The Council of War •
Tursun Pasha (full name: Ugurlu Tursun Tunxhasllan Sert Ollgunsoj): The ageing Turkish general commanding the besieging army. He is aware that he has recently fallen out of favour with
the sultan, and that the Albanian expedition represents a final opportunity for him to salvage his reputation; he expects to be executed if he fails. •
The Quartermaster-General: The unnamed officer responsible for the army's provisioning, who befriends Mevla Çelebi. An unusually perceptive man, he realises that the Ottoman campaigns against the Albanians are having the effect of strengthening Albanian nationhood, and thus that even if Albania is eventually reconquered, it will be impossible to keep it subjugated forever. He also reveals to Mevla Çelebi that the traditional Ottoman narrative of
Sultan Murad I's heroic death at the
Battle of Kosovo Field is a lie, and that the sultan and his son
Jakup Bey were actually murdered in a premeditated plot to engineer the accession of his other son,
Sultan Bayezid I. •
The Mufti: The senior
Islamic cleric attached to the army. He disapproves of Tursun Pasha bringing his harem with him on what is supposed to be a
holy war against infidels, and is also disdainful of the 'experts' like Saruxha and the Architect. •
Saruxha: The army's chief gunsmith, who favours a scientific, rational approach to warfare and is frustrated by the mysticism of the Mufti. He replaced the Ottoman Empire's previous chief gunsmith, Sarunhali, after the latter had a crisis of conscience concerning the morality of their profession; by contrast, Saruxha believes that the advance of military science is inexorable and that moral considerations are irrelevant. •
Sirri Selim: The doctor. He proposes introducing disease-ridden rats into the castle in order to incapacitate the garrison. •
Old Tavxha: Commander of the
Janissaries, an elderly warrior whose limbs are deformed by
rheumatism. He frequently reminisces about tactics used in previous sieges he has witnessed, one of which - the trick of using a thirsty horse to find hidden watercourses - proves useful to the Turkish army. •
The Astrologer: A junior member of the council who attempts to secure advancement by boldly predicting that an immediate assault upon the castle will be successful. Scapegoated for the failure of the attack, he is punished by being assigned to the tunnelling party, and is among the unfortunate men trapped and killed when the tunnel collapses. •
Kurdisxhi: Commander of the
Akinjis. •
Kara-Mukbil: Commander of the
Azebs. •
The Alaybey: A senior officer tasked by the sultan with observing Tursun Pasha's actions. •
Ulug Bey: Commander of the
sappers. He is harshly criticised by Tursun Pasha for burying the Turkish dead from the initial assault in a shallow grave, enabling dogs to unearth the corpses and feed on them. To redeem himself he personally takes charge of the subsequent tunnelling operation, and is among those killed when the tunnel collapses. •
The Architect: A Christian renegade who provides the Ottoman army with plans of the castle and advises the besiegers on the conduct of the siege; the tunnelling plan is his idea. The other members of the council dislike him, and mock his ungrammatical Turkish. He is often referred to as 'the
Giaour'. At the end of the novel,
Sultan Mehmet II orders him to assist in the planning for the upcoming Siege of Constantinople. As such, it is possible that he is equivalent to the historical
Orban. ''Tursun Pasha's Harem'' •
Hasan: The
eunuch who manages the harem and is the only man other than the pasha himself allowed to speak to the concubines. •
Lejla: The senior member of the harem, therefore nicknamed 'Nanny'. She was previously the chief concubine of an Ottoman
vizier, and is the only member of the harem to have had sex with a man other than Tursun Pasha. She is also the only one of them to have been on campaign before. •
Blondie: A European concubine, presumably of
Slavic origin; she is the only one of the girls who does not speak Turkish fluently. •
Ajsel: The only one of the concubines to have borne Tursun Pasha a child (a daughter). •
Exher: The youngest concubine, who falls pregnant on the first night of the camp. Expecting the child to be a boy, Tursun Pasha becomes increasingly concerned with its welfare as his hopes of a successful conclusion to the campaign fade.
Other Turks •
Mevla Çelebi: The campaign chronicler, tasked with producing the official account of the siege. He is acutely conscious of the fact that his work will determine how these events are remembered by posterity. As the point-of-view character in most chapters, he is the effective
protagonist of the novel. Of the four men who drink together on the first night of the siege - himself, Tuz Okçan, Sadedin and the Astrologer - he is the only one to survive the siege without being killed or maimed. •
Tuz Okçan: A rank-and-file janissary. He befriends Sadedin, and cares for him after he is blinded. He himself catches an unspecified disease from an infected rat during the attempt to introduce plague into the castle, and dies soon afterward. •
Sadedin: A poet who is enthusiastic about the war, which he hopes will inspire him to write a great work of poetry. He is blinded by burning pitch in the initial assault, and subsequently compared to
Homer by the Quartermaster-General.
Albanians • An unnamed scribe among the Albanian garrison. The entries in his chronicle form short 'inter-chapters' between the longer chapters describing the siege from the Turkish perspective. David Bellos speculates that he is based on the historical Albanian writer
Marin Barleti, who wrote a chronicle (
De Obsidione Scodrensi) about the 1478
Siege of Shkodra and also a biography of Skanderbeg. •
Vranakonti (Count Vrana): Commander of the Albanian garrison. Historically, he fulfilled the same function at the 1450 Siege of Krujë. •
Skanderbeg, real name Gjergj Kastrioti, leader of the Albanian rebels against the Ottoman Empire. Although he never appears in person in the novel, he is frequently mentioned by other characters, as the Turks are in awe of his fearsome reputation. ==Commentary==