Ottoman Empire
historical empire, Asia
Introduction
empire created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia. One of the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries, it spanned more than 600 years and came to an end only in 1922, when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and various successor states in southeastern Europe and the Middle East. At its height the empire included most of southeastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, including modern Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Romania, Greece, and Ukraine; Iraq, Syria, Israel, and Egypt; North Africa as far west as Algeria; and most of the Arabian Peninsula. The term Ottoman is a dynastic appellation derived from Osman (Arabic: ʿUthmān (Osman I)), the nomadic Turkmen chief who founded both the dynasty and the empire.
The Ottoman state to 1481: the age of expansion
The first period of Ottoman history was characterized by almost continuous territorial expansion, during which Ottoman dominion spread out from a small northwestern Anatolian principality to cover most of southeastern Europe and Anatolia. The political, economic, and social institutions of the classical Islāmic empires were amalgamated with those inherited from Byzantium and the great Turkish empires of Central Asia and were reestablished in new forms that were to characterize the area into modern times.Origins and expansion of the Ottoman state, c. 1300–1402
In their initial stages of expansion, the Ottomans were leaders of the Turkish warriors for the faith of Islām (Islāmic world), known as ghazis, who fought against the shrinking Christian Byzantine state. The ancestors of Osman I, the founder of the dynasty, were members of the Kayı tribe who had entered Anatolia along with a mass of Turkmen Oğuz nomads. These nomads, fleeing from the Mongols of Genghis Khan, overwhelmed Byzantium after the Battle of Manzikert (1071) and occupied eastern and central Anatolia during the 12th century. The ghazis fought against the Byzantines and then the Mongols, who invaded Anatolia following the establishment of the Il-Khanid (Il-Khanid Dynasty) (Ilhanid) empire in Iran and Mesopotamia in the last half of the 13th century. With the disintegration of Seljuq power and its replacement by Mongol suzerainty, enforced by direct military occupation of much of eastern Anatolia, independent Turkmen principalities—one of which was led by Osman—emerged in the remainder of Anatolia.
Following the Mongol defeat of the Seljuq army in 1293, Osman emerged as prince (bey) of the border principality that took over Byzantine (Byzantine Empire) Bithynia in northwestern Anatolia around Bursa, commanding the ghazis against the Byzantines in that area. Hemmed in on the east by the more powerful Turkmen principality of Germiyan, Osman and his immediate successors concentrated their attacks on Byzantine territories bordering the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara to the west. The Ottomans, left as the major Muslim rivals of Byzantium, attracted masses of nomads and urban unemployed who were roaming through the Middle East searching for means to gain their livelihoods and seeking to fulfill their religious desire to expand the territory of Islām. The Ottomans were able to take advantage of the decay of the Byzantine frontier defense system and the rise of economic, religious, and social discontent in the Byzantine Empire and, beginning under Osman and continuing under his successors Orhan (Orkhan, ruled 1324–60) and Murad I (1360–89), took over Byzantine territories, first in western Anatolia and then in southeastern Europe. It was only under Bayezid I (1389–1402) that the wealth and power gained by this initial expansion were used to assimilate the Anatolian Turkish principalities to the east.
By 1300 Osman ruled an area in Anatolia stretching from Eskişehir (Dorylaeum) to the plains of İznik (Nicaea), having defeated several organized Byzantine efforts to curb his expansion. Byzantine attempts to secure Il-Khanid support against the Ottomans from the east were unsuccessful, and the Byzantine emperor's use of mercenary troops from western Europe caused more damage to his own territory than to that of the Turks. The Ottomans lacked effective siege equipment, however, and were unable to take the major cities of Bithynia. Nor could they move against their increasingly powerful Turkmen neighbours Aydın and Karası (Karası Dynasty), which had taken over Byzantine territory in southwestern Anatolia. Orhan's (Orhan) capture of Bursa in 1324 (some sources date this event to 1326) provided the first means for developing the administrative, economic, and military power necessary to make the principality into a real state and to create an army. Orhan began the military policy, expanded by his successors, of employing Christian mercenary troops, thus lessening his dependence on the nomads.
Orhan soon was able to capture the remaining Byzantine towns in northwestern Anatolia: İznik (1331), İzmit (1337), and Üsküdar (1338). He then moved against his major Turkmen neighbours to the south. Taking advantage of internal conflicts, Orhan annexed Karası in 1345 and gained control of the area between the Gulf of Edremit and Kapıdağı (Cyzicus), reaching the Sea of Marmara. He thus put himself in a position to end the lucrative monopoly enjoyed by the city of Aydın, that of providing mercenary troops to competing Byzantine factions in Thrace and at Constantinople. The expansion also enabled the Ottomans to replace Aydın as the principal ally of the Byzantine emperor John VI Cantacuzenus. The consequent entry of Ottoman troops into Europe gave them a direct opportunity to see the possibilities for conquest offered by Byzantine decadence. The collapse of Aydın following the death of its ruler, Umur Bey, left the Ottomans alone as the leaders of the ghazis against the Byzantines. Orhan helped Cantacuzenus take the throne of Byzantium from John V Palaeologus and as a reward secured the right to ravage Thrace and to marry the emperor's daughter Theodora. Ottoman raiding parties began to move regularly through Gallipoli into Thrace. Huge quantities of captured booty strengthened Ottoman power and attracted thousands from the uprooted Turkmen masses of Anatolia into Ottoman service. Starting in 1354, Orhan's son Süleyman transformed Gallipoli, a peninsula on the European side of the Dardanelles, into a permanent base for expansion into Europe (Europe, history of) and refused to leave, despite the protests of Cantacuzenus and others. From Gallipoli his bands moved up the Maritsa River into southeastern Europe, raiding as far as Adrianople. Cantacuzenus soon fell from power, at least partially because of his cooperation with the Turks, and Europe began to be aware of the extent of the Turkish danger.
Orhan's son Murad I was the first Ottoman emperor to use Gallipoli for permanent conquests in Europe. Constantinople (Istanbul) itself was bypassed, despite the weakness and disorganization of its defenders, because its thick walls and well-placed defenses remained too strong for the nomadic Ottoman army, which continued to lack siege equipment. Murad's initial conquests extended northward into Thrace, culminating with the capture in 1361 of Adrianople, the second city of the Byzantine Empire. Renamed Edirne, the city became the new Ottoman capital, providing the Ottomans with a centre for the administrative and military control of Thrace. As the main fortress between Constantinople and the Danube, it controlled the principal invasion road through the Balkan (Balkans) Mountains, assured Ottoman retention of their European conquests, and facilitated further expansion to the north. Murad then moved through the Maritsa River valley and captured Philippopolis (Philibé or Filibe; modern Plovdiv) in 1363. Control of the main sources of Constantinople's grain and tax revenues enabled him to force the Byzantine emperor to accept Ottoman suzerainty. The death of the Serbian emperor Stefan Dušan in 1355 left his successors too divided and weak to defeat the Ottomans, despite an alliance with Louis I of Hungary and Tsar Shishman of Bulgaria in the first European crusade against the Ottomans. The Byzantine emperor John V (John V Palaeologus) tried to mobilize European assistance by uniting the churches of Constantinople and Rome, but this effort only further divided Byzantium without assuring any concrete help from the West. Murad was thus able in 1371 to rout the allies at Chernomen (Maritsa River, Battle of the) (Çirmen), on the Maritsa, increasing his own confidence and demoralizing his smaller enemies, who rapidly accepted his suzerainty without further resistance.
Murad next incorporated into the rapidly expanding empire many European vassals. He retained local native rulers, who in return accepted his suzerainty, paid annual tributes, and provided contingents for his army when required. This policy enabled the Ottomans generally to avoid local resistance by assuring rulers and subjects that their lives, properties, traditions, and positions would be preserved if they peacefully accepted Ottoman rule. It also enabled the Ottomans to govern the newly conquered areas without building up a vast administrative system of their own or maintaining substantial occupation garrisons.
Moving rapidly to consolidate his empire south of the Danube, Murad captured Macedonia (1371), central Bulgaria (including Monastir 【1382】, Sofia 【1385】, and Niš 【1386】), and Serbia, all culminating in the climactic defeat of the Balkan allies at the Battle of Kosovo (Kosovo, Battle of) in 1389. South of the Danube only Walachia, Bosnia, Albania, Greece, and the Serbian fort of Belgrade remained outside Ottoman rule, and to the north Hungary alone was in a position to resist further Muslim advances.
Murad was killed during the Battle of Kosovo. His son and successor, Bayezid I (1389–1402), was unable to take advantage of his father's victory to achieve further European conquest; in fact, he was compelled to restore the defeated vassals and return to Anatolia. This return was precipitated by the rising threat of the Turkmen principality of Karaman, created on the ruins of the Seljuq empire of Anatolia with its capital at Konya. Bayezid's predecessors had avoided forceful annexation of Turkmen territory in order to concentrate on Europe. They had, however, expanded peacefully through marriage alliances and the purchase of territories. The acquisition of territory in central Anatolia from the emirates of Hamid and Germiyan had brought the Ottomans into direct contact with Karaman for the first time. Murad had been compelled to take some military action to prevent it from occupying his newly acquired Anatolian territories but then had turned back to Europe, leaving the unsolved problem to his successor son.
Karaman willingly cooperated with Serbia in inciting opposition to Ottoman rule among Murad's vassals in both Europe and Anatolia. This opposition strengthened the Balkan Union that was routed by the Ottomans at Kosovo and stimulated a general revolt in Anatolia that Bayezid was forced to meet by an open attack as soon as he was able. By 1390 Bayezid had overwhelmed and annexed all the remaining Turkmen principalities in western Anatolia. He attacked and defeated Karaman in 1391, annexed several Turkmen states in eastern Anatolia, and was preparing to complete his conquest in the area when he was forced to turn back to Europe to deal with a revolt of some of his Balkan vassals, encouraged and assisted by Hungary and Byzantium. Bayezid quickly smashed the rebels (1390–93), occupied Bulgaria and installed direct Ottoman administration for the first time, and besieged Constantinople. In response, Hungary organized a major European crusade against the Ottomans. The effort was beaten back by Bayezid at Nicopolis (Niğbolu (Nicopolis, Battle of)) on the Danube in 1396. Europe was terrorized and Ottoman rule south of the Danube was assured; Bayezid's prestige in the Islāmic world was so enhanced that he was given the title of sultan by the shadow ʿAbbāsid caliph of Cairo, despite the opposition of the caliph's Mamlūk masters (the rulers of Egypt, Syria, and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina), who wanted to retain the title only for themselves.
Turning back to Anatolia to complete the conquests aborted by his move against the crusaders, Bayezid overran Karaman, the last Turkmen principality, in 1397. His advances, however, attracted the attention of Timur (Tamerlane), who had been building a powerful Tatar empire in Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mesopotamia and whose invasion of India in 1398 had been halted by his fear of the rising Ottoman power on his western flank. Encouraged by several Turkmen princes who had fled to his court when their territories were taken by Bayezid, Timur decided to destroy Bayezid's empire before resuming his campaigns in India and thus invaded Anatolia. As Bayezid and Timur moved toward battle, the former's Turkmen vassals and Muslim followers deserted him because he had abandoned the old Ottoman ghazi tradition of advancing against the infidel. Left only with forces provided by his Christian vassals, Bayezid was decisively overwhelmed by Timur at the Battle of Ankara (Ankara, Battle of) in 1402. Taken captive, he died within a year.
Restoration of the Ottoman Empire, 1402–81
Timur's objective in Anatolia had been not conquest but rather a secure western flank that would enable him to make further conquests in India. He thus followed his victory by retiring from Anatolia after restoring to power the Turkmen princes who had joined him; evidently Timur assumed that a divided Anatolia would constitute no threat to his ambitions. Even Bayezid's sons were able to assume control over the family's former possessions in western Anatolia, and the Ottoman Empire in Europe was left largely untouched. At this time a strong European crusade might have pushed the Ottomans out of Europe altogether, but weakness and division south of the Danube and diversion to other matters to the north left an opportunity for the Ottomans to restore what had been torn asunder without significant loss.
Internal divisions, however, were to hinder Ottoman efforts to restore their power during a period that has come to be known as the Interregnum (1402–13), during which four of Bayezid's sons competed for the right to rule the entire empire. His eldest son Süleyman assumed control in Europe, establishing a capital at Edirne, and gained the support of the Christian vassals and those who had stimulated Bayezid to turn toward conquest in the East. The descendants of the Turkmen notables who had assisted the early Ottoman conquests in Europe supported the claims of Mehmed (Mehmed I); with the additional support of the Anatolian Muslim religious orders and artisan guilds, Mehmed was able to defeat and kill his brothers Mûsa Bey, who had established his capital at Bursa, and İsa Bey of Balıkesir in southwestern Anatolia, as well as Süleyman, and so assume undisputed possession of the entire empire as Sultan Mehmed (Muḥammad) I (ruled 1413–20).
Under Mehmed and Murad II (ruled 1421–51), there was a new period of expansion in which Bayezid's empire was restored and new territories were added. Mehmed restored the vassal system in Bulgaria and Serbia, promising that he would not undertake new European adventures. Murad II was also compelled to devote most of the early years of his reign to internal problems, particularly to the efforts of the ghazi commanders and Balkan vassal princes in Europe, as well as the Turkmen vassals and princes in Anatolia, to retain the autonomy and—in some areas—independence that had been gained during the Interregnum. In 1422–23 Murad suppressed the Balkan resistance and put Constantinople under a new siege that ended only after the Byzantines provided him with huge amounts of tribute. He then restored Ottoman rule in Anatolia and eliminated all Turkmen principalities left by Timur, with the exceptions of Karaman and Candar (Jandar), which he left autonomous though tributary so as not to excite the renewed fears of Timur's successors in the East.
Murad then inaugurated the first Ottoman war with Venice (1423–30), which had maintained friendly relations with the sultans in order to develop a strong trade position in the Ottoman dominions but had accepted Salonika (Thessaloníki) from Byzantium in order to prevent Ottoman expansion across Macedonia to the Adriatic, its lifeline for trade with the rest of the world. The war was indecisive for some time; Venice was diverted by conflicts in Italy and in any case lacked the force to meet the Ottomans on land, while the Ottomans needed time to build a naval force sufficient to compete with that of the Venetians. In addition, Murad was diverted by an effort of Hungary to establish its rule in Walachia, between the Danube and the Transylvanian Alps, a move that inaugurated a series of Ottoman-Hungarian conflicts which were to occupy much of the remainder of his reign. Murad finally built a fleet strong enough to blockade Salonika and enable his army to conquer it in 1430. Subsequent Ottoman naval raids against Venetian ports in the Adriatic and the Aegean compelled Venice in 1432 to make a peace in which it abandoned its efforts to prevent the Ottoman advance to the Adriatic but was allowed to become the leading commercial power in the sultan's dominions.
Murad, who had been put on the throne by Turkish notables who had joined the Ottoman state during the first century of its existence, soon began to resent the power they had gained in return; the power of these notables was also enhanced by the great new estates they had built up in the conquered areas of Europe and Anatolia. To counteract their power, he began to build up the power of various non-Turkish groups in his service, particularly those composed of Christian slaves and converts to Islām, whose military arm was organized into a new infantry organization called the Janissary (Yeniçeri; “New Force”) corps. To strengthen this group Murad began to distribute most of his new conquests to its members, and to add new supporters of this sort he developed the famous devşirme system, by which Christian youths were drafted from the Balkan provinces for conversion to Islām and life service to the sultan.
With their revenues and numbers increasing, the devşirme men and their supporters achieved considerable political power. Because the new European conquests were being used by the sultan to build up the devşirme, they wanted the conquests to continue and expand, while the Turkish notables, whose power was diminished by the increasing status of the devşirme, opposed further conquest. Murad, wanting to return to aggressive policies of European expansion in order to help the devşirme reduce the power of the Turkish notables, renewed the struggle with Hungary in Serbia and Walachia in 1434. He took advantage of the death in 1437 of the Hungarian king Sigismund to reoccupy Serbia (except Belgrade) and to ravage much of Hungary; he then annexed Serbia in 1439, beginning a policy of replacing the vassals with direct Ottoman rule throughout the empire. Hungarian control of Belgrade became the primary obstacle to large-scale advances north of the Danube. Ottoman attacks on Belgrade and raids on Transylvania failed to move the Hungarians, largely because of the leadership of János Hunyadi (Hunyadi, János), originally a leader of the Walachian border resistance to the ghazis in 1440–42. Although Murad finally defeated Hunyadi at the Battle of Zlatica (İzladi) in 1443, the increased influence of the Turkish notables at Murad's court led the sultan to agree to the Peace of Edirne in 1444. By its terms Serbia regained its autonomy, Hungary kept Walachia and Belgrade, and the Ottomans promised to end their raids north of the Danube. In 1444 Murad also made peace with his main Anatolian enemy, Karaman, and retired to a life of religious contemplation, voluntarily passing the throne to his young son Mehmed II. Mehmed already showed the leadership qualities that were to distinguish his long reign, though at that time he relied primarily on devşirme supporters for advice and assistance.
The Byzantines and the pope (Eugenius IV) sought to use the opportunity created by the rule of a youthful and inexperienced sultan to expel the Ottomans from Europe, organizing a new crusade—joined by Hungary and Venice—after the pope assured them that they were not bound to honour the peace treaty they had signed with Muslim infidels. A crusader army moved through Serbia across the Balkan Mountains to the Black Sea at Varna, where it was to be supplied and transported to Constantinople by a Venetian fleet that would sail through the straits, while using its power to prevent Murad from returning from Anatolia with the bulk of the Ottoman army. Though the crusaders reached Varna, they were left stranded by a Serbian decision to remain loyal to the sultan and by Venetian reluctance to fulfill its part of the agreement for fear of losing its trade position in the event of an Ottoman victory. Further quarrels among the crusade leaders gave Murad time to return from Anatolia and organize a new army. The Turkish victory at Varna (Varna, Battle of) on Nov. 10, 1444, ended the last important European crusading effort against the Ottomans.
Murad reassumed the throne and restored the power of the devşirme party, whose insistent demands for conquest led him to spend the remainder of his reign eliminating the vassals and establishing direct rule in much of Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece. In the process he divided the newly acquired lands into estates, the revenues of which further increased the power of the devşirme at the expense of the Turkish notables. Only Albania was able to resist, because of the leadership of its national hero, Skanderbeg (George Kastrioti), who finally was routed by the sultan at the second Battle of Kosovo (Kosovo, Battle of) (1448). By the time of Murad's death in 1451, the Danube frontier was secure, and it appeared that the Ottoman Empire was permanently established in Europe. Whereas the victory at Varna brought new power to the devşirme party, the grand vizier (chief adviser to the sultan) Candarlı Halil Paşa was able to retain a dominant position for the Turkish notables, whom he led by retaining the confidence of the sultan and by successfully dividing his opponents. Prince Mehmed therefore became the candidate of the devşirme, and it was only with his accession that they were able to achieve the political and military power made possible by the financial base built up during the previous two decades.
Under Sultan Mehmed II (1451–81) the devşirme increasingly came to dominate and pressed their desire for new conquests in order to take advantage of the European weakness created at Varna. Constantinople became their first objective. To Mehmed and his supporters, the Ottoman dominions in Europe could never reach their full extent or be molded into a real empire as long as their natural administrative and cultural centre remained outside their hands. The grand vizier and other Turkish notables bitterly opposed the attack, ostensibly because it might draw a new crusade but in fact because of their fear that the capture of the Byzantine capital might bring about the final triumph of the devşirme. The siege (April 6–May 29, 1453) and conquest of Constantinople and its transformation into the Ottoman capital of Istanbul marked an important new stage in Ottoman history. Internally, it meant the end of power and influence for the old Turkish nobility, whose leaders were executed or exiled to Anatolia and whose European properties were confiscated, and the triumph of the devşirme and their supporters in Istanbul and the West. Externally, the conquest made Mehmed II the most famous ruler in the Muslim world, even though the lands of the old caliphate still remained in the hands of the Mamlūks of Egypt and Timur's successors in Iran. Moreover, the possession of Constantinople stimulated in Mehmed a desire to place under his dominion not merely the Islāmic and Turkic worlds but also a re-created Byzantine Empire and, perhaps, the entire world of Christendom.
To pursue these objectives Mehmed II developed various bases of power. Domestically, his primary objective was to restore Istanbul, which he had spared from devastation during the conquest, as the political, economic, and social centre of the area that it formerly had dominated. He worked to repopulate the city not only with its former inhabitants but also with elements of all the conquered peoples of the empire, whose residence and intermingling there would provide a model for a powerful and integrated empire. Special attention was paid to restoring Istanbul's industry and trade, with substantial tax concessions made to attract merchants and artisans. While thousands of Christians and Muslims were brought to the city, Greeks and Armenians were disinclined to accept Muslim Ottoman rule and sought to secure new European crusades. Mehmed thus gave special attention to attracting Jews (Jew) from central and western Europe, where they were being subjected to increasing persecution. The loyalty of these Jews to the Ottomans was induced by that of their coreligionists in Byzantium, who had supported and assisted the Ottoman conquests after the long-standing persecution to which they had been subjected by the Greek Orthodox church and its followers.
Under Ottoman rule the major religious groups were allowed to establish their own self-governing communities, called millets (millet), each retaining its own religious laws, traditions, and language under the general protection of the sultan. Millets were led by religious chiefs, who served as secular as well as religious leaders and thus had a substantial interest in the continuation of Ottoman rule. Mehmed used the conquering army to restore the physical structure of the city. Old buildings were repaired, streets, aqueducts, and bridges were constructed, sanitary facilities were modernized, and a vast supply system was established to provide for the city's inhabitants.
Mehmed also devoted much time to expanding his dominions in Europe and Asia in order to establish his claim to world leadership. To this end he eliminated the last vassal princes who might have disputed his claims to be legitimate successor to the Byzantine and Seljuq dynasties, establishing direct Ottoman administration in most of the provinces throughout the empire. In addition, he extended Ottoman rule far beyond the territories inherited from Murad II. From 1454 to 1463 he concentrated mainly on southeastern Europe, annexing Serbia (1454–55) and conquering the Morea (Morea, Despotate of) (1458–60), in the process eliminating the last major claimants to the Byzantine throne. When Venice refused to surrender its important ports along the Aegean coast of the Morea, Mehmed inaugurated the second Ottoman-Venetian war (1463–79). In 1461 he annexed Trebizond and the Genoese commercial colonies that had survived along the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, including Sinop and Kafa, and began the process by which the Crimean Tatar khans were compelled to accept Ottoman suzerainty. In 1463 he occupied and annexed Bosnia. When Albania continued to hold out, helped by supplies sent by sea from Venice, Mehmed sent in large numbers of Turkmen irregulars, who in the process of conquering Albania settled there and formed the nucleus of a Muslim community that has remained to the present day.
Since the papacy and Venice were unable to raise a new crusade in Europe, they diverted Mehmed by encouraging attacks by his enemies in the east, the Turkmen principality of Karaman and the Tatar Ak Koyunlu (“White Sheep”) dynasty, which under the leadership of Uzun Ḥasan had replaced Timur's descendants in western Iran. Mehmed, however, skillfully used dynastic divisions to conquer Karaman in 1468, thereby extending direct Ottoman rule in Anatolia to the Euphrates. When Uzun Ḥasan responded by invading Anatolia with the support of many Turkmen princes who had been dispossessed by Mehmed, Venice intensified its attacks in the Morea, Hungary moved into Serbia, and Skanderbeg attacked Bosnia. Mehmed, however, was able to defeat each of these enemies. In 1473 he routed Uzun Ḥasan, who acknowledged Ottoman rule in all of Anatolia and returned to Iran. This brought the Ottomans into conflict with the Mamlūk empire of Syria and Egypt, which sought to expand into southeastern Anatolia. Mehmed neutralized Mamlūk forces, though he could not defeat them. He then turned to Venice, initiating several naval raids along the Adriatic coast that finally led to a peace in 1479, whereby Venice surrendered its bases in Albania and the Morea and agreed to pay a regular annual tribute in return for restoration of its commercial privileges. Mehmed then used his new naval power to attack Rhodes and to send a large force that landed at Otranto in southern Italy in 1480. Success appeared imminent, but his premature death in 1481 brought the effort to an end. Nevertheless, Mehmed had laid the foundations for Ottoman rule in Anatolia and southeastern Europe that was to survive for the next four centuries.
In addition to conquering a large empire, Mehmed worked to consolidate it and to codify the political, administrative, religious, and legal institutions developed during the previous century by promulgating a series of secular laws ( kanun) compiled by subject into law codes called kanunnames. The immensity of the task, however, and his diversion in numerous campaigns delayed the process to such an extent that it was completed only during the mid-16th century. Mehmed also had only limited success in building the economic and social bases of his empire. His most important problem was securing enough money to finance his military expeditions and the new apparatus of government and society. The tax systems inherited from his predecessors did not provide the required resources, particularly because most of the conquered lands were turned into estates (timars) whose taxes went entirely to their holders in return for military and administrative services.
Mehmed therefore turned to a number of financial expedients that achieved their immediate objectives, but at the cost of grave economic and social difficulties. He regularly withdrew all coins (coin) from circulation and issued new ones with a larger proportion of base metal alloys. To enforce acceptance of the new issues, he sent armed bands around the empire with the right to confiscate without compensation all the older and more valuable coins that were not being voluntarily exchanged for the new. The debasement of the coinage soon caused inflation, which greatly disturbed the industry and trade that the sultan had hoped to promote. In addition, in his search for revenues, Mehmed created monopolies over the production and use of essential goods, distributing them among the highest bidders, who in turn charged excessive prices and created artificial scarcities to secure their profits. Finally, Mehmed established the principle that all revenue-producing property belonged to the sultan. In pursuance of this idea, he confiscated much private property and religious foundation lands, creating tremendous resentment and opposition among those who lost their revenues, including members of the religious ulama class, the Turkish notables, and even some devşirme men, whose discontent threatened to undermine both state and sultan. It was only by playing these groups off against each other that Mehmed was able to maintain his own position and power and to continue his conquests.
Ottoman institutions in the 14th and 15th centuries
Changing status of the Ottoman rulers
Ottoman dynasts were transformed from simple tribal leaders to border princes (uc beys) and ghazi leaders under Seljuq and then II-Khanid suzerainty in the 13th and early 14th centuries. With the capture of Bursa, Orhan had been able to declare himself independent of his suzerains and assume the title of bey, which was retained by his successors until Bayezid I was named sultan by the shadow ʿAbbāsid caliph of Cairo following his victory over the Christian crusaders at the Battle of Nicopolis (1396). These title changes reflected changes in the position of the Ottoman ruler within the state and in the organization of the state itself.
As uc bey and even as bey, the Ottoman leader remained little more than a tribal chief, sharing administrative and military leadership with the Turkmen tribal chiefs surrounding him. Like them, he was owed the loyalty and obedience of his followers only so long as he led them to victory and only in relation to his military functions. Beyond this he was only one among equals in the councils that decided general internal policies; the tribes and clans remained autonomous in their internal affairs. The bey was accessible to the tribe and clan leaders as well as to their followers. He could intervene in disputes among the clans, but jurisdiction was temporary and restricted. Muslim law and jurists had little influence, whereas Turkish tribal law and custom prevailed. In such a situation the idea of rule was very limited. Administration was conceived mainly in financial terms, with each clan or family or tribe accepting Ottoman military leadership largely for the financial rewards it could bring. Ottoman chiefs collected the booty in conquered lands and had the right to collect taxes from lands left in their possession after conquests. The only advantage that the bey, as tribal war leader, had over the chiefs surrounding him was the pençik (“fifth”), or right to collect an extra fifth of the booty taken by his followers. Because the bey was dependent for his power and revenues on the assent of his followers, his authority was limited in scope and in time.
As the territory of the Ottoman principality expanded, however, and the Ottomans inherited the administrative apparatus left by the Byzantines, this simple tribal organization was replaced by a more complex form of government. By the time the Ottoman rulers became sultans, they already had far more extensive power and authority than had been the case a half century earlier. The simple tribal organization of the Ottoman bey could suffice only while the state was small enough for the individual tribal leaders to remain on their lands to collect their revenues and fight the nearby enemy at the same time. As the principality expanded and the frontiers and enemies became further removed from previously conquered territory, the financial and administrative functions at home had to be separated from the military. Taxes had to be collected to exploit the conquered territories and support the officers and soldiers while they were away. The treasury of the sultan had to be separated from that of the state so that each would have an independent income and organization.
Institutional evolution
Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, therefore, the Ottoman state gradually reshaped its government and military institutions to meet the needs of administering and defending an expanding empire. This process naturally was influenced by those states that had preceded the Ottoman Empire, not only in the areas it came to rule but also in the lands of its ancestors. So it was that the developing Ottoman state was influenced by the traditions of the nomadic Turkic empires of Central Asia, particularly in military organization and tactics. It was also heavily influenced by the classical high Islāmic civilization of the ʿAbbāsids, as passed through the hands of the Seljuqs, particularly in the development of orthodox Islām as the basis of its administrative, religious, legal, and educational institutions and in the organization of its financial systems. In the court hierarchy, the central financial structure, and the tax and administrative organizations developed in the European provinces, the Ottomans were influenced by the Byzantines and, to a lesser extent, by the Serbian and Bulgarian empires. Although conversion to Islām was not demanded of the conquered, many Christians (Christianity) and a few Jews voluntarily converted to secure full status in the new empire. Most, however, continued to practice their old religions without restriction.
A particularly important source of Christian influence during the 14th century came from the close marriage ties between the Ottoman and Christian courts. Orhan was married to the Byzantine princess Nilüfer, mother of Murad I. Murad married Byzantine and Bulgarian princesses, and Bayezid I married Despina, daughter of the Serbian prince Lazar. Each of these marriages brought Christian followers and advisers into the Ottoman court, and it was under their influence that Bayezid I abandoned the simple nomadic courts and practices of his predecessors and isolated himself behind elaborate court hierarchies and ceremonies borrowed primarily from the Byzantines, setting a pattern that was continued by his successors. The triumph of Sultan Mehmed I in 1413 was due at least in part to the support of the Turkish notables and Muslim religious orders of Anatolia, who strongly resented the Christian predominance in Bayezid's court and attributed his abandonment of the ghazi tradition and attacks in Turkish Muslim Anatolia—as well as the defeat at the hands of Timur—to Christian influence. As a result Turkish and Muslim influences dominated the Ottoman court during the 15th century, although the hierarchies, institutions, and ceremonies introduced in the previous century remained largely unchanged. The same process that isolated the sultans from their subjects also removed them from the daily administration of government. Formal institutions of administration therefore evolved to take their place, with the rulers delegating more and more of their duties to executive ministers, to whom the Seljuq title vezir ( vizier) was given.
The continued close connections of the Ottoman family with the urban guilds and orders of Anatolia, many of the members of which were descendants of officials of the Great Seljuq and Il-Khanid empires, as well as the empire of the Seljuqs of Konya, provided continuity with the Islāmic Turkish traditions of government. With them came the basic unit of Islāmic administrative and financial organization, the mukâṭaʾa, which associated each office with a source of revenues and made each official the collector of his own salary. At the same time it circumscribed his administrative powers to those tasks directly involved with the financial function. It was relatively simple for the Ottomans to preserve previous methods of local taxation in different parts of the empire while weaving them into a united whole through the veneer provided by the mukâṭaʿa financial units, whose tax revenues were assigned to Ottoman officials. As the central administration was divided into functional departments, a vizier was appointed to direct each. Most of the early viziers were former Turkmen princes who had entered Ottoman service, though some, particularly under Bayezid I, were Christians and Christian converts. State policy was discussed and decided in a council ( divan) of these viziers, who were joined by religious, judicial, and military leaders under the direction and chairmanship of the sultan. As the duties of the state became more extensive and complex, the individual viziers gained increased financial and political power, and, as the Byzantine influence caused the sultan to isolate himself, it was inevitable that the viziers would come to dominate the administration. As if to emphasize his removal from the daily affairs of state, the sultan began to appoint one of his viziers as his chief minister, or grand vizier (sadr-ı azem). From 1360 until the conquest of Constantinople, this powerful position was reserved for members of the Candarlı family, which came to lead and represent the powerful and assertive Turkmen notable families; these families thus benefited most from the 14th-century expansion of the empire.
Military organization
The first Ottoman army had been composed entirely of Turkmen nomads, who had remained largely under the command of the religious orders that had converted most of them to Islām. Armed with bows and arrows and spears, these nomadic cavalrymen had lived mostly on booty, although those assigned as ghazis to border areas or sent to conquer and raid Christian lands also had been given more permanent revenues in the form of taxes levied on the lands they garrisoned. These revenue holdings were formalized as mukâṭaʿas, held by tribal leaders and ghazi commanders who used their revenues to feed, supply, and arm their followers. It was this type of mukâṭaʿa that developed into the Ottoman form of fief—called a timar—that was the basis of Ottoman military and administrative organization as the European portions of the empire were conquered from the vassals in the 15th century and placed under direct Ottoman administration. These nomadic troops had predominated through Orhan's reign, until he saw that such undisciplined cavalrymen were of limited use in besieging and taking large cities. In addition, once he had established his state, he had found it difficult to maintain order with such an army because the nomads still preferred to maintain themselves by looting, in the lands of their commander as well as in those of the enemy.
To replace the nomads, Orhan organized a separate standing army of hired mercenaries (mercenary) paid by salary rather than booty or by timar estates. Those mercenaries organized as infantry were called yayas; those organized as cavalry, müsellems. Although the new force included some Turkmens who were content to accept salaries in place of booty, most of its men were Christian soldiers from the Balkans who were not required to convert to Islām as long as they obeyed their Ottoman commanders. As Murad I conquered more and more of southeastern Europe, these forces became mainly Christian, and, as they came to dominate the Ottoman army, the older Turkmen cavalry forces were maintained along the frontiers as irregular shock troops, called akıncis, who were compensated only by booty. As the yayas and müsellems expanded in numbers, their salaries became too burdensome for the Ottoman treasury, so in most cases the newly conquered lands were assigned to their commanders in the form of timars. This new regular army developed the techniques of battle and siege that were used to achieve most of the 14th-century Ottoman conquests, but, because it was commanded by members of the Turkish notable class, it became the major vehicle for their rise to predominance over the sultans, whose direct military supporters were limited to the vassal contingents.
Only late in the 14th century did Murad I and Bayezid I attempt to build up their own personal power by building a military slave (slavery) force for the sultan under the name kapıkulu. Murad based the new force on his right to a fifth of the war booty, which he interpreted to include captives taken in battle. As these men entered his service, they were converted to Islām and trained as Ottomans, gaining the knowledge and experience required for service in the government as well as the army, while remaining in the sultan's personal service. During the late 14th century this force—particularly its infantry branch, the Janissary corps—became the most important element of the Ottoman army. The provincial forces maintained and provided by the timar holders constituted the Ottoman cavalry and were called spahis (spahi), while the irregular akıncis and salaried yayas and müsellems were relegated to rear-line duties and lost their military and political importance. But, when Bayezid I abandoned the ghazi tradition and moved into Anatolia, he lost the support of the Turkish notables and their spahis before his new kapıkulu army was fully established. He therefore had to rely only on the Christian vassal forces at the Battle of Ankara, and, although they demonstrated considerable valour and fighting ability, they were overwhelmed by Timur's powerful army.
When the Ottoman Empire was restored under Sultan Mehmed I, the Turkish notables, in order to deprive the sultan of the only military force he could use to resist their control, required him to abandon the kapıkulu, justifying the action on the basis of the Islāmic tradition that Muslims could not be kept in slavery. The European and Anatolian revolts that arose early in the reign of Murad II were at least partly stimulated and supported by members of the kapıkulu, as well as the Christian slaves and vassals who had been losing their power to the Turkish notables. As soon as Murad II came to power, however, he resumed earlier efforts to make the sultanate more independent, building up the strength of the Janissaries and their associates and playing them off against the notables. He distributed most of his conquests to members of the kapıkulu force, occasionally as timars but more often as tax farms (iltizam (iltizām)s), so that the treasury could obtain the money it needed to maintain the Janissary army entirely on a salaried basis. In addition, in order to man the new force, Murad developed the devşirme system of recruiting the best Christian youths from southeastern Europe.
Whereas Mehmed II used the conquest of Constantinople to destroy the major Turkish notable families and build up the power of the devşirme, Murad sought only to establish a balance of power and function between the two groups so that he could use and control both for the benefit of the empire. Thus he enlarged the concept of kapıkulu to include members of the Turkish nobility and their Turkmen spahis as well as the products of the devşirme. Now only persons accepting the status of slaves of the sultan could hold positions in the Ottoman government and army. Persons of Muslim and non-Muslim origin could achieve this status as long as they accepted the limitations involved: absolute obedience to their master and the devotion of their lives, properties, and families to his service. After this time all important ministers, military officers, judges, governors, timar holders, tax farmers, Janissaries, spahis, and the like were made members of this class and attached to the will and service of the sultan. The salaried Janissary corps remained the primary source of strength of the devşirme class, whereas the spahis and the timar system remained the bases of power of the Turkish notables. Mehmed II thus avoided the fate of the great Middle Eastern empires that had preceded that of the Ottomans, in which rule had been shared among members of the ruling dynasty and with others and rapid disintegration had resulted. The Ottomans established the principle of indivisibility of rule, with all members of the ruling class subjected to the absolute will of the sultan.
The peak of Ottoman power, 1481–1566
Domination of southeastern Europe and the Middle East
During the century that followed the reign of Mehmed II, the Ottoman Empire achieved the peak of its power and wealth. New conquests extended its domain well into central Europe and throughout the Arab portion of the old Islāmic caliphate, and a new amalgam of political, religious, social, and economic organizations and traditions was institutionalized and developed into a living, working whole. Bayezid II
The reign of Mehmed II's immediate successor, Bayezid II (1481–1512), was largely a period of rest. The previous conquests were consolidated, and many of the political, economic, and social problems caused by Mehmed's internal policies were resolved, leaving a firm foundation for the conquests of the 16th-century sultans. The economic stringencies imposed to finance Mehmed II's campaigns had led during the last year of his reign to a virtual civil war between the major factions in Istanbul, the devşirme party and the Turkish aristocracy. Bayezid was installed on the throne by the Janissaries because of their military domination of the capital, while his more militant brother Cem fled to Anatolia, where he led a revolt initially supported by the Turkish notables. Bayezid managed to conciliate the latter, however, by exposing to them his essentially pacific plans, which downgraded the devşirme, leaving Cem without major support. Cem then fled into exile in Mamlūk Syria in the summer of 1481. He returned the following year with the help of the Mamlūks and the last Turkmen ruler of Karaman, but his effort to secure the support of the Turkmen nomads failed because of their attraction to Bayezid's heterodox religious policies. Cem remained in exile, first at the court of the crusading Knights of Rhodes and then with the pope in Rome, until his death in 1495. European efforts to use him as the spearhead of a new crusade to regain Istanbul were unsuccessful.
In the meantime, however, the threat that Cem might lead a foreign attack compelled Bayezid to concentrate on internal consolidation. Most of the property confiscated by his father for military campaigns was restored to its original owners. Equal taxes were established around the empire so that all subjects could fulfill their obligations to the government without the kind of disruption and dissatisfaction that had characterized the previous regime. Particularly important was the establishment of the avâriz-ı divaniye (“war chest”) tax, which provided for the extraordinary expenditures of war without special confiscations or heavy levies. The value of the coinage was restored, and Mehmed II's plans for economic expansion were at last brought to fruition. To this end thousands of Jews (Jew) expelled from Spain by the Inquisition during the summer of 1492 were encouraged to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire. They settled particularly in Istanbul, Salonika, and Edirne, where they joined their coreligionists in a golden age of Ottoman Jewry that lasted well into the 17th century, when Ottoman decline and the rising power of European diplomats and merchants enabled them to promote the interests of the sultan's Christian subjects at the expense of Muslims and Jews alike. Bayezid II completed the effort begun by Mehmed II to replace the vassals with direct Ottoman administration throughout the empire. For the first time the central government regularly operated under a balanced budget. Culturally, Bayezid stimulated a strong reaction against the Christianizing trends of the previous half century. The Turkish language and Muslim traditions were emphasized. Since Bayezid himself was a mystic, he brought mystic rituals and teachings into the institutions and practices of orthodox Islām in order to counteract the increasing menace of heterodox Shīʿism among the tribes of eastern Anatolia.
Though Bayezid preferred to maintain peace—in order to have the time and resources to concentrate on internal development—he was forced into a number of campaigns by the exigencies of the period and the demands of his more militant devşirme followers. In Europe he rounded off the empire south of the Danube and Sava by taking Herzegovina (1483), leaving only Belgrade outside Ottoman control. The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus (Matthias I) (ruled 1458–90) was interested mainly in establishing his rule over Bohemia and agreed to peace with the Ottomans (1484), and, after his death, struggles for succession left this front relatively quiet for the remainder of Bayezid's reign. To the northeast the sultan pushed Ottoman territory north of the Danube, along the shores of the Black Sea, capturing in 1484 the ports of Kilia and Akkerman, which controlled the mouths of the Danube and Dniester. The Ottomans thus controlled the major entrepôts of northern European trade with the Black Sea and Mediterranean. Because these advances conflicted with the ambitions of Poland, in 1483–84 war ensued, until the diversion of Poland by the threat of Muscovy under Ivan III the Great left this front quiet also after 1484.
Bayezid then turned to the east, where previous conquests as far as the Euphrates had brought the Ottomans up to the Mamlūk empire. Conflict over control of the small Turkmen principality of Dulkadir (Dhū al-Qadr), which controlled much of Cilicia and the mountains south of Lake Van, and an Ottoman desire to share in control of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina led to an intermittent war (1485–91). This war was inconclusive, however, and Bayezid's disinclination to commit major forces to the endeavour led to dissension and criticism on the part of his more militant followers. To counter this, Bayezid tried to use Hungarian internal dissension to take Belgrade, without success, and raiding forces sent into Transylvania, Croatia, and Carinthia were turned back. In 1495 Cem died and a new peace with Hungary left Bayezid's objectives unfulfilled, so he turned toward Venice, his other major European enemy. Venice had been encouraging revolts against the sultan in the Morea, Dalmatia, and Albania, which it had ceded to the Ottomans in 1479. It also gained control of Cyprus (1489) and built there a major naval base, which it refused to allow Bayezid to use against the Mamlūks and instead used as a base for pirate raids against Ottoman shipping and shores, thus pointing up the island's strategic importance to the sultan. Bayezid also hoped to conquer the last Venetian ports in the Morea to establish bases for complete Ottoman naval control of the eastern Mediterranean. All these objectives, except control of Cyprus, were achieved in the war with Venice that followed in 1499–1503. The Ottoman fleet emerged for the first time as a major Mediterranean naval power, and the Ottomans became an integral part of European diplomatic relations.
Bayezid never was able to use this situation to make new conquests in Europe, because the rise of revolts in eastern Anatolia occupied much of his attention during the last years of his reign. There the old conflict resumed between the autonomous, uncivilized nomads and the stable, settled Middle Eastern civilization of the Ottomans. The Turkmen nomads resisted the efforts of the Ottomans to expand their administrative control to all parts of the empire. In reaction to the orthodox Muslim establishment, the nomads developed a fanatical attachment to the leaders of the Ṣūfī and Shīʿite mystic orders. The most successful of these were the Ṣafavids (Ṣafavid Dynasty) of Ardabīl, a Turkish mystic order that had immigrated there from eastern Anatolia along with seven Turkmen tribes (called Kizilbash 【“Redheads”】 because of their use of red headgear to symbolize their allegiance); the Ṣafavids used a combined religious and military appeal to conquer most of Iran. Under the shah Ismāʿīl I (1501–24), the Ṣafavids sent missionaries throughout Anatolia, spreading a message of religious heresy and political revolt, not only among the tribesmen but also to cultivators and some urban elements, who began to see in this movement the answers to their own problems.
A series of revolts resulted, which Bayezid was unable or unwilling to suppress because of his involvements in Europe and because his mystic preferences inclined him to sympathize with the religious message of the rebels. Finally, at the start of the 16th century, a general Anatolian uprising forced Bayezid into a major expedition (1502–03) that pushed the Ṣafavids and many of their Turkmen followers into Iran. There the Ṣafavids turned from orthodox Ṣūfism to heterodox Shīʿism as a means of gaining the loyalty of the Persians to a Turkish dynasty. Ismāʿīl continued, however, to spread his message as Ṣūfī leader in Anatolia, leading to a second major revolt of his followers against the Ottomans (1511). All the grievances of the time coalesced into what was essentially a religious uprising against the central government, and only a major expedition led by the grand vizier Ali Paşa could suppress it. But the conditions that had caused the uprising remained a major problem for Bayezid's successor. In the end Bayezid's increasingly mystic and pacific nature led the Janissaries to dethrone him in favour of his militant and active son Selim.
Selim I
Whereas Bayezid had been put on the throne by the Janissaries despite his pacific nature and carried out military activities with reluctance, Selim I (ruled 1512–20) shared their desire to return to Mehmed II's aggressive policy of conquest. But Selim did not wish to be dependent on or controlled by those who had brought him to power, so he killed not only all his brothers but also all seven of their sons and four of his own five sons, leaving only the ablest, Süleyman, as the sole heir to the throne. This deprived potential opponents of alternative leaders around whom they could coalesce. Selim was thus able to leave the devşirme in control of the government, but it was he who dominated. Selim's ambitions encompassed Europe as well as Asia; Bayezid had left the European fronts relatively quiet, however, so the new sultan turned first to the East and chose the Ṣafavids of Iran as his initial victims.
Selim first launched a vigorous campaign against the Ṣafavid supporters in eastern Anatolia, massacring thousands of tribesmen and missionaries and espousing a strict defense of Islāmic orthodoxy as a means of regaining political control. In the summer of 1514 he undertook a major expedition against the Ṣafavids, hoping to add Iran to his empire and finally eliminate the threat of heterodoxy. Ismaīʿīl employed a scorched-earth policy, retiring into central Iran and hoping that winter would force the Ottomans to retire without a battle. But the militant Kizilbash followers of the Ṣafavids forced the shah to accept battle by intercepting the Ottomans before they entered Azerbaijan. The Ottomans, with superior weapons and tactics, routed the Ṣafavid army at Chāldirān (Chāldirān, Battle of), on the eastern side of the Euphrates; Selim's cannons and gunpowder overpowered the spears and arrows of the Ṣafavids. Although Azerbaijan's capital, Tabrīz, was occupied, the Ottoman victory did not lead to the conquest of Iran or the collapse of the Ṣafavid empire. The Ottoman army became increasingly discontented under the impact of Ṣafavid propaganda among the already heterodox Janissaries. A relative lack of booty and supplies compared with campaigns in Europe also weakened morale. Selim was compelled to retire, and the Ṣafavids regained their lost province without resistance. The major result of the Chāldirān battle was to convince Ismāʿīl and his successors to avoid open conflict with the Ottomans at all costs, a policy that continued for a century. This preserved the Ṣafavid army, but it enabled Selim to overcome the last independent Turkmen dynasties in eastern Anatolia (1515–17) and to establish a strong strategic position relative to the Mamlūk empire, which was falling into internal decay and was ripe for conquest. With Ismāʿīl occupied with the restoration of his army, Selim I was able to overwhelm the Mamlūks (Mamlūk) in a single, yearlong campaign (1516–17). The Mamlūk army fell easily to the well-organized and disciplined Ottoman infantry and cavalry supported by artillery. The conquest was aided by the support of many Mamlūk officials, who betrayed their masters in return for important positions and revenues promised by the conquerors. In addition, most of the major populated centres of Syria and Egypt turned out their Mamlūk garrisons, preferring the security and order offered by the Ottomans to the anarchy and terror of the last century of Mamlūk dominion. Thus in a single sweep Selim doubled the size of his empire, adding to it all the lands of the old Islāmic Caliphate with the exception of Iran, which remained under the Ṣafavids, and Mesopotamia, which was taken by his successor.
These acquisitions were of immense importance to the Ottomans. Under efficient administration the new conquests provided Istanbul with revenues that solved the financial problems left from the 15th century and made the empire one of the most powerful and wealthy states in the 16th century. Acquisition of the holy places of Islām (Islāmic world) cemented the position of the sultan as the most important Islāmic ruler, though he and his successors declined to claim the position of caliph, or religious leader of Islām, until the late 18th century. The Ottomans gained direct access to the intellectual, artistic, and administrative heritage of the high Islāmic civilization of the ʿAbbāsids and Seljuqs, which previously had been transmitted to them only indirectly. From the Arab world there came to Istanbul the leading Muslim intellectuals, artisans, administrators, and artists of the time, who penetrated every facet of Ottoman life and made the empire much more of a traditional Islāmic state than it ever had been before. Finally, the Ottomans replaced the Mamlūks in control of the Middle Eastern portion of the old international routes between Europe and East Asia. One of the major reasons for the Mamlūk decline had been Portuguese discoveries in India and the establishment of a sea route around southern Africa in place of the partly land-based route through the Middle East. It now remained for the Ottomans to restore the full prosperity of their Middle Eastern dominions by countering Portuguese naval activities in the Eastern seas that sought to prevent European shippers from using the old routes, a campaign that had some success well into the 16th century. The Ottoman conquests in the East, combined with the Ṣafavid survival in Iran, ended the long period of political vacuum and anarchy that had followed the collapse of the universal ʿAbbāsid empire in the 11th century. Order and security finally were reestablished throughout the area, and the stability of Middle Eastern society was restored under the guidance and protection of powerful imperial orders. But the Islāmic world was left permanently divided, with Iran and Transoxania, once centres of the Islāmic caliphates, separated from the Arab world. Anatolia and southeastern Europe were for the first time added to the Arab world as integral parts of the Middle East.
Süleyman I
Selim's last years were spent in Istanbul solidifying the supremacy of the sultanate, exploiting the prestige and revenues that resulted from his Eastern victories. It was therefore only during the long reign of his son and successor, Süleyman I (ruled 1520–66), called “the Magnificent” in Europe and “the Lawgiver” (Kanuni) among the Ottomans, that the foundations laid by Selim were fully used to establish the classical Ottoman state and society and to make important new conquests in the East and West. As a result of his father's policies and successes, Süleyman assumed the throne with a position unequaled by any sultan before or after. He was left without opposition and with a great deal of control over the devşirme class, as well as over the remnants of the Turkish notables. The conquest of the Arab world had doubled the revenues of the treasury without imposing important additional financial obligations, leaving Süleyman with wealth and power unparalleled in Ottoman history. Although Süleyman never took full advantage of the opportunities left him and, in fact, began the process of Ottoman decline, his reign still marked the peak of Ottoman grandeur and has always been regarded as the golden age of Ottoman history.
The chief battlefields of Ottoman expansion in Europe (Europe, history of) under Süleyman were Hungary and the Mediterranean. The weak southeastern European enemies of Süleyman's predecessors had been replaced by the powerful Habsburg (Habsburg, House of) dynasty, which was bolstered by the appeals of the pope throughout Europe against the menace of Islām. Süleyman's main European ally was France, which sought to use Ottoman pressure in the south to lessen the pressure of the Habsburgs on its eastern frontiers. The land war with the Habsburgs was centred in Hungary and was fought in three main stages. From 1520 to 1526 the independent Hungarian kingdom bore the direct brunt of the Ottoman attack and acted as a buffer between the two great empires, but the weak king Louis II and feudal anarchy and misrule made a united defense impossible. A split among Hungarian nobles over the question of accepting Habsburg rule, combined with social and national divisions stimulated by the Reformation, further weakened the opposition to Ottoman attack. As a result Süleyman was able to take Belgrade in 1521, opening the way for a large-scale advance north of the Danube. The only real army the Hungarian nobles could muster was routed in 1526 at the Battle of Mohács (Mohács, Battle of), and the death of Louis II ended the last hope for Hungarian unity and independence.
The second period of Ottoman-Habsburg relations (1526–41) was characterized by Hungarian autonomy under the anti-Habsburg prince of Transylvania, John Zápolya, who accepted the suzerainty of the sultan in return for the right to continue native administration and military defense. The Habsburg prince Ferdinand (Ferdinand I), brother of the emperor Charles V, occupied the northern areas of Hungary with the support of the wealthier Hungarian nobles who desired Habsburg aid against the Turks. For all practical purposes he annexed them to Austria before undertaking to conquer the remainder of Hungary in 1527–28. In response Süleyman returned from Anatolia to drive the Habsburgs from all of Hungary and besieged Vienna in 1529, an effort that failed because of the difficulty of supplying a large force so far from the major centres of Ottoman power. Vienna thus stood as the principal European bulwark against further Muslim advance. Under the existing conditions of supply, transport, and military organization, the Ottomans had reached the limit of their possible expansion in the West; the winter base that supported this expansion had to be maintained in Istanbul because of the constant threat of military action against the Ṣafavids in the East. The siege of Vienna, however, secured Süleyman's rule of Hungary and prevented Ferdinand from launching a new attack against the territories ruled by Zápolya until 1540. Although the siege frightened the other states of Europe sufficiently for them to agree to a Roman Catholic–Protestant truce (1532), the result was only temporary, and Ferdinand never was certain of the support of the independent German princes and the other European rulers who promised help. Even Charles V was too preoccupied with the problems of the Reformation and with France to devote much attention to the Ottomans. Thus, when Süleyman embarked on a second Austrian campaign (1532), he was unable to draw the imperial army into conflict and had to content himself with devastating large areas of the Habsburg realm. By the peace of 1533 Ferdinand abandoned his claims to central Hungary and recognized Zápolya's rule there as Ottoman vassal, while Süleyman agreed to accept Ferdinand as ruler of northern Hungary in return for the payment of an annual tribute. This arrangement lasted until 1540, when Zápolya died and left his dominions to Ferdinand in defiance of his agreement with the sultan. When Ferdinand tried to assume his heritage by force, Süleyman occupied and annexed Hungary in 1541—under the guise of championing the cause of Zápolya's infant son, John Sigismund Zápolya—putting it under direct Ottoman administration and occupation for the first time. Thus began the third and final period of Ottoman-Habsburg relations, characterized by continuous border conflict; diversions on both sides, however, prevented long periods of open warfare. Christian historians have accused Francis I of France of encouraging Ottoman expansion into central Europe to relieve Habsburg pressure on him. But the Ottoman advances should be ascribed less to French overtures than to Süleyman's own ambitions, together with his fears of Habsburg rule in Hungary and a possible alliance among the Habsburgs, Hungarians, and Ṣafavids.
The sultan regarded the French king largely as a supplicant for commercial favours, which were granted in the Capitulations (capitulation) treaty of 1536, an agreement by which French subjects were given the freedom to travel and trade in the sultan's dominions and subjects of other states wishing to do the same were required to secure French protection. French and other merchants and travelers in the Ottoman Empire were allowed to remain under French laws and courts in cases concerning themselves and were granted special privileges in cases involving Ottoman subjects. Thus was established the foundation of the French predominance in the Levant, which remained until modern times. The Capitulations served as a model for later agreements between the Ottomans and the other European powers, who subsequently used them during the centuries of Ottoman weakness as means to dominate commerce within the Ottoman dominions and to drive the native Muslims and Jews out of the marketplace in favour of their coreligionist Greek and Armenian protégés. The stalemate between the Ottomans and Habsburgs in northern Hungary was characterized by centuries-long conflicts along the land frontier. Periodic Ottoman raids into central Europe and resulting European anti-Muslim propaganda led to Christian prejudice against Muslims in general and Turks in particular; many Europeans sympathized with the Christian minority subjects of the Turks, a sentiment which lasted into modern times.
Organized military conflict shifted to the sea, with the Ottomans emerging for the first time as a major naval power. The decline of the Venetian navy led Charles V to seek complete control of the Mediterranean (Mediterranean Sea), enlisting as his naval commander the great Genoese seaman Andrea Doria (Doria, Andrea) and thus gaining the support of the powerful Genoese fleet. Süleyman responded in 1522 by driving the Knights of Rhodes (Hospitallers), a Christian religious and military order, out of Rhodes, but in 1530 Charles established them on Malta, from which they organized piratical raids against Ottoman ships and shores and in 1535 captured Tunis. While Süleyman was occupied in Anatolia, Doria captured a number of ports in the Morea and began to raid the Ottoman coasts, severing most sea lines of communication between Istanbul and Alexandria and preventing thousands of Muslim pilgrims from reaching Mecca and Medina. In response, Süleyman in 1533 enrolled in his service as grand admiral Khayr ad-Dīn (known to Europeans as Barbarossa), a Turkish captain who had built a major pirate fleet of “sea ghazis” in the western Mediterranean and used it to capture Algiers (1529) and other North African ports. As part of the arrangement with Barbarossa, the Ottomans annexed Algiers to the empire as a special timar province permanently assigned to the grand admiral to support the fleet. Ottoman land troops were sent to defend Algiers against Habsburg attacks, which probably was the main reason Barbarossa agreed to join the sultan. Barbarossa built a powerful Ottoman fleet able to confront the Habsburgs on equal terms. In 1537 he launched a major attack on southern Italy, expecting a promised French attack in the north, with the objective of a joint conquest of Italy. But France, fearing a hostile European reaction to its alliance with the infidel, withheld the diversion. Doria then organized and led an allied European naval force against the Ottomans, but it was routed in 1538 at the Battle of Préveza off the Albanian coast. Venice then surrendered the Morea and Dalmatia, its last possessions in the Aegean, thus assuring an Ottoman naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean that remained unbroken for three decades.
Süleyman failed to pursue his ambitions in Europe after 1541, largely because of his increasing preoccupation with problems in the East. He ruthlessly suppressed Ṣafavid (Ṣafavid Dynasty) propagandists and supporters in eastern Anatolia and stimulated the Uzbek empire of Transoxania to attack Iran. Iran fell into disorder following the death of Ismāʿīl and the accession of his infant son Ṭahmāsp I, but Süleyman was able to take advantage of this situation only during periods of peace in Europe. He personally led three campaigns into northwestern Iran, in 1534–35, 1548–50, and 1554, and, although he captured Ṣafavid territories in the southern Caucasus and in Iraq, he never was able to catch and defeat the Iranian army. Supply problems invariably compelled him to retire to Anatolia during the winter months, allowing the Persians to regain Azerbaijan with little difficulty. Süleyman finally despaired of defeating his elusive enemies and agreed in 1555 to the Peace of Amasya, by which he retained Iraq and eastern Anatolia but renounced Ottoman claims to Azerbaijan and the Caucasus and agreed to allow Shīʿite Persian pilgrims to visit Mecca and Medina as well as their own holy places in Iraq. Thus, the same geographic problems that had limited Ottoman conquests in central Europe made western Azerbaijan the practical limit of Ottoman expansion in the East, preventing the final elimination of the Ṣafavid danger.
Süleyman was somewhat more successful in restoring the old international trade routes through his Middle Eastern possessions. To counteract the Portuguese fleet, supplied by the Ṣafavids from their Persian Gulf ports, he built major naval bases at Suez (1517) and, as soon as he took Iraq, at Basra (1538), establishing garrisons and fleets that not only resisted the Portuguese naval attacks but also attacked them in the Eastern seas. As a result the old trade route regained some of its former volume in the 16th century. The Ottomans never were able to fully restore it, however, because Portugal, using a sea route, still was able to pay higher prices in the East and sell at lower prices in Europe, avoiding the duties and local charges levied on goods sent by land through Ottoman territory. It should be noted that, contrary to the myths maintained by many European historians, it was the Ottomans who fought to keep the old Middle Eastern trade route open; the route was closed only when the Cape route was taken over from the Portuguese by the much more powerful fleets of the English and Dutch.
Classical Ottoman society and administration
During the 16th century the institutions of society and government that had been evolving in the Ottoman dominions for two centuries reached the classical forms and patterns that were to persist into modern times. The basic division in Ottoman society was the traditional Middle Eastern distinction between a small ruling class of Ottomans (Osmanlı) and a large mass of subjects called rayas (reʿâyâ). Three attributes were essential for membership in the Ottoman ruling class: profession of loyalty to the sultan and his state; acceptance and practice of Islām and its underlying system of thought and action; and knowledge and practice of the complicated system of customs, behaviour, and language known as the Ottoman Way. Those who lacked any of these attributes were considered to be members of the subject class, the “protected flock” of the sultan.
Social mobility was based on the possession of these definable and attainable attributes. Rayas able to acquire them could rise into the ruling class, and Ottomans who came to lack any of them became members of the subject class. Members of the ruling class were considered the sultan's slaves and acquired their master's social status. As slaves, however, their properties, lives, and persons were entirely at his disposition. Their basic functions were to preserve the Islāmic nature of the state and to rule and defend the empire. By Ottoman theory the main attribute of the sultan's (sultan) sovereignty was the right to possess and exploit all sources of wealth in the empire. The function of enlarging, protecting, and exploiting that wealth for the benefit of the sultan and his state, therefore, was the main duty of the ruling class. The rayas produced the wealth by farming the land or engaging in trade and industry and then paying a portion of the resulting profits to the ruling class in the form of taxes.
Organizations and hierarchies were developed by the ruling and subject classes to carry out their functions in Ottoman society. The ruling class divided itself into four functional institutions: the imperial, or palace (mülkiye), institution, personally led by the sultan, which provided the leadership and direction for the other institutions as well as for the entire Ottoman system; the military (seyfiye or askeriye) institution, which was responsible for expanding and defending the empire and keeping order and security within the sultan's dominions; the administrative, or scribal (kalemiye), institution, organized as the imperial treasury (hazine-i amire), which was in charge of collecting and spending the imperial revenues; and the religious, or cultural (ilmiye), institution, comprising the ulama (Muslims expert in the religious sciences), which was in charge of organizing and propagating the faith and maintaining and enforcing the religious law (Sharīʿah or Şeriat)—its interpretation in the courts, its expounding in the mosques and schools, and its study and interpretation.
To cover the areas of life not included within the scope of the ruling class of Ottomans, members of the subject class were allowed to organize themselves as they wished. As a natural manifestation of Middle Eastern society, their organization was determined largely by religious and occupational distinctions. The basic class divisions within the subject class were determined by religion, with each important group organizing into a relatively self-contained autonomous community usually called a millet (also taife or cemaat), which operated under its own laws and customs and was directed by a religious leader responsible to the sultan for the fulfillment of the duties and responsibilities of the millet members, particularly those of paying taxes and security. In addition, each millet cared for the many social and administrative functions not assumed by the Ottoman ruling class, concerning such matters as marriage, divorce, birth and death, health, education, internal security, and justice. Within the millets, just as in Ottoman society as a whole, there was social mobility, with persons moving up and down the ladder according to ability and luck. Individuals could pass from one millet to another if they wished to convert, but, because all the millets were extremely antagonistic toward those who left them to convert to another religion, the state discouraged such action as much as possible to preserve social harmony and tranquility. The purpose of the millet system was to keep the different peoples of the empire separated in order to minimize conflict and preserve social order in a highly heterogeneous state. Christian (Christianity) hatred (anti-Semitism) of Muslims (Islāmic world) and Jews (Jew), however, led to constant tension and competition among the different millets, with the Jews being subjected to “blood libel” attacks against their persons, shops, and homes by the sultan's Greek and Armenian subjects. These attacks intensified during the week preceding Easter, when Greeks and Armenians were driven into a frenzy by the old accusations, invented in ancient times by the Greek Orthodox church, that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals. The sultan intervened to provide protection for his Jewish subjects as much as possible, though the fact that many of his soldiers were converted Christians who retained the hatreds instilled in their childhoods made this intervention very difficult.
In addition to the religion-based millets, Ottoman subjects also organized themselves by economic function into guilds (guild). These guilds regulated economic activities, setting quality and pricing standards that guild members had to maintain in order to continue in their occupations. In most cases particular occupations were monopolized by members of one millet, but, in some trades practiced by members of different religions, guild membership cut across religious boundaries, joining members of different religions in common organizations based not on class, rank, or religion but on mutually shared values and beliefs, economic activities, and social needs. Through contact and cooperation in such guilds, members of the different groups of Ottoman society were cemented into a common whole, performing many of the social and economic functions outside the scope of the ruling class and the millets, particularly those functions associated with economic regulation and social security. In many cases guilds also were associated intimately with mystic religious orders, which—providing a more personal religious experience than that provided by the established Muslim and non-Muslim religious organizations—came to dominate Ottoman society in its centuries of decline.
Within the Ottoman ruling class the most important unit of organization and action was the mukâṭaʿa, in which a member of the ruling class was given a portion of the sultan's revenues along with authority to use the revenues for purposes determined by the sultan. The exact nature of the mukâṭaʿa depended on the proportion of the revenues that the holder remitted to the treasury and the proportion he retained for himself. Three types of mukâṭaʿa were found: timars, emanets, and iltizāms.
The timar, traditionally described as a fief, only superficially resembled European feudalism; it was part of a centralized system and did not involve the mutual rights and obligations that characterized feudalism in the West. In return for services to the state, the timar holder was given the full profits of the source of revenue for his personal exploitation and profit; these profits were independent of, and in addition to, those connected with the exploitation of the timar itself. For many military and administrative positions timars normally were given in lieu of salaries, thus relieving the treasury of the trouble and expense of collecting revenues and disbursing them to its employees as salaries. Almost all of the 14th- and 15th-century Ottoman conquests in southeastern Europe were distributed as timars to military officers, who in return assumed administrative responsibility in peacetime and provided soldiers and military leadership for the Ottoman army in war. Many of the officers of the central government also were rewarded with timars in place of, or in addition to, salaries paid by the treasury.
A less common form of the mukâṭaʿa was the emanet (“trusteeship”), held by the emin (“trustee” or “agent”). In contrast to the timar holder, the emin turned all his proceeds over to the treasury and was compensated entirely by salary, thus being the closest Ottoman equivalent to the modern government official. The legal rationale for this arrangement was that the emin undertook no additional service beyond administering the mukâṭaʿa and thus had no right to share in its profits. Used primarily for urban custom houses and market police, emanets were closely supervised by the central government and its agents and did not need the profit motive in order to assure efficiency on the part of the holders.
The most common kind of mukâṭaʿa, and therefore the most prevalent type of administrative unit in the Ottoman system, was the tax farm ( iltizām), which combined elements of both the timar and emanet. As in the timar, the tax farmer (mültezim) could keep only a part of the tax he collected and had to deliver the balance to the treasury. This was because his service consisted only of his work in administering the mukâṭaʿa, for which he was given a share of his collection instead of the emin's salary. The tax farmer thus was given the inducement of profit to be as efficient as possible. Most of Anatolia and the Arab provinces were administered in this way because they were conquered at a time when the government's need for cash to pay the salaried Janissary infantry and supply an increasingly lavish court required the treasury to seek out all the revenues it could find. As the timar-based spahi cavalry became less important and as the Turkish notables who held most of the timars lost most of their political power during the time of Süleyman, the estates gradually fell into the hands of the devşirme class.
The legal and customary bases of organization and action in Ottoman society depended on a dual system of law: the Sharīʿah, or Muslim religious law, and the kanun, or civil law. The Sharīʿah was the basic law of Ottoman society, as it was of all Muslim communities. Considered to be a divinely inspired corpus of political, social, and moral regulations and principles, the Sharīʿah was intended to cover all aspects of life for Muslims, although it was highly developed only in the issues of personal behaviour that affected the early Muslim community and were reflected in the Qurʾān and early Muslim tradition. It never was developed in detail in matters of public law, state organization, and administration. Its general principles left room for interpretation and legislation on specific matters by secular authorities, and the Muslim judges of the Ottoman Empire recognized the right of the sultan to legislate in civil laws as long as he did not conflict with the Sharīʿah in detail or principle. The Sharīʿah, therefore, provided the principles of public law and covered matters of personal behaviour and status in the Muslim millets in the same way that the members of the Christian and Jewish millets were subject to their own religious codes. The Sharīʿah was interpreted and enforced by members of the cultural institution, the ulama, just as the laws of each non-Muslim millet were enforced by its leaders. The members of the ulama who interpreted the law in the courts, called qadis (qadi), as well as the jurisconsults, called muftis (mufti), had the right to invalidate any secular law they felt contradicted the Sharīʿah; however, they rarely used this right, because as part of the ruling class they were under the authority of the sultan and could be removed from their positions. The sultan therefore was relatively free to issue secular laws to meet the needs of the time, a major factor in the long survival of the empire. It must be noted, however, that, with the restricted scope of the Ottoman ruling class and state and the large areas of power and function left to the religious communities, guilds, and Ottoman officials who held the mukâṭaʿas, the sultans were never as autocratic as has been assumed. It was only in the 19th century that Ottoman reformers centralized government and society on Western lines and restricted or ended the traditional autonomies that had done so much to decentralize power in the previous centuries.
The decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1566–1807
Internal problems
The reign of Süleyman I the Magnificent marked the peak of Ottoman grandeur, but signs of weakness signaled the beginning of a slow but steady decline. An important factor in the decline was the increasing lack of ability and power of the sultans themselves. Süleyman tired of the campaigns and arduous duties of administration and withdrew more and more from public affairs to devote himself to the pleasures of his harem. To take his place, the office of grand vizier was built up to become second only to the sultan in authority and revenue; the grand vizier's authority included the right to demand and obtain absolute obedience. But, while the grand vizier was able to stand in for the sultan in official functions, he could not take his place as the focus of loyalty for all the different classes and groups in the empire. The resulting separation of political loyalty and central authority led to a decline in the government's ability to impose its will.
The triumph of the devşirme
The mid-16th century also saw the triumph of the devşirme over the Turkish nobility, which lost almost all its power and position in the capital and returned to its old centres of power in southeastern Europe and Anatolia. In consequence, many of the timars formerly assigned to the notables to support the spahi cavalry were seized by the devşirme and transformed into great estates—becoming, for all practical purposes, private property—thus depriving the state of their services as well as the revenue they could have produced if they had been transformed into tax farms. While the spahis did not entirely disappear as a military force, the Janissaries and the associated artillery corps became the most important segments of the Ottoman army.
Corruption and nepotism
Because the sultans no longer could control the devşirme by setting it against the Turkish notables, the devşirme gained control of the sultans and used the government for its own benefit rather than for the benefit of a sultan or his empire. In consequence, corruption and nepotism took hold at all levels of administration. In addition, with the challenge of the notables gone, the devşirme class itself broke into countless factions and parties, each working for its own advantage by supporting the candidacy of a particular imperial prince and forming close alliances with corresponding palace factions led by the mothers, sisters, and wives of each prince. After Süleyman, therefore, accession and appointments to positions came less as the result of ability than as a consequence of the political maneuverings of the devşirme-harem political parties. Those in power found it more convenient to control the princes by keeping them uneducated and inexperienced, and the old tradition by which young princes were educated in the field was replaced by a system in which all the princes were isolated in the private apartments of the harem and limited to such education as its permanent inhabitants could provide. In consequence, few of the sultans after Süleyman had the ability to exercise real power, even when circumstances might have given them the opportunity. But the lack of ability did not affect the sultans' desire for power; lacking the means developed by their predecessors to achieve this end, they developed new ones. Selim II (ruled 1566–74), known as “the Sot” or “the Blonde,” and Murad III (1574–95) both gained power by playing off the different factions and by weakening the office of grand vizier, the main administrative vehicle for factional and party influence in the declining Ottoman state. As the grand viziers lost their dominant position following the downfall of Mehmed Sokollu (served 1565–79), power fell first into the hands of the women of the harem, during the “Sultanate of the Women” (1570–78), and then into the grasp of the chief Janissary officers, the agas, who dominated from 1578 to 1625. No matter who controlled the apparatus of government during this time, however, the results were the same—a growing paralysis of administration throughout the empire, increasing anarchy and misrule, and the fracture of society into discrete and increasingly hostile communities.
Economic difficulties
Under such conditions it was inevitable that the Ottoman government could not meet the increasingly difficult problems that plagued the empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. Economic difficulties began in the late 16th century, when the Dutch and British completely closed the old international trade routes through the Middle East. As a result the prosperity of the Middle Eastern provinces declined. The Ottoman economy was disrupted by inflation, caused by the influx of precious metals into Europe from the Americas and by an increasing imbalance of trade between East and West. As the treasury lost more of its revenues to the depredations of the devşirme, it began to meet its obligations by debasing the coinage, sharply increasing taxes, and resorting to confiscations, all of which only worsened the situation. All those depending on salaries found themselves underpaid, resulting in further theft, overtaxation, and corruption. Holders of the timars and tax farms started using them as sources of revenue to be exploited as rapidly as possible, rather than as long-term holdings whose prosperity had to be maintained to provide for the future. Political influence and corruption also enabled them to transform these holdings into private property, either as life holdings (malikâne) or religious endowments (vakif), without any further obligations to the state.
Inflation also weakened the traditional industries and trades. Functioning under strict price regulations, the guilds were unable to provide quality goods at prices low enough to compete with the cheap European manufactured goods that entered the empire without restriction because of the Capitulations agreements. In consequence, traditional Ottoman industry fell into rapid decline. Christian subjects combined with foreign diplomats and merchants, who were protected by the Capitulations, largely to drive the sultan's Muslim (Islāmic world) and Jewish (anti-Semitism) subjects out of industry and commerce and into poverty and despair.
Social unrest
These conditions were exacerbated by large population growth during the 16th and 17th centuries, part of the general population rise that occurred in much of Europe at this time. The amount of subsistence available not only failed to expand to meet the needs of the rising population but in fact fell as the result of the anarchic political and economic conditions. Social distress increased and disorder resulted. Landless and jobless peasants fled off the land, as did cultivators subjected to confiscatory taxation at the hands of timariots and tax farmers, thus reducing food supplies even more. Many peasants fled to the cities, exacerbating the food shortage, and reacted against their troubles by rising against the established order; many more remained in the countryside and joined rebel bands, known as levends and Jelālīs (Celâlis (Jelālī Revolts)), which took what they could from those who remained to cultivate and trade.
The central government became weaker, and as more peasants joined rebel bands they were able to take over large parts of the empire, keeping all the remaining tax revenues for themselves and often cutting off the regular food supplies to the cities and the Ottoman armies still guarding the frontiers. Under such conditions the armies broke up, with most of the salaried positions in the Janissary and other corps becoming no more than new sources of revenue, without their holders performing any military services in return. Thus, the Ottoman armies came to be composed primarily of fighting contingents supplied by the vassals of the sultan, particularly the Crimean Tartar khans, together with whatever rabble could be dragged from the streets of the cities whenever required by campaigns. The Ottoman army still remained strong enough to curb the most pressing provincial revolts, but the revolts proliferated through the centuries of decline, making effective administration almost impossible outside the major cities still under the government's control. In many ways the substratum of Ottoman society—formed by the millets and various economic, social, and religious guilds and buttressed by the organization of the Ottoman ulama—cushioned the mass of the people and the ruling class itself from the worst effects of this multisided disintegration and enabled the empire to survive much longer than otherwise would have been possible.
External relations
Despite these difficulties, the internal Ottoman weakness was evident to only the most discerning Ottoman and foreign observers during much of the 17th century. Most Europeans (Europe, history of) continued to fear the Ottoman army as they had two centuries earlier, and, although its ability was reduced, it remained strong enough to prevent the provincial rebels from assuming complete control and even to make a few more significant conquests in both East and West. The empire suffered defeats for the first time, but it retained reserve strength sufficient for it to recoup when needed and to prevent the loss of any integral parts of the empire. Although the Ottoman navy was destroyed by the fleet of the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), it was able to rebuild and regain naval mastery in the eastern Mediterranean through the rest of the 16th and most of the 17th century, taking Tunis from the Spanish Habsburgs (1574), Fez from the Portuguese (1578), and Crete from Venice (1669). In consequence, as long as Europe continued to fear the Ottomans, no one tried to upset the precarious peace treaties concluded in Süleyman's later years, and the Ottomans were shielded from their own weakness for quite some time. Despite the upsets then disturbing the body politic, the Ottomans occasionally undertook new campaigns. When the rising principality of Moscow (Moscow, Grand Principality of) conquered the last Mongol states in Central Asia and reached the Caspian Sea, thus posing a threat to the Ottoman positions north of the Black Sea and in the Caucasus, Murad III conquered the northern sections of the Caucasus and, taking advantage of the anarchy in Iran that followed the death of Shah Ṭahmāsp I in 1576, seized long-coveted Azerbaijan. He thus brought the empire to the peak of its territorial extent and added wealthy new provinces whose revenues, for a half century at least, rescued the Ottoman treasury from the worst of its financial troubles and gave the empire a respite during which it could attempt to remedy its worst problems.
Reform efforts
The Ottoman reforms introduced during the 17th century were undertaken by sultans Osman II (ruled 1618–22) and Murad IV (1623–40) and by the famous dynasty of Köprülü (Köprülü Mehmed Paşa) grand viziers who served under Mehmed IV (1648–87)—Köprülü Mehmed Paşa (served 1656–61) and Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Paşa (served 1661–76). Each of these early reformers rose as the result of crises and military defeats that threatened the very existence of the empire. Each was given the power needed to introduce reforms because of the fears of the ruling class that the empire, on which the privileges of the ruling class depended, was in mortal danger. In a war between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs (Habsburg, House of) that began in 1593, the Austrians were able to take much of central Hungary and Romania, and only an accidental Ottoman triumph in 1596 enabled the sultan to recoup. The Habsburgs then agreed to the Treaty of Zsitvatorok (1606), by which Ottoman rule of Hungary and Romania was restored. The treaty itself, however, like the events that led up to it, for the first time demonstrated to Europe the extent of Ottoman weakness and thus exposed the Ottomans to new dangers in subsequent years.
In the East, anarchy in Iran was brought to an end by Shah Abbās Iʿ, who not only restored Iranian power but also conquered Iraq (1624) and threatened to take the entire Ottoman Empire. Though Murad IV was able to retake Iraq (1638), Iran remained a major threat. Finally, a long war with Venice (1645–69), occasioned by Ottoman efforts to capture Crete, exposed Istanbul to a major Venetian naval attack. Although the Venetians finally were pushed back in a naval campaign culminating in the Ottoman conquest of Crete (1669), they still posed a major threat that, like those which had occurred earlier in the century, stimulated the ruling class to accept needed reforms. The reforms introduced during the 17th century were too limited in nature and scope, however, to permanently arrest the Ottoman decline. The reforms essentially were no more than efforts to restore the inherited system of government and society that had operated successfully in the past. Efforts were made to restore the timar and tax (iltizām) farm systems as the basis of the administration and army and to limit taxes to the limits imposed by law. Provincial revolts were suppressed, peasants were forced back to the land, and cultivation was increased. Debased coins were replaced by coins of full value. Industry and trade were encouraged, corrupt officials executed, and insubordination driven out.
Such reforms were sufficient to end the immediate difficulties. But they were successful only temporarily because the reformers were allowed to act against only the results of the decay and not its cause, the continued monopoly of the self-interested ruling class. As soon as the worst consequences of decay had been alleviated, the old groups resumed power and their old ways. Moreover, the reformers did not understand that the Europe now faced by the Ottomans was far more powerful than that which the great sultans of the past had defeated; even if the reforms had been more permanently successful, they could not have corrected the increasing Ottoman weakness relative to the powerful nation-states then rising in Europe. Such an understanding was to come to the Ottoman reformers only in the 19th century.
Military defeats and the emergence of the Eastern Question, 1683–1792
The traditionalist 17th-century reforms did, however, produce at least a semblance of revival. By 1681 the Ottoman army seemed so strong that the grand vizier, Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa (Kara Mustafa Paşa, Merzifonlu) (served 1676–83), brother-in-law of Ahmed Köprülü, was emboldened to move again into central Europe and besiege Vienna (Vienna, Siege of) (July–September 1683). His effort quickly overextended the fragile bases of the Ottoman revival. The aroused defenders, led by the Polish king Jan Sobieski (John III Sobieski) (ruled 1674–96), not only held out but also built a major European coalition that was to bring destruction to the Ottoman Empire during the 18th century. The Habsburgs set out to reconquer Hungary, Serbia, and the Balkans, while Venice hoped to regain its naval bases along the Adriatic coast and in the Morea and to resume its naval and commercial power in the Levant, and Russia worked to extend its reach through the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles to the Aegean. Only the European enemies of the coalition, led by France and Sweden, tried to support Ottoman integrity. They were supported in this by neutral Britain and the Netherlands, who sought to guard the commercial privileges they had secured from the sultan through the Capitulations by preventing any nation from gaining control of the entire Ottoman Empire and thereby becoming dominant in Europe. Russia and Austria fought the Ottomans not only by direct military attack but also by fomenting dissatisfaction and revolt on the part of the non-Muslim subjects of the sultan. Against such subversion, the Ottomans could only try to conciliate their subjects where possible and repress them when conciliation was rejected, taking advantage at every opportunity of each rivalry that arose between the Habsburgs and Russians for predominance in the Balkan provinces of the empire.
In consequence the Ottoman Empire fought intermittent wars with its European enemies during the period between the second siege of Vienna (1683) and the Treaty of Jassy (1792). From 1683 to 1699 it fought the armies of the Holy League in a disastrous war that culminated in the Treaty of Carlowitz (Carlowitz, Treaty of) (1699). In 1710–11 it fought Russia (Russo-Turkish wars) again, and at the Treaty of the Pruth (1711) it regained some territories previously lost. The war of 1714–18 with Venice and Austria was concluded by the Treaty of Passarowitz (Passarowitz, Treaty of) (1718); and three wars with Russia and Austria, in 1736–39, 1768–74, and 1787–92, culminated in the treaties of Belgrade (Belgrade, Treaty of) (1739), Küçük Kaynarca (Küçük Kaynarca, Treaty of) (1774), and Jassy (Jassy, Treaty of) (1792). As a result of these wars, the Ottomans lost Hungary, the Banat of Temesvár region, Transylvania, and Bukovina, establishing their European boundary on the Danube, where it had been early in the 16th century. By 1812 the Ottomans had lost all their possessions on the northern coast of the Black Sea, from the Romanian principalities to the Caucasus, including Bessarabia, southern Ukraine, and the Crimea (the soldiers of which had provided the strongest element in the Ottoman army during the 17th century). In addition, the Ottomans were compelled to allow the Russians and Austrians to intervene legally on behalf of the sultan's Christian subjects, increasing European influence in internal Ottoman affairs.
Imperial decline in the 18th and early 19th centuries
Most manifestations of decline were only continuations and elaborations of earlier conditions. In the later Ottoman period, however, a new factor of decline was added: the weakness of the central government resulted in the loss of control of most of the provinces to the local ruling notables, called ayan (aynʿ) or derebeyi (derebey)s (“lords of the valley”) in Anatolia and klephts or hayduks in Europe, who took more or less permanent control of large areas, creating a situation that in many ways resembled European feudalism much more than the traditional Ottoman timar system ever did. These notables were able to build up their power and maintain control not only because the sultan's government lacked the military resources to suppress them but also because the local populations preferred the notables' rule to that of the corrupt and incompetent Ottoman officials. In the Balkans and Anatolia local rulers solidified their positions by taking advantage of currents of local nationalism that were arising among the Balkan Christians. The notables formed private armies of mercenaries and slaves, which they sometimes used to provide important contributions to the Ottoman armies in return for recognition of their autonomy by the sultans. These rulers were able to exercise almost complete authority, collecting taxes for themselves and sending only nominal payments to the treasury, thus further increasing its problems. The central government maintained its position when it could by playing off the local rebels against each other, using the leverage of Ottoman support to its own advantage and securing considerable payments of cash and military contributions when needed. The treasury, therefore, did not suffer as much from these provincial revolts as might be imagined, but the revolts did disrupt the established food supplies of the empire and caused large-scale famines to starve the major cities on a regular basis. In response, the urban populace became a restless, misruled, and anarchic mass that broke loose at the slightest provocation, responding to unemployment, famine, and plague with riots and summary executions of the officials considered responsible. This violence brought attention to Ottoman difficulties but did not remedy them and in fact made things worse. The potential for reform lay only in the hands of the ruling class, but its reaction was quite different.
Resistance to change
Most Ottomans saw little need for the empire to change, because they benefited financially from the anarchy and the sultan's lack of control. In addition, the ruling class was completely isolated from developments outside its own sphere; it assumed that the remedies to Ottoman decline lay entirely within Ottoman practice and experience. This resulted from the basic belief of Ottoman society in its own superiority over anything outsiders could possibly produce, a belief that had far more justification in the 16th century, when it arose, than in the 18th century. All the advances in industrial and commercial life, science and technology, and particularly political and military organization and techniques that had occurred in Europe since the Reformation were simply unknown to the Ottomans. The only direct Ottoman contacts with Europe were on the battlefield, where most Ottomans still assumed that their military reverses were caused not by the superiority of Western armies but rather by Ottoman failure to apply fully the techniques that had worked so well in the past. Thus, the 18th-century reforms largely paralleled those of the traditional Ottoman reformers of the 17th century, with only occasional efforts to add new military organizations and to make use of specific European weapons and techniques of undeniable superiority.
Contacts with the West
For some Ottomans this isolation was at least partially broken down when some channels of contact opened with the West during the 18th century. A few Ottoman ambassadors went to Europe to participate in negotiations and sign treaties; more and more European merchants, travelers, and consuls came into the Ottoman Empire; a very few Ottoman men of science and philosophy began to correspond with their Western counterparts; and members of the Ottoman minorities entered into correspondence with their relatives in the West. But such contacts had very limited consequences: only a small number of Ottomans experienced them, and, even when they did learn something, the effect was quite superficial because the resulting information did not fit into the patterns of thought of even the most educated Ottomans. Those few who did understand something of what they heard usually were only voices in the wilderness, and their efforts to apply and disseminate the new knowledge had little overall effect. Such contacts led to nothing more than changes in the modes of living of a few upper-class Ottomans and to some military innovations. Beginning in the so-called Tulip Period (1717–30), some Ottomans under the influence of the grand vizier İbrahim Paşa began to dress like Europeans, and the palace began to imitate European court life and pleasures. Sultan Ahmed III (ruled 1703–30) built several lavish summer residences on the Bosporus and the Golden Horn (an inlet that forms part of the harbour of Istanbul), and members of his immediate entourage built similarly lavish houses, holding frequent garden parties in imitation of the pleasures of Versailles. The sultan and his ministers were no longer confined behind the walls of the Topkapı palace. This new era was celebrated by Nedim (Nedim, Ahmed), the court poet, whose poetry demonstrates a considerable awareness of his environment and an appreciation of nature. Growing tulips became an obsession with rich and poor alike, signifying Westernization, and the flower gave its name to the period. In 1727 Turkish-language books were printed for the first time in the empire, by a Hungarian convert who took the name İbrahim Müteferrika, and while the press was closed at times owing to resentment on the part of the scribes—who feared being made obsolete—during the remainder of the century it provided a number of books on history and geography that further opened the minds of the literate.
Military reforms
As a result of contact with European armies and the influence of European renegades in Ottoman service, a few attempts were made during the 18th century to adopt Western-style uniforms, weapons, and tactics. Because the members of the established military corps could not and would not surrender their old ways, entirely new corps were formed to handle the new weapons under the direction of European instructors. The new corps had no effect at all on the Janissaries and the other older corps that continued to form the bulk of the army, however; the older corps accurately perceived that the new ways threatened their privileges and security. The new corps thus were essentially special mercenary bodies built up under the direction of individual Ottomans, lasting only so long as their patrons remained in power.
The most successful and lasting Ottoman military reform during this time came in the navy, which was modernized by the grand admiral Gazi Hasan Paşa (served 1770–89) with the support and encouragement of the sultan Abdülhamid I (ruled 1774–89); this success came largely because the Ottoman naval establishment was devastated in 1770 at the Battle of Çeşme (Çeşme, Battle of) by a Russian fleet that had sailed from the Baltic Sea, and there was none of the inbred resistance that stifled significant reforms elsewhere. Important reforms introduced into the army under the grand vizier Halil Hamid Paşa (served 1782–85), with the help of Western technicians, were limited to new corps specially created for the purpose. The bulk of the Ottoman army remained unchanged and therefore was more equipped to suppress reform at home than to challenge modern Western armies.
Selim III and the nizam-ı cedid
These 18th-century reform efforts culminated during the reign of Selim III (ruled 1789–1807), often considered the originator of modern reform in the Ottoman Empire. While still a prince, Selim developed plans for modernizing the Ottoman army. He came to the throne during the 1787–92 war with Austria and Russia and had to postpone serious reform efforts until its completion. Selim's early efforts to modernize the Janissary corps created such opposition that thereafter he concentrated on creating a new European-style army called the nizam-ı cedid (“new order”), using modern weapons and tactics developed in Europe. This new force, never numbering more than 10,000 active soldiers, was trained in Istanbul and in a number of Anatolian provincial centres by officers and military experts sent by the different European powers that were competing for the sultan's support. In order to avoid disrupting the established Ottoman institutions, it was financed by an entirely new treasury, called the irad-ı cedid (“new revenue”), whose revenues came from taxes imposed on previously untaxed sources and from the confiscation of some timars whose holders were not fulfilling their military and administrative duties to the state. Under the guidance of European technicians, factories were erected to manufacture modern weapons and ammunition, and technical schools were opened to train Ottoman officers. Limited efforts also were made to rationalize the Ottoman administrative machinery, but largely along traditional lines. The older military corps, however, remained intact and hostile to the new force, and Selim was therefore compelled to limit its size and use.
At the same time much of Selim's energy was diverted by the rise of powerful autonomous notables in southeastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Arab provinces, as well as by a French expedition to Egypt (1798–1801) under Napoleon Bonaparte. The French expedition eventually drew Selim into alliances with Great Britain and Russia, through which the French were driven out. The rise of nationalism among Ottoman subject peoples—stimulated by agents of Russia, Austria, and Revolutionary France—showed itself in the beginning of a Serbian revolution (1804) and a new war with Russia (1806–12) and made it impossible for Selim to resist the wishes of the Janissaries, who still formed the bulk of his army. Finally, the sultan's personal weakness, which led him to desert the reformers and the new army whenever opposition became strong, left him with little significant support in 1807, when he was attacked and overthrown by a conservative coalition. While Selim was imprisoned in the palace, a conservative resurgence under the sultan Mustafa IV (1807–08) ended the reforms, and most of the reformers were massacred. An effort to restore Selim led by the Danubian notable Bayrakdar Mustafa Paşa led to Selim's death and, after the short rule of Mustafa IV, the accession of his reforming cousin, Mahmud II (1808–39). Although Selim's reforms were largely abandoned for some time, the greatly increased knowledge of the West in the Ottoman Empire—made possible by the schools established for the nizam-ı cedid and by the increased numbers of Westerners present in Istanbul during the era of the French Revolution—began the process by which Ottoman isolation was finally and definitively broken, setting the stage for the more significant reforms that transformed the empire during the remainder of the 19th century.
The empire from 1807 to 1920
The triumph of the antireform coalition that had overthrown Selim III was interrupted in 1808 when the surviving reformers within the higher bureaucracy found support among the ayan of Rumelia (Ottoman possessions in the Balkans), who were worried by possible threats to their own position. The ayan were led by Bayrakdar (“Standard Bearer”) Mustafa Paşa. The forces of Mustafa and the grand vizier Çelebi Mustafa Paşa together recovered Istanbul, deposed Mustafa IV, installed Mahmud II—the son of Abdülhamid I—as ruler, and recommenced some of the reforming policies that had been initiated by Selim.The ayan took care to protect their own interests by securing a Covenant of Union, which defined and guaranteed their rights against the central government. Their victory, however, was short-lived. A further Janissary uprising in November 1808 led to the death of the Bayrakdar and to the reestablishment of conservative rule.
Rule of Mahmud II
The Ottoman situation at the end of 1808 appeared desperate. Within the empire the authority of the central government was minimal. Control of North Africa had long since faded. In Egypt the Ottoman viceroy Muḥammad ʿAlī was laying the foundations for independent power. In Iraq the Georgian Mamlūk pashas paid only lip service to the authority of the Sublime Porte (Ottoman government), as did various independent local governors in Syria. In Arabia the Wahhābīs mocked Ottoman pretensions. In all of Anatolia only two provinces were firmly under central control, while in the European provinces power had fallen into the hands of such formidable local notables as Ali Paşa (Ali Paşa Tepelenë), who controlled southern Albania, and Osman Pasvanoğlu, who dominated northern Bulgaria until his death in 1807. Serbia, under the leadership of George Petrović (Karageorge (Karadjordje)), had been in revolt since 1804; at first the Serbs had risen in desperation against the terrorist policies of the Janissaries—who had usurped the power of the local governor—but they subsequently had demanded autonomy and in 1807 allied themselves with Russia.
The external threat to the empire was no less ominous. Selim III had hoped to enlist French aid in order to recover territory lost to Russia; as a result, the Ottomans found themselves at war with both Russia, which invaded the principalities (i.e., Moldavia and Walachia; modern Romania) in November 1806, and Britain, which attempted to seize the Dardanelles with a naval force (February 1807) and invaded Egypt (March 1807). Meanwhile Napoleon, through the agreements of Tilsit (July 7, 1807) and Erfurt (Oct. 12, 1808), had abandoned active opposition to Russia and had accepted its occupation of the principalities.
The preoccupation of the European powers with other interests helped the Ottomans ameliorate their international problems. Britain made peace on Jan. 5, 1809, in the Treaty of Çanak (Çanak, Treaty of). Through the Treaty of Bucharest (May 28, 1812) Russia returned the principalities to Ottoman rule, although Russia retained most of Bessarabia.
Internal reform
Mahmud II was then able to concentrate on internal reform. The basic element in Mahmud's reforms was the reconstruction of the army to make it a fit instrument for preserving the Ottoman Empire against both the encroachments of European powers and the separatist ambitions of local potentates. This policy brought him into conflict with the Janissaries (Janissary). In 1826 Mahmud set out his proposals for a new European-style army; on June 15 the Istanbul Janissaries mutinied in protest and were promptly and efficiently massacred by the sultan, an episode known as “the Auspicious Incident.”
As a tactician, Mahmud proved to be superior to Selim. He had the support of most of the higher ulama. Whereas in 1807 the Janissaries had enjoyed the approval of the population of Istanbul, in 1826 only two guilds gave them active help. Mahmud had built up a cooperative group among the Janissary officers and had carefully arranged to have loyal troops at hand. Perhaps most important of all, Mahmud made sure his proposals were perceived not as dangerous and infidel innovations but as a restoration of the military system of the Ottoman golden age.
The destruction of the old army was completed in 1831 by the final abolition of the timar system. The remaining timars were resumed by the government. Although the new army was outfitted, equipped, and trained in the style of European armies and helped by a succession of European advisers (including the future chief of the German General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke), it differed from the former army in its greater loyalty to the sultan. It thus became an instrument of political centralization, and it provided the major motive for modernization. The continuing effort to pay and equip the army and to train its officers and other specialized personnel in a sustained, but ultimately vain, attempt to keep pace with the European powers stimulated reform of the political and economic institutions of the Ottoman Empire. For example, the modernization of higher education began with the need to train officers, army doctors, and veterinary surgeons; that of the taxation system began with the need to pay the army; and that of the administration, with the need to collect the taxes. Ultimately the entire system of minimal government—by which political, economic, and social decisions were left to local organizations—was replaced by one in which the state centralized decisions in its own hands.
Move toward centralization
Mahmud began by curbing the power of rival claimants. He undermined the influence of the ulama and of popular religious organizations. He created a new directorate of evkâf (charitable endowments) in 1826, hoping to gain control of the hitherto independent financial base of ulama power. To make his power more effective, he built new roads and in 1834 inaugurated a postal service.
The central administration was reorganized. New European-style ministries were created to replace the ancient bottleneck of power caused by the vesting of full administrative responsibility in the grand vizier. New councils were established to assist in long-term planning; one, the Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances (1838), subsequently became the principal legislative body. Bureaucrats were given greater security by the abolition of the practice of confiscating their property at death, while the opening of a translation bureau (1833) and the reopening of embassies abroad gave some the opportunity to learn European languages and encounter European ideas.
The reformed army and administration became the agents by which the sultan extended his authority over the semi-independent governors, local notables, valley lords, and other groups that had wielded political power in various parts of the empire. This process had begun immediately after 1812. The Serbian revolt had been temporarily suppressed in 1813, although it broke out again in 1815. Firm Ottoman governmental control was established over Anatolia, Iraq, and much of Rumelia.
The only local ruler who succeeded in asserting his own authority, unaided, against the Porte was Muḥammad ʿAlī of Egypt, who was carrying through a still more radical program of modernization. In 1831 Egyptian forces invaded Syria, routed the Ottomans at Konya (Dec. 27, 1832), and threatened Istanbul. Mahmud was forced to seek Russian aid, and on July 8, 1833, he signed the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi (Hünkâr İskelesi, Treaty of) (Unkiar Skelessi); Muḥammad ʿAlī was, for a time, left in possession of Syria, but Mahmud had not abandoned his claims. In 1839 he attacked the Egyptians; once more the Ottomans were defeated (June 24, 1839). With the help of the European powers (except France) through the Treaty of London (July 15, 1840), the Ottomans recovered Syria and eventually consolidated their authority there; but Muḥammad ʿAlī obtained recognition as hereditary ruler of Egypt (1841).
Attempts to extend Ottoman control in the European provinces, notably in Greece (Greece, history of), Serbia, and the principalities, were frustrated. The Greek revolt was the product of the economic prosperity of the Napoleonic Wars and exposure to western European ideas and was a reaction against Ottoman centralization. The revolt was the result of the opposition of peasants and bandits to Ottoman authority and was instigated by plots of certain intellectuals organized through the political society Philikí Etaireía and led by Alexander Ypsilantis, who invaded Moldavia in March 1821. Ypsilantis was defeated, but an uprising began in the Peloponnese. A stalemate developed, but the Ottomans were reinforced in 1825 by Egyptian troops and threatened to put down the revolt. The destruction of the combined Ottoman and Egyptian fleets by Russian, French, and British naval forces at Navarino (Navarino, Battle of) in the southwestern Peloponnese (Oct. 20, 1827) prevented the Muslims from supplying their armies and made Greek independence inevitable. The Ottomans were forced to recognize Greek autonomy (1829) and independence (1832).
Similarly, Ottoman efforts to regain control of Serbia and the principalities were obstructed by Russian opposition, leading to the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29). By the Treaty of Edirne (Edirne, Treaty of), on Sept. 14, 1829, the Ottomans ceded to Russia the mouth of the Danube and important territories in eastern Asia Minor and conceded new privileges to the principalities and Serbia. Serbian autonomy was recognized in 1830 and was extended over the full area of the state in 1833.
By the time of the death of Mahmud II in 1839, the Ottoman Empire was diminished in extent; it was more consolidated and powerful than it had been at its height but was increasingly subject to European pressures, with Russia supporting and Britain opposing separatist movements and the other powers oscillating between. The cure, however, had begun. Mahmud had established the respectability of change, and its symbol was the replacement of the turban with the fez (1828).
The Tanzimat reforms (1839–76)
The Tanzimat is the name given to the series of Ottoman reforms promulgated during the reigns of Mahmud's sons Abdülmecid I (ruled 1839–61) and Abdülaziz (1861–76). The best-known of these reforms are the Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane (“Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber”; Nov. 3, 1839) and the Hatt-ı Hümayun (“Imperial Edict”; Feb. 18, 1856).Purpose of the Tanzimat
The Tanzimat has been the subject of much controversy. Many Western writers have dismissed the promises of reform as merely an Ottoman desire to win European diplomatic support at critical moments, and some features of the Tanzimat appear to support such a view. The promises of equality for Christian subjects were not always implemented—for example, it was proposed in 1855 to end the poll tax paid by non-Muslims and to allow them to enter the army, but the old poll tax was merely replaced by a new exemption tax levied at a higher rate, and Christians were still excluded from the army. It is also true that the timing of reform announcements coincided with crises: the 1839 edict came when the Ottomans needed European help against Muḥammad ʿAlī, the 1856 edict when the Ottomans needed European acceptance in the wake of the Crimean War, and the 1876 constitution when European pressure for reforms was mounting.
This view of the Tanzimat is based, however, upon a misconception of its purpose. Europeans, who were principally concerned with improving conditions for Ottoman Christians, looked first at those elements of the Tanzimat that appeared to be directed toward this goal (e.g., a proclamation in the 1839 edict of the principles of individual liberty, freedom from oppression, and equality before the law and a section of the 1856 edict that was concerned with the rights of Christians). To the Ottomans, however, the purpose of reform was to preserve the Ottoman state. Although the Ottomans found it necessary to make some concessions to European powers and to their own non-Muslim subjects and although some Tanzimat statesmen did consider equality to be an ultimate goal, it was the desire to preserve the state that brought about the mobilization of resources for modernization. The central reforms, therefore, were in the army, notably major reorganizations of 1842 and 1869 (the latter following the pattern of the successful Prussian conscript system); in the administration, both at the centre and in the provinces; and in society, through changes in education and law.
Reform in education
Before the reforms, education in the Ottoman Empire had not been a state responsibility but had been provided by the various millets; education for Muslims was controlled by the ulama and was directed toward religion. The first inroads into the system had been made with the creation of naval engineering (1773), military engineering (1793), medical (1827), and military science (1834) colleges. In this way specialized Western-type training was grafted onto the traditional system to produce specialists for the army. Similar institutions for diplomats and administrators were founded, including the translation bureau (1833) and the civil service school (1859); the latter was reorganized in 1877 and eventually became the political science department of the University of Ankara and the major training centre for higher civil servants.
In 1846 the first comprehensive plan for state education was put forward. It provided for a complete system of primary and secondary schools leading to the university level, all under the Ministry of Education. A still more ambitious educational plan, inaugurated in 1869, provided for free and compulsory primary education. Both schemes progressed slowly because of a lack of money, but they provided a framework within which development toward a systematic, secular educational program could take place.
By 1914 there were more than 36,000 Ottoman schools, although the great majority were small, traditional primary schools. The development of the state system was aided by the example of progress among the non-Muslim millet schools, in which the education provided was more modern than in the Ottoman schools; by 1914 these included more than 1,800 Greek schools with about 185,000 pupils and some 800 Armenian schools with more than 81,000 pupils. Non-Muslims also used schools provided by foreign missionary groups in the empire; by 1914 there were 675 U.S., 500 French Catholic, and 178 British missionary schools, with more than 100,000 pupils among them. These foreign schools included such famous institutions as Robert College (founded 1863), the Syrian Protestant College (1866; later the American University of Beirut), and the Université Saint-Joseph (1874).
Reforms in law
Law, to a large extent, also had been the responsibility of the various millets (millet). The Capitulations (capitulation) exempted foreigners and those Ottoman citizens on whom foreign consuls conferred protection from the application of criminal law. The Tanzimat reformers had two objects in the reform of law and legal procedure: to make Ottoman law acceptable to Europeans, so that the Capitulations could be abolished and sovereignty recovered, and to modernize the traditional Islāmic law. Their efforts resulted in the promulgation of a commercial code (1850), a commercial procedure code (1861), a maritime code (1863), and a penal code (1858). French influence predominated in these, as it did in the civil code of 1870–76. Increasingly, the laws were administered in new state courts, outside the control of the ulama. Although they failed to achieve the purposes intended, they provided the basis for future success.
Obstructions to reforms
The Tanzimat reforms moved steadily in the direction of modernization and centralization. The reformers were handicapped by a lack of money and skilled men, and they were opposed by traditionalists who argued that the reformers were destroying the empire's fundamental Islāmic character and who often halted the progress of reform. Centralization, meanwhile, was slowed by interference from the major European powers, who obstructed the Ottoman attempt to recover power in Bosnia and Montenegro in 1853, forced the granting of autonomy to Mount Lebanon in 1861, and considered, but eventually rejected, intervention to prevent the Ottomans from suppressing a Cretan revolt of 1868. Although Britain and France helped the Ottomans resist Russian pressure during the Crimean War (1853–56), the Ottomans derived no real benefits from the peace settlement; new arrangements helped to bring about the unification of the principalities (1859) and paved the way for the emergence of independent Romania.
The 1875–78 crisis
The success of the Tanzimat reformers, ironically, created a systemic weakness as centralization removed the checks on the power of the sultan. After the death of Ali Paşa, Abdülaziz so abused his unrestrained authority as to contribute to a major crisis in 1875–78.Drought in 1873 and floods in 1874 had produced widespread discontent and even famine among the Ottoman peasantry, who already were disturbed by the increased burdens of a landholding system that had spread in the Balkans in the 19th century and by increased taxation and greater liability to conscription resulting from the 1869 military reorganization. The burden of taxation had been aggravated by the Ottoman debt burden. The first Ottoman foreign loan was in 1854; by 1875 the nominal public debt was £200,000,000, with annual interest and amortization payments of £12,000,000, more than half the national revenue. The Ottomans could meet only about half of their annual obligation, however, because a world financial crisis in 1873 had made new credit difficult to obtain.
Balkan discontent was fanned by nationalist agitation supported by Serbia and by émigré Slav organizations. It culminated in uprisings largely of Christian peasants against Muslim lords in Bosnia and Herzegovina (July 1875) and in Bulgaria (August 1876). Ottoman efforts to suppress the uprisings led to war with Serbia and Montenegro (July 1876) and to attempts by European powers to force Ottoman reforms.
Agreement among the European powers proved impossible, and, when the Ottomans rejected Russian demands, Russia (Russo-Turkish wars) decided to act alone and declared war (April 24, 1877). The war ended in defeat for the Ottomans, but their unexpected resistance at Plevna (modern Pleven, Bulg.; July–December 1877) allowed other European powers, led by Britain, to intervene. According to the Treaty of San Stefano (San Stefano, Treaty of) (March 3, 1878), the Ottomans were to recognize the independence of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro and cede territory to them, concede autonomy to an extensive new state of Bulgaria, cede territory to Russia in the Dobruja (west of the Black Sea) and eastern Asia Minor, introduce various administrative reforms, and pay an indemnity.
Diplomatic pressure from other European powers led to the modification of these terms at the Congress of Berlin (Berlin, Congress of) (June–July 1878). The major changes concerned autonomous Bulgaria, which was substantially reduced in size and divided into two parts, the northern part to have political and the southern (eastern Rumelia) to have administrative autonomy. The independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania was recognized, but their territorial gains were much reduced. Russia retained its acquisitions of Kars and Batum in Asia Minor. Austria-Hungary was given control of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the strategic district of Novi Pazar in Serbia. By a separate convention Cyprus was put under British rule.
The settlement was a major defeat for the Ottomans. Eastern Rumelia was soon lost when it united with Bulgaria in 1885. The Ottoman territories in Europe were reduced to Macedonia, Albania, and Thrace, and European influence had attained new dimensions. Britain now proposed to supervise governmental reforms in the Asian provinces, although this was skillfully frustrated by Abdülhamid II (ruled 1876–1909). In addition, the Ottomans were soon forced to accept new financial controls. By the Decree of Muharrem (December 1881) the Ottoman public debt was reduced from £191,000,000 to £106,000,000, certain revenues were assigned to debt service, and a European-controlled organization, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA), was set up to collect the payments.
The OPDA subsequently played an important role in Ottoman affairs, acting as agent for the collection of other revenues and as an intermediary with European companies seeking investment opportunities. Its influence should not, however, be exaggerated. The OPDA remained under Ottoman political control, and its existence even enabled the Ottomans to add to the debt at the annual rate of £3,000,000 throughout the reign of Abdülhamid; nor was the burden of repayments a major drain on the country's resources. But taken in conjunction with the activities of European-controlled banks and with the tariff limitations imposed on the Ottomans by the Capitulations, the result was a distinct restriction on Ottoman ability to guide the allocation of resources.
The Ottoman constitution, 1876
Perhaps more significant than external changes were the internal political developments that brought about the first Ottoman constitution on Dec. 23, 1876. The Tanzimat had produced three types of criticism within the Muslim community. The first was a simple traditionalist opposition. The second was a more sophisticated critique elaborated by certain intellectuals, many of whom had bureaucratic training and some knowledge of Western ideas. The third expressed a determination to control, and if necessary to depose, the sultan.The intellectuals were known as the Young Ottomans. Although some had taken part in a secret society (the “Patriotic Alliance”) in 1865 and had some similarity of background, the Young Ottomans were not an organized political party; they are considered as a group largely through the accident of their assembly in Paris and London in 1867–71. Their political views ranged from secular, cosmopolitan revolutionism to profoundly Islāmic traditionalism. Because his views occupied a middle ground among these intellectuals and because of his lucidity of expression, Namık Kemal (Kemal, (Mehmed) Namık) (1840–88) has often been regarded as the representative figure, although he is no more representative than the others. His views, however, had the greatest effect on later reformers.
Kemal criticized the Tanzimat reformers for their indiscriminate adoption of Western innovations. While admiring much of Western civilization, he believed that the principles underlying its best institutions were to be found in Islām. In particular, he derived from early Islāmic precept and practice the idea of a representative assembly that could check the unbridled power of the sultan and his ministers. He helped to form and popularize the idea of a constitution and of loyalty to the Ottoman fatherland. Like others, he was assisted by the development of an Ottoman press, which had its origins in the 1830s but began to express opinions—occasionally critical of the government—in the 1860s. During this decade two influential newspapers were established, the Tercüman-i Ahval (1860) and the Tasvir-i Efkâr (1862); along with later newspapers, these became the vehicles for Young Ottoman ideas.
But it was the third line of criticism, that which sought to control the sultan, that was most important. Arising within the higher Ottoman bureaucracy itself, it was led by Midhat Paşa (Midhat Pasha). Midhat and others became determined, because of their own exclusion from power and because of the disastrous results of Abdülaziz's policies, to impose some check on the sultan's power. The traditional check was deposition, and this was accomplished (May 30, 1876) following a riot by theological students and the removal of the hated grand vizier Mahmud Nedim Paşa. A new cabinet was formed, which included Midhat and other partisans of reform. A new sultan with a reputation for liberalism, Murad V (ruled 1876), was installed, but he quickly became insane and was deposed, replaced by Abdülhamid II. The experience convinced Midhat of the necessity of a permanent check upon the power of the sultan, such as could be provided by a representative assembly that would give ministers a basis of support independent of the sultan. Accordingly, Abdülhamid was persuaded to agree to a constitution.
Although earlier documents had had constitutional implications and although the development of councils—particularly provincial councils with their elected elements—had had parliamentary aspects, the December 23 document was the first comprehensive Ottoman constitution and (except for a Tunisian organic law of 1861) the first in any Islāmic country. The constitution was derived entirely from the will of the ruler, who retained full executive power and to whom ministers were individually responsible. In legislation the sultan was assisted by a two-chamber Parliament, the lower house indirectly elected and the upper house nominated by the ruler. Rights of ruler and ruled were set out, but the system it established might best be described as attenuated autocracy. Midhat has been criticized for accepting certain amendments demanded by Abdülhamid, including the then-notorious article 113, which gave the sultan the right to deport persons harmful to the state; but it is clear that the majority of Midhat's colleagues were content with these amendments and that the amendments made little difference, so great were the sultan's powers within and outside the constitution. The Parliament summoned under the constitution in March 1877 was dissolved in less than a year and was not recalled until 1908. The liberals were exiled; some, including Midhat, were put to death.
Rule of Abdülhamid II
The reign of Abdülhamid II (1876–1909) is often regarded as having been a reaction against the Tanzimat, but, insofar as the essence of the Tanzimat reforms was centralization rather than liberalization, Abdülhamid may be seen as its fulfiller rather than its destroyer. The continued development of the army and administration, the formation of a gendarmerie, the growth of communications—especially the telegraph and railways—and the formation of an elaborate spy system enabled the sultan to monopolize power and crush opposition. His brutal repression of the Armenians (Armenian) in 1894–96 earned him the European title “red sultan.” But Abdülhamid's reign also made positive advances in education (including the renovation of Istanbul University in 1900); legal reform, led by his grand vizier Mehmed Said Paşa; and economic development, through the construction of railways in Asia Minor and Syria with foreign capital and of the Hejaz Railway from Damascus to Medina with the help of subscriptions from Muslims in other countries.Pan-Islāmism
The Hejaz Railway constituted one element in Abdülhamid's Pan-Islāmic policies. Political Pan-Islāmism had made its first appearance in Ottoman policy at the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (Küçük Kaynarca, Treaty of) (1774) with Russia, when the Ottoman sultan had made claims to religious jurisdiction over Muslims outside his territories, particularly those in the Crimea. Some years later the theory was elaborated by the addition of the baseless legend that in 1517 the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate had been transferred to the Ottoman sultan. With the extinction of many independent Muslim states and their absorption into the empires of European powers, this myth of the Caliphate became a useful weapon in the Ottoman diplomatic armoury and was exploited by Abdülhamid as a means of deterring European powers from pressing him too hard, lest he create dissension within their own territories. In addition, stress on popular Islām through the press and other publications and through the sultan's patronage of dervish orders served to rally Muslim opinion within the empire behind him.
Preservation of the empire
Abdülhamid had reasonable success in preserving the empire after 1878. Apart from eastern Rumelia, no further territories were lost until 1908 (Ottoman authority in Tunisia, occupied by France in 1881, and Egypt, occupied by Britain in 1882, was already insignificant). In Crete the Ottomans suppressed revolts and defeated Greece when it intervened in 1897 in support of the Cretans. The European powers, however, forced Abdülhamid to concede autonomy to Crete. He was more successful in obstructing European efforts to force the introduction of substantial reforms in Macedonia. In Arabia the Ottomans continued the expansion of their power that had begun in the early 1870s.
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908
Several conspiracies took place against Abdülhamid. In 1889 a conspiracy in the military medical college spread to other Istanbul colleges. These conspirators came to call themselves the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti) and were commonly known as the Young Turks. When the plot was discovered, some of its leaders went abroad to reinforce Ottoman exiles in Paris, Geneva, and Cairo, where they helped prepare the ground for revolution by developing a comprehensive critique of the Hamidian system. The most noteworthy among these were Murad Bey, Ahmed Rıza, and Prince Sabaheddin. As editor of Mizan (“Balance”), published first in Istanbul (1886) and later in Cairo and Geneva, Murad Bey preached liberal ideas combined with a strong Islāmic feeling; this may have contributed to his defection and return to Istanbul in 1897. Ahmed Rıza in Paris edited Meşveret (“Consultation”), in which he set out ideas of reform, strongly flavoured by Auguste Comte's philosophy of positivism. His advocacy of a strong central government within the Ottoman Empire and the exclusion of foreign influence led to a major split within the Young Turk exiles at the 1902 Paris Congress; Ahmed Rıza clashed with Sabaheddin, who, with Armenian support, favoured administrative decentralization and European assistance to promote reform. Sabaheddin set up the League of Private Initiative and Decentralization.
The émigrés could supply literary sustenance to dissidents, but Abdülhamid could not be overthrown while the army remained loyal. The real origin of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 lay in the discontent within the 3rd Army Corps in Macedonia, where officers acted independently of the CUP in Paris. It is still unclear if a coordinated conspiracy existed in Macedonia or if a number of separate centres of disaffection, linked haphazardly through individuals, dervish orders, Freemason lodges, and other means, coalesced in July 1908 under the banner of the CUP through the pressure of events. On July 3, 1908, Major Ahmed Niyazi, apparently fearing discovery by an investigatory committee, decamped from Resne with 200 followers, including civilians, leaving behind a demand for the restoration of the constitution. The sultan's attempt to suppress this uprising failed, and rebellion spread rapidly. Unable to rely on other troops, on July 24 Abdülhamid announced the restoration of the constitution.
The young officers who had instigated the revolution, like their civilian supporters, were primarily concerned with preserving the Ottoman Empire; they feared that Hamidian policies and European interventions were endangering its existence. Grievances concerning personal matters such as salary and rank, however, also may have played a part. Though some writers have argued that a new type of officer, of lower social origin than officers from earlier generations, influenced this discontent, there is little evidence to support such a theory. It is clear, however, that the officers had not thought much beyond their demand for the restoration of a constitution that had proved ineffectual in 1877–78. They had no program of action and were content to leave government to the established bureaucrats.
In April 1909, however, an army mutiny in Istanbul (known because of the Julian calendar as the “31st March Incident”) exposed the weakness of the CUP and at the same time gave it a new opportunity. The mutiny resulted from the discontent of ordinary soldiers over their conditions and their neglect by college-trained and politically ambitious officers and from what they regarded as infidel innovations. They were encouraged by a religious organization known as the Mohammedan Union. The weakness of the government allowed the mutiny to spread, and, although order was eventually restored in Istanbul and more quickly elsewhere, a force from Macedonia (the Action Army), led by Mahmud Şevket Paşa (Şevket Paşa, Mahmud), marched on Istanbul and occupied the city on April 24.
Dissolution of the empire
Abdülhamid was deposed and replaced by Sultan Mehmed V (ruled 1909–18), son of Abdülmecid. The constitution was amended to transfer real power to the Parliament. The army, and particularly Şevket Paşa, became the real arbiters of Ottoman politics.
Rise of the CUP
Although the removal of many of its political opponents had allowed the CUP to move into a more prominent position in government, it was still weak. It had a core of able, determined men but a much larger collection of individuals and factions whose Unionist affiliation was so weak that they easily merged into other parties. Although the CUP won an overwhelming majority in the election of April 1912, its support rapidly melted away following military losses to Italy. Evidence of army hostility finally forced the CUP out of office in July 1912, to be succeeded by a political coalition called the Liberal Union.
The Liberal Union, too, lost support following defeats in the Balkans. This provided the opportunity for a small group of CUP officers and soldiers to stage a coup (Jan. 23, 1913), known as the Sublime Porte Incident, to force the resignation of the grand vizier Mehmed Kâmil Paşa (Kâmil Paşa, Mehmed) and establish a new cabinet under Şevket. Şevket, however, was not a Unionist, and it was only after his assassination (June 11, 1913) that the CUP at last succeeded in establishing a Unionist-dominated government under Said Halim Paşa (Halim Paşa, Said).
Internal developments
The disastrous results of the Young Turks' external policies overshadowed the important internal developments of the years 1908–18. Further administrative reforms, particularly of provincial administration in 1913, led to more centralization, although by European standards the central Ottoman government remained relatively weak, particularly in the more distant provinces. The burden of taxation was well below that of European powers.
The Young Turks were the first Ottoman reformers to promote industrialization, with a Law for the Encouragement of Industry (1909, revised 1915). Although they had little success, they did build a framework for later state-directed economic planning. Considerable attention was given to education, especially to the neglected area of primary education. The process of secularization of the law was carried much further. A major development in national journalism took place, and the position of women improved. The whole period was one of intense social and political discussion and change.
Turkish nationalism
The basic ideologies of the state remained Ottomanism and Islām, but a new sense of Turkish identity began to develop. This new concept was fostered by educational work of the Turkish Society (formed 1908) and the Turkish Hearth (formed 1912). A political twist was given by the adherents of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Turanianism. Pan-Turkism, which aimed at the political union of all Turkish-speaking peoples, began among Turks in the Crimea and along the Volga River. Its leading exponent was İsmail Bey Gasprinski (Gaspirali (Gasprinski, Ismail)), who attempted to create a common Turkish language. Many Pan-Turkists migrated to Ottoman lands, especially after 1905. One of them, Yusuf Akçuraoğlu, argued in Üç tarz-ı siyaset (1903; “Three Kinds of Policy”) that Turkism provided a better basis for the Ottoman Empire than either Islām or Ottomanism. Pan-Turanianism developed from a much-disputed 19th-century theory of the common origin of Turkish, Mongol, Tungus, Finnish, Hungarian, and other languages; some of its advocates envisioned a great political federation of speakers of these languages, extending from Hungary eastward to the Pacific Ocean.
These ideas, however, found little support within the Ottoman government. The accusation that the Young Turks pursued a deliberate policy of Turkification within the empire in order to alienate non-Turks and promote the rise of Arab and Albanian nationalism is an oversimplification. The extension of government activity inevitably brought with it the Turkish language, as it was the language of government. This produced some reaction from speakers of other languages, but the evidence suggests that it did not override basic feelings of Muslim solidarity, except among some small minorities. It was among the Christian groups that distinct separatist ideas were developed.
Foreign relations
The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire under the Young Turks led to disaster. The 1908 revolution provided an opportunity for several powers to press their designs upon the empire. In October 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria proclaimed its independence. Italy seized Tripoli (Libya) and occupied the Dodecanese, a group of Aegean islands; by the Treaty of Lausanne (Lausanne, Treaty of) (Oct. 18, 1912) Italy retained the former but agreed to evacuate the Dodecanese. In fact, however, it continued to occupy them.
The two Balkan Wars (1912–13) almost completed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. In the first (October 1912–May 1913) the Ottomans lost almost all their European possessions, including Crete, to Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and the newly created state of Albania (Treaty of London, May 30, 1913). In the second (June–July 1913), fought between Bulgaria and the remaining Balkan states (including Romania) over the division of Macedonia, the Ottomans intervened against Bulgaria and recovered part of eastern Thrace, including Edirne. The Ottomans had lost more than four-fifths of the territory and more than two-thirds of the population of their European provinces.
The people
In 1914 the total population of the Ottoman Empire was approximately 25 million, of which about 10 million were Turks, 6 million Arabs (Arab), 1.5 million Kurds (Kurd), 1.5 million Greeks, and between 1.5 million and 2 million Armenians (Armenian). The population of the empire (excluding such virtually independent areas as Egypt, Romania, and Serbia) in the period immediately prior to the losses of 1878 is estimated to have been about 26 million. Natural increases and Muslim immigration from Russia and the Balkans virtually made up the losses, and in 1914 the population was increasingly homogeneous in religion and language, though a variety of languages continued to be spoken.
World War I, 1914–18
The Ottoman entry into World War I resulted from an overly hasty calculation of likely advantage. German influence was strong but not decisive; Germany's trade with the Ottomans still lagged behind that of Britain, France, and Austria, and its investments, which included the Baghdad railway, were smaller than those of France. A mission to Turkey led by the German military officer Otto Liman von Sanders (Liman von Sanders, Otto) in 1913 was only one of a series of German military missions, and Liman's authority to control the Ottoman army was much more limited than contemporaries supposed. Except for the interest of Russia in Istanbul and the Straits, no European power had genuinely vital interests in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans might have remained neutral, as a majority of the cabinet wished, at least until the situation became clearer. But the opportunism of the minister of war Enver Paşa, early German victories, friction with the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and Great Britain) arising out of the shelter given by the Ottomans to German warships, and long-standing hostility to Russia combined to produce an Ottoman bombardment of the Russian Black Sea ports (Oct. 29, 1914) and a declaration of war by the Entente against the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottomans made a substantial contribution to the Central Powers' war effort. Their forces fought in eastern Asia Minor, Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, and the Dardanelles, as well as on European fronts, and they held down large numbers of Entente troops. In September 1918 they dominated Transcaucasia. During the war the Young Turks also took the opportunity to attack certain internal problems—the Capitulations were abolished unilaterally (September 1914), the autonomous status of Lebanon was ended, a number of Arab nationalists were executed in Damascus (August 1915 and May 1916), and the Armenian (Armenian massacres) community in eastern Asia Minor and Cilicia was massacred or deported to eliminate any domestic support for the pro-Christian tsarist enemy on the Eastern Front. Possibly 600,000 Armenians were killed, principally by Kurdish irregulars.
After 1916, army desertions took place on a massive scale, and economic pressures became acute. The surrender of Bulgaria (Sept. 28, 1918), which severed direct links with Germany, was the final blow. The CUP cabinet resigned on October 7, and a new government was formed under Ahmed Izzet Paşa on October 9. On October 30 the Ottomans signed the Armistice of Mudros (Mudros, Armistice of).
Allied war aims and the proposed peace settlement
Entente proposals for the partition of Ottoman territories were formulated in a number of wartime agreements. By the Istanbul Agreements (Constantinople Agreement) (March–April 1915) Russia was promised Istanbul and the Straits; France was to receive a sphere of influence in Syria and Cilicia. Britain had already annexed Cyprus and declared a protectorate over Egypt. By the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement (Jan. 3, 1916) the French sphere was confirmed and extended eastward to Mosul in Iraq. A British sphere of influence in Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia, history of) extended as far north as Baghdad, and Britain was given control of Haifa and ʿAkko and of territory linking the Mesopotamian and Haifa-ʿAkko spheres. Palestine was to be placed under an international regime. In compensation, the Russian gains were extended (April–May 1916) to include the Ottoman provinces of Trabzon, Erzurum, Van, and Bitlis in eastern Asia Minor. By the London Agreement (April 26, 1915) Italy was promised the Dodecanese and a possible share of Asia Minor. By the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne (Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Agreement of) (April 1917) Italy was promised a large area of southwestern Anatolia, including İzmir and an additional sphere to the north. Britain made various promises of independence to Arab leaders, notably in the Ḥusayn-MacMahon correspondence (1915–16), and in the Balfour Declaration (Nov. 2, 1917) promised to support the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
The Russian withdrawal in 1917 and postwar bargaining led to some modifications of these agreements, and the Allied terms were not finally presented until 1920. By the Treaty of Sèvres (Sèvres, Treaty of) (Aug. 10, 1920) the Ottomans retained Istanbul and part of Thrace but lost the Arab provinces, ceded a large area of Asia Minor to a newly created Armenian state with access to the sea, surrendered Gökçeada and Bozcaada to Greece, and accepted arrangements that implied the eventual loss of İzmir to Greece. The Straits were internationalized, and strict European control of Ottoman finances was established. An accompanying tripartite agreement between Britain, France, and Italy defined extensive spheres of influence for the latter two powers. The treaty was ratified only by Greece and was abrogated by the Treaty of Lausanne (Lausanne, Treaty of) (July 24, 1923) as the result of a determined struggle for independence waged under the leadership of the outstanding Ottoman wartime general Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk.
Additional Reading
The classical studies of Ottoman history based on Ottoman and European sources are Joseph von Hammer (Joseph, Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall), Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, 10 vol. (1827–35, reprinted 1963), also available in a French translation, Histoire de l'Empire ottoman depuis son origine jusqu'à nos jours, 18 vol. (1835–43); and Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, 7 vol. (1840–63), emphasizing Ottoman diplomatic and military history based on extensive use of European diplomatic archives and travelers' reports. More modern accounts include Stanford J. Shaw and E.K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2 vol. (1976–77); Robert Mantran (ed.), Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman (1989), a collection of studies by France's ablest Ottomanists; and Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (1994). A popular account for the nonspecialist is Lord Kinross (Patrick Balfour, Baron Kinross), The Ottoman Centuries (1977). Ottoman rule in southeastern Europe is studied in L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453 (1958, reissued 1966); Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe Under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1804 (1977); and Nicoara Beldiceanu, Le Monde Ottoman des Balkans, 1402–1566 (1976). The most useful atlases of the Ottoman Empire are Donald Edgar Pitcher, An Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire from Earliest Times to the End of the Sixteenth Century (1972); and William C. Brice (ed.), An Historical Atlas of Islam (1981).Paul Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (1938, reprinted 1971), a classic study of Ottoman origins in 13th- and 14th-century Anatolia, emphasizes the importance of the ghazi tradition in Ottoman expansion; while Rudy Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (1983), denies the ghazi thesis on the basis of more recent research. Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (1973, reprinted 1994), is a scholarly survey of the early period. Ernst Werner, Die Geburt einer Grossmacht, die Osmanen (1300–1481), 4th rev. ed. (1985), is a general survey based on examination of Turkish and Western sources. M.A. Cook (ed.), A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (1976), conveniently assembles the excellent articles in The Cambridge History of Islam and The New Cambridge Modern History relating to the Ottoman Empire. A work of fundamental importance is Halil Inalcik, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest,” Studia Islamica, 2:103–129 (1954), describing the development of the vassal system and of toleration of non-Muslim communities as a means of gaining Ottoman conquests in southeastern Europe. P. Wittek, “De la défaite d'Ankara a la prise de Constantinople (un demi-siècle d'histoire ottomane),” Revue des Études Islamiques, 12(1):1–34 (1938), describes the Ottoman Interregnum (1402–13) and the means by which the Ottoman Empire was restored in the first half of the 15th century. Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978), which is based mainly on European sources, emphasizes Ottoman relations with Europe under Mehmed II the Conqueror; but it should be read in conjunction with Halil Inalcik, “Mehmed the Conqueror (1432–1481) and His Time,” Speculum, 35:408–427 (1960). Dorothy M. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances, 1350–1700 (1954, reprinted 1976), studies diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Ottoman relations with Ṣafavid Iran are studied in Sydney Nettleton Fisher, The Foreign Relations of Turkey, 1481–1512 (1948); George William Frederick Stripling, The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574 (1942, reprinted 1977); Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict (906–962/1500–1555) (1983); and Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, les Safavides et leurs voisins (1987). The Ottomans in the Mediterranean world are described in Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vol. (1972–73; originally published in French, 2nd rev. ed., 1966), a brilliant study of economic problems and development in the Mediterranean area in the mid-16th century, stressing the importance of population problems, the results of the influx of precious metals from the New World, and shifts in international trade routes. Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Les Déportations comme méthode de peuplement et de colonisation dans l'Empire Ottoman,” Revue de la Faculté des Sciences Économiques de l'Université d'Istanbul, 11(1–4):67–131 (October 1949–July 1950), provides a major study of Ottoman social movements in the 15th and 16th centuries written by the leading Turkish economic historian. Stephen A. Fischer-Galati, Ottoman Imperialism and German Protestantism, 1521–1555 (1959, reissued 1972), describes the role of the Ottoman threat in the development of the Reformation. Gunther Erich Rothenberg, The Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 1522–1747 (1960), studies Ottoman-Habsburg military relations. R.C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Levant, 1559–1853 (1952), also treats military matters. Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: Conquest, Organization, and Economy (1978), and “Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire,” The Journal of Economic History, 29(1):97–140 (March 1969), are fundamental studies of internal Ottoman economic organization and development.Ottoman administration and society are treated in Joseph von Hammer (Joseph, Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall), Des Osmanischen Reichs Staatsverfassung und Staatsverwaltung, 2 vol. (1815, reprinted 1977), a detailed study of Ottoman administrative organization in the 16th century. Hamilton Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, vol. 1 in 2 parts (1950), emphasizes Ottoman organization in the 18th century but adds considerable information on earlier periods based on examination of Turkish and Western sources. Stanford J. Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798 (1962), studies the Ottoman provincial and financial systems as applied in Egypt based on exhaustive research in Ottoman archives—it is summarized in Shaw's article “Landholding and Land-Tax Revenues in Ottoman Egypt,” in P.M. Holt (ed.), Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (1968), pp. 91–103. A.D. Alderson, The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty (1956, reprinted 1982), details the Ottoman imperial institution and the development of the Ottoman dynasty. An exhaustive study of Ottoman political, economic, and social life in the 17th century is Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle (1962). Extensive accounts of popular customs are Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, Crafts, and Food Production in an Urban Setting, 1520–1650 (1984); Bernard Lewis, Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire (1963, reissued 1972); Raphaela Lewis, Everyday Life in Ottoman Turkey (1971, reissued 1988); and Fanny Davis, The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918 (1986). The Ottoman millet system is discussed in Stanford J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (1991); and Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 2 vol. (1982). Walter Livingston Wright, Jr. (trans. and ed.), Ottoman Statecraft (1935, reissued 1971), is a 17th-century Ottoman analysis of decline. Thomas M. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent: Vienna's Second Turkish Siege and Its Historical Setting (1967), is a detailed study of the Eastern question relative to the Ottoman Empire in the late 17th century. Lavender Cassels, The Struggle for the Ottoman Empire, 1717–1740 (1966), discusses a similar topic in readable fashion. Mary Lucille Shay, The Ottoman Empire from 1720 to 1734 as Revealed in Despatches of the Venetian Baili (1944, reprinted 1978), describes Ottoman life during the Tulip Period, based on the reports of Venetian consuls in Istanbul. Heinrich Benedikt, Der Pascha-Graf Alexander von Bonneval, 1675–1747 (1959); M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923: A Study in International Relations (1966, reprinted 1991), an outline of diplomacy; and Richard F. Kreutel (trans.), Kara Mustafa vor Wien: 1683 aus der Sicht türkischer Quellen, trans. from Turkish, enlarged ed. prepared by Karl Teply (1982), are also of interest. Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire Under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807 (1971), is a detailed study of the Ottoman reform effort in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with an account of the diplomatic and military relations with Europe and of problems in the Balkan, Anatolian, and Arab provinces.
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