From: Daut Dauti

Netflix, to some extent even Prime, is revolutionizing cinematography. With its own production, Netflix has brought the cinema to the viewer's home by offering new film formats, especially series. Above all, Netflix should be praised for its documentary programs, especially for historical ones. We are talking about the "Rise of empires" series, such as those for the Roman and Ottoman Empires, but also for other empires such as the Austro-Hungarian, British, Russian and the Arab rule in Spain.

These series are highly professional and, as such, a serious contribution to the educational system. They are of a new format where competent historians of the respective fields speak and are then accompanied by scenes from the feature film.

A few days ago, the screening of the second series "Ottoman Empire" began, which is the work of the well-known American screenwriter and producer Kelly McPherson and the Turkish director, Emre Şahin. The acting is also excellent where Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu plays the role of Sultan Mehmet II, Tommaso Basili (Constantine XI), Tuba Büyüküstün (Mara Brankovic), Daniel Nuta (Vlad Impaler or Vlad Ngulitesi). The narrative is based on the data of historians: Roger Crowley, Lars Brownworth, Jason Goodwin, Marios Philippides, Michael Talbot, Emrah Safa Gürkan, etc.

The screenwriter and director have chosen Sultan Mehmet II (1432-1481) and Mara Brankovic (1416-1478), also known as Hatuna Mara Despina or Sultana Marija, as two main characters who dominate in both series. Very sharp way of telling.

Otherwise, Mara Brankoviqi was born in Kosovo, namely in Vushtrri. In 1432, the Serbian despot, Gjuraq Brankovic, decided to offer his 16-year-old daughter, Mara, who is talked about in these series, as a wife to Sultan Murat II. On this occasion, the chronicler Ashik Pasha Zade noted that the emissaries of the Serbian despot had gone to the sultan, to whom they had said: 'Emperor, Sir, please accept our daughter as a concubine, just as your grandfather, Bayazit, accepted her. , our daughter Olivera Lazarevic'.

As for the mother of Sultan Mehmet II, it is said that she was a Byzantine from Constantinople. Some think it was Greek, while another group of historians say it was Albanian. Regardless of her origins, her husband, Sultan Murad II, for unknown reasons, removed her from the palace (harem), so Mehmet was left without a mother at the age of perhaps six. The sultan's other, most favored wife, Mara Brankoviqi, who had no children, takes Mehmet to educate and raise him as her son and future ruler. Therefore, Mehmeti addresses Mara Branković in the film as "Mother Mara" (Mother Mary).

Mother Mary, daughter of the Serbian ruler Branković and Irene Kantakouzene, who was from the ruling family of Byzantium, was a woman of great influence in the Ottoman imperial court. As the saying goes, she brought the court to its knees. Being related to four European dynasties and not having converted to Islam like many other women in the court, she had authority even outside the Ottoman territory. Regardless of the fact that she had not converted to Islam - since she did not need to, since Muslim rules did not require this - Mother Mary had embraced the idea of ​​Ottomanism and had become Ottoman to the core.

When Mehmet II takes the imperial throne, which is also shown in the film, he calls Mother Mary to the audience and tells her that she must now go to Serbia. Her husband had died and now she had no reason to stay in the palace where it was essentially a gift, tax or guarantee of Serbia's vassalage to the Sultan. Mother Marë, thinking that Mehmet, her "son", now the sultan, was kicking her out of the palace, asks him: "My sultan, haven't I served the empire enough"?

But the far-sighted sultan is not expelling Mara. He sends her to Serbia on the duty of a diplomat or, better said, a spy. She was supposed to prevent the creation of the Serbo-Hungarian alliance. Mehmet planned the siege of Constantinople, to which country outside aid should not come because it would weaken the Ottoman power. And, Mother Mara manages to discover and prevent the tendency to create a Serbo-Hungarian alliance. She warns her father that such an action was wrong and that the Ottoman Empire was so powerful that Serbia would lose even its vassal status. “The Empire will destroy your army,” Mara tells her father. “My army?! Isn't the Serbian army yours too? You have stayed too long at the Ottoman court,” the Serbian ruler replies to his daughter, whom he is trying to marry off to the Byzantine emperor. But Mother Mary is not interested in giving up the Ottoman imperial palace in exchange for anything, because she was convinced that Constantinople would fall into Mehmet's hands.

Even from Serbia, she becomes the main moral force supporting the siege and fall of Constantinople. The film shows the case when she travels from Serbia to secretly meet with the sultan, almost demoralized by the long siege, to convince him to continue the attacks because he had discovered that prophecies and astrological data warned that he would conquer the city and become ruler of the world.

Mother Marë returns to Constantinople, now Istanbul, to congratulate her "son" on his new success and to stay in the palace again as the main woman and closest to the sultan.

Even in the second series, she is the advisor and the main diplomat. He is behind the initiative to defeat Vlad Dracula and return Wallachia under Ottoman rule. The Sultan again sends Mara to Hungary to talk with the Hungarian king and to influence him not to help Vlad. She even appears as an excellent diplomat as she has the ability to intimidate the Hungarian king.

Mara was also important for its role in the Ottoman negotiations with Venice. She practically led the Ottoman Foreign Ministry.

Mother Marë died in Istanbul at the age of 70 where she lived as a woman of great influence and very rich after her "son", Mehmet II gave her lands and monasteries in her possession. At the request of the Orthodox Church, she was buried in the monastery of Ikosifineca in Kosinica (Greece).

Because of her role in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, Serbian history has not paid any attention to this important (Serbian) woman. These days, the Serbian press, due to the way in which Serbia and Mara Branković are portrayed, has described the series "Rise of Empires: Ottoman" as controversial. /Telegraph/

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