eugene of Savoy destroyed the Ottoman army at Senta.

Years

1710 – 1711

Road on the map

800 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature work

Treaty of Lutsk (13 Apr 1711)

In 1710 the Porte named him prince of Moldavia. Cantemir believed the Ottoman Empire was collapsing, and gambled everything on Peter the Great: on 13 April 1711, at Lutsk, the treaty putting Moldavia under Russia's protection was signed in secret. He had written the 17-article text himself, from end to end; for Moldavia, Metropolitan Ghedeon signed.

In early summer Peter entered Moldavia and joined his army with Cantemir's near Iași; together they marched down toward the Prut. That same spring, at Satu Mare, the peace of 29 April ending Rákóczi's uprising had been sealed. Eastern Europe was reshuffling every alliance at once.

At Stănilești, on 18–22 July 1711, the Christian army was encircled. The Peace of the Prut humiliated Peter (Russia abandoned Azov), and Cantemir lost his throne for good, fleeing into exile with his boyars and troops, the chronicler Ion Neculce among them.

Meanwhile: Two years earlier, Peter had crushed Charles XII at Poltava (1709), the victory that convinced Cantemir he was betting on the winning horse.

Years

1711 – 1723

Road on the map

2,700 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature work

Descriptio Moldaviae (1714)

In 1712 Peter gave him the Bogorodskoye estate (“Black Mud”) and the title of knyaz; Emperor Charles VI made him a prince of the Empire. Peter had refused to hand his ally to the victorious Turks. He settled at Dmitrovka, near Oryol, with a train of boyars, and wrote for twelve years almost without pause.

In 1714 he was admitted to the Berlin Academy, which asked him for a description of Moldavia: thus were born the Descriptio Moldaviae and the country's first true map. In exile too he wrote the History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire and, between 1719 and 1722, the Hronicul, the first critical history of the Romanians as a whole.

He was no forgotten exile: in 1722 his Systema of the Turkish religion came off the press at St Petersburg, in Russian, and the manifesto with which Peter opened the Persian war, on 15 July 1722, was drafted by him. He died at Dmitrovka on 21 August 1723.

Meanwhile: In the year of his death, in Scotland, Adam Smith was born.

Years

c.1700 – 1705

Road on the map

no road on the map

Signature work

The Edvar (c.1700)

The Edvar, the Book of the Science of Music in Letters, is Ottoman music theory written by a practitioner: an alphabet in which every letter is a note and every numeral a duration. It reads right to left: notes on the first line, rhythm on the second. Written at Tsargrad around 1700, the copy was presented to Sultan Ahmed III.

The collection keeps over 350 instrumental pieces (318 peshrevs and 36 saz semais), gathered and notated by him, not composed; his own compositions, a few dozen, are still played in the Turkish classical repertoire. The autograph original is kept at the Turcology Institute in Istanbul.

Below you can try the system yourself: the eight principal frets of the tanbur neck, from bottom to top, under the names he gave them, plus the rhythm numerals. The sounds are illustrative, after the standard modern correspondences.

Meanwhile: In 1703, the year Ahmed III came to the throne and Peter laid the first stone of St Petersburg.

Years

1714 – 1935

Road on the map

2,900 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature work

History of the Othman Empire (London, 1734)

The Descriptio Moldaviae was written in Latin in 1714, at the request of the Berlin Academy. It circulated in manuscript for decades: first in German, in a geography magazine (1769) and in book form (1771). The manuscript map of c.1714, the first true map of Moldavia, was printed in the Netherlands in 1737, with the cartouche “Principatus Moldaviae nova & accurata descriptio, delineante Principe Demetrio Cantemirio”.

The History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire, taken to London by his son Antioch, the ambassador, was printed first in English (1734–1735), then in French and German, and remained into the mid-nineteenth century the book of record on the Ottoman Empire.

The Hronicul (1719–1722) argued the Latin origin of the language and the Roman origin of the people. His son Antioch (1708–1744), ambassador in London and Paris, friend of Voltaire and Montesquieu, would be called the father of Russian poetry. And in the autumn of 1935, the prince's bones returned to Iași, to the Three Hierarchs church.

The noblest wine grows at Cotnari, on a great hill[...] we dare affirm it finer and nobler than all the other wines of Europe, Tokay itself not excepted[...] if it be kept shut three years[...] it catches fire like spirits[...] it is green, and the older it grows, the greener.

Descriptio Moldaviae, our translation from the Latin

The history of the Growth and Decay of the Othman empire was translated into English from the Latin MS. of Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia (London, 1734, in folio). The author is guilty of strange blunders in Oriental history; but he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions of the Turks.

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 64, n. 41

Meanwhile: As Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he cited Cantemir in the notes.