The prince who wrote down the Turks' music

Years

1688 – 1710

Road on the map

600 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature work

The Divan (Iași, 1698)

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

His home at Constantinople was the family palace in the Phanar, its windows on the Golden Horn. He lived in the city from 1688 to 1691 and again from 1693 to 1710, hostage and envoy of his father, then of his brother Antioch. At the Patriarchate's Greek Academy he learned Turkish and Ottoman history; meanwhile, he composed music.

Between one embassy and the next, he wrote: the Divan (Iași, 1698), in Romanian and Greek, and the Istoria ieroglifică (1705), a coded political satire counted as the first novel in Romanian. And in March 1693, on his father's death, he took the throne for three weeks, until the Porte deposed him for Constantin Duca.

Meanwhile: In 1697 he was in the Ottoman camp, with the Moldavian troops, when Eugene of Savoy destroyed the sultan's army at Senta.

Years

1710 – 1711

Road on the map

800 kmgreat-circle, rounded

Signature work

Treaty of Lutsk (13 Apr 1711)

On 13 April 1711, at Lutsk, far from the Porte's eyes, 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. A year earlier the Porte had named him prince of Moldavia, and he believed the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and gambled everything on Peter the Great.

In early summer the armies joined near Iași: Peter had entered Moldavia and united his army with Cantemir's, and 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 on the bank of the Prut, without supplies and without a way out. 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)

At Dmitrovka, near Oryol, the exile was given an estate with a name that said everything: Bogorodskoye, “Black Mud”. In 1712 Peter gave it to him together with the title of knyaz, and Emperor Charles VI made him a prince of the Empire: Peter had refused to hand his ally to the victorious Turks. He settled there with a train of boyars and wrote for twelve years almost without pause.

In 1714 the Berlin Academy admitted him among its members and 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.

In 1722, at St Petersburg, his Systema of the Turkish religion came off the press, in Russian; and the manifesto with which Peter opened the Persian war, on 15 July 1722, was drafted by him too. 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)

A page of the Edvar, the Book of the Science of Music in Letters, reads right to left: letter-notes on the first line, rhythm signs on the second. It is Ottoman music theory written by a practitioner: an alphabet in which the letters are notes and the durations signs beneath. Written at Tsargrad around 1700, it was dedicated later to Sultan Ahmed III, who came to the throne in 1703.

Between its covers stand 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.

The instrument he invented the notation for is the long-necked tanbur: the eight principal frets, from the bottom of the neck up, under the names he gave them, each with its duration sign beneath. 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 commission came from Berlin: a description of Moldavia, in Latin. The Descriptio Moldaviae, written in 1714, 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”.

His son Antioch took the manuscript to London: the History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire 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.

At Dmitrovka, between 1719 and 1722, he wrote the Hronicul, which 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, after more than two centuries.

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.