Ottoman Empire

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The Ottoman empire expanded from a small territory near Constantinople to capture the remnant of the Byzantine empire in the late thirteenth century, reviving many of its institutions and synthesizing an elaborate, centralized Sunni Islamic state. Suleyman the Magnificent (1494–1566) ruled the empire at its greatest extent; at that time it reached from the Near East west to the Balkans and south to North Africa. Although the empire began to slowly shrink after Suleyman, it persisted until overthrown in the early twentieth century.

Before the fourteenth century the Turkish tribe of Osman (from which "Ottoman" is derived) migrated westward to the Byzantine border and intermarried into the Byzantine royal family. Expansion began with Murad I (1326–1389), who made the Byzantine emperor a vassal, conquered parts of the Balkans, and routed the Serbs (1389). Bayezid (1360–1424), the first Ottoman ruler to assume the title of sultan, continued the advance but ended his life as a captive of Timur (Tamerlane), the Turkic conqueror who campaigned through much of Central and Western Asia.

After dynastic civil war, the austere and determined Mehmed II the Conqueror (1432–1481), often considered the real founder of the empire, introduced European artillery expertise and dragged his newly built fleet across the headland of Pera (modern Beyoglu, European Turkey north of the Golden Horn) into the enclosed waters of the Golden Horn, an inlet of the Bosporus, to assault simultaneously the seaward and landward walls of Constantinople and to capture the city. He renamed it Istanbul and turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Selim the Grim (1470–1520) created an Ottoman navy, which successfully countered the Venetians and captured Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt from the Mamluk sultans, thereby acquiring the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Suleyman the Magnificent, whose reign represented the flowering of Ottoman culture, presided over the apogee of Ottoman importance and expansionism. He advanced into Europe and conquered the Hungarians (1526) but unsuccessfully besieged Vienna (1529) and Malta (1565). During Suleyman's reign the empire rimmed the whole eastern Mediterranean from the Persian Gulf to Hungary; it encompassed self-governing minorities of variousMuslim sects, as well as Armenian, Syrian, Coptic, and Greek Christians, Jews, and Yezidis (fire worshipers).

Ottoman naval expansion confronted Venice; defeated at Lepanto (1571), the fleet was rebuilt in a few months, but land wars with Persia (1575–1624) went badly due to mass desertions caused by the devaluation of the currency and hence underpayment of troops as Mexican silver flooded Europe. Viziers of the Koprulu family restored internal and naval peace, but after the defeat at Vienna (1683), Mustafa II (1664–1703) was forced to deal with foreign powers as equals in the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699), and some Balkan lands were lost.

Until the reforms of Mahmud II (1785–1839), weak sultans could not control the military or update its weaponry; from 1774 onward, the empire lost territory to expansionist Russia, nationalist movements, and rebellious governors. Protection and loans from Britain and France kept the empire alive long enough to become an ally of Germany in World War I.

Nationalist movements began in imitation of the French Revolution; Greece rebelled in 1821, and France, England, and Russia forced Mahmud II to accept Greek independence through the terms of the Treaty of Adrianople (1829). The Janissaries, an Ottoman military elite, had become rebellious Praetorian guards, responsible for deposing five sultans, until Mahmud II eliminated them and introduced farranging religious, legal, and military reforms.

Abdulhamid II (1842–1918) introduced the first constitution (1876) but later suspended it (1878) and ruled through autocratic despotism enforced by secret police. His reign saw the Armenian massacres (1895–1896). The rise of the Young Turk nationalist society, in response to the sultan's autocracy, caused him to reinstate the constitution in 1908.

Taking advantage of Ottoman military and administrative reorganization, a Russian aggressive move in 1826 enabled the Egyptian Pasa Mehmet, in a bid for independence, to strike northward through Palestine and Syria to central Anatolia. The British fleet ensured a reversion almost to the status quo, but the Ottoman empire's weakness was evident. Russia used religion to foment discontent among Orthodox Christian Ottoman subjects; Russia's massive defeat in the Crimean War (1854–1856) did not deter the Russian invasion of Ottoman Bulgaria in 1877. By the terms of the Conference of Berlin (1878), the Ottomans lost more territory: Romania and Bulgaria became independent, and Bosnia and Herzegovina went to Austria.

Britain moved in to guarantee the empire's borders in exchange for Cyprus and occupied Egypt to suppress nationalist unrest and maintain the route to India (1882). Uneasy peace ensued until eventually the Young Turk movement deposed the sultan and imposed constitutional government under the military triumvirate of Talat Pasa, Cemal Pasa, and Enver Pasa (1908). The Young Turks, crushing all opposition, disastrously led the empire on the losing side in the Balkan wars and World War I. Following the War of Independence (1919–1922), the new republican government, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938), abolished the sultanate on 1 November 1922.

The Ottoman state was organized around the idea of Islamic conquest of Christian states, and its military was based on a unique slave army called the devshirme. Christian boys were converted to Islam and educated for the select Janissary forces and for the civil service. Military fief holders (sipahi) served as cavalry in exchange for the revenue of their estates. After Suleyman, overpopulation, currency devaluation, and tribalism began to fragment the state.

During the early reigns, monopolies of silks, cottons, and metals brought prosperity, but the empire failed to enter an industrial age, relying on favorable tariffs to encourage imports and exports and, in the nineteenth century, on foreign contractors for the construction of railways and telegraph systems. Massive overspending, largely on trappings of royalty, led to debt restructuring and put large parts of the taxation system in foreign hands (1881).

Despite their belief in the mission of Islamic conquest of Christian states, the Ottomans adopted an enlightened policy of encouraging the coexistence of millets (self-governing communities of coreligionists) in the state. Each millet's religious leader administered his community's legal and educational systems and collected a capitation tax for the Ottoman government in lieu of military service. Many Christian churches continued in use, although construction of new ones was forbidden until the nineteenth century. Forced population movements created enclaves of skilled Christian craftspeople, especially until the sixteenth century; it was Ottoman policy to move captured people in accordance with the political and economic needs of the empire.

From 1517, when the Ottomans conquered Mecca and Medina, the sultan was also nominally caliph, or leader of the faithful, and the Ottoman empire acquired theoretical leadership privileges over all Sunni Muslim states. The ulama, or religious hierarchy of mullahs, supported the sultan by validating his actions under Islamic law. Religious charitable foundations (vakif) provided mosques, schools, and hospital complexes supported by an income from trade. Pan Islamism as an ideology was not actively promoted until the time of Abdulhamid II; this movement, along with the Greek War of Independence, missionary activity, discriminatory taxes favoring Christians, and concessions made by the Tanzimat (reform) movement, led to Muslim resentment against Christian minorities.

Ottoman art ignored the Muslim prohibition against depicting the human form and continued the Persian tradition of miniature painting and the Seljuk tradition of pottery and tile decoration. The imperial mosques, built by the famous architect Sinan (1489–1588), set the standard for later Turkish religious architecture. Sinan's mosques, finished with marble, Iznik tiles, and carving, and filled with rare carpets, are as impressive as Hagia Sophia; later Ottoman palaces were Victorian Gothic fantasies in white marble and glass set in tulip-filled gardens. Poetry was based on Persian models; the court spoke and wrote Arabic, Persian, Greek, and Turkish. The language of officialdom was Ottoman Turkish.

The Ottoman empire united under one banner and under a fair system of government the rival monotheistic religions and many Indo-European and Turkish ethnic groups in an impressive and unequaled example of tolerance. Although it had been eroded by Russian and European aggression, at its end the empire included Syria and Arabia, present-day Libya and Rhodes, and parts of the Balkans. The last parliament of the Ottoman administration (1909) included 147 Turks, 60 Arabs, 27 Albanians, 26 Greeks, 14 Armenians, 10 Slavs, and 2 Jews. Foreign pressures and promotion of nationalist prejudices eroded the basis of this society; loss of this cultural diversity has proved to be a tragic legacy for modern Turkey's culture and economy.

Kinross, Patrick. (1977) The Ottoman Centuries. New York: Morrow Quill.

Lewis, Bernard. (1982) The Muslim Discovery of Europe. London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Wheatcroft, Andrew. (1994) The Ottomans. London: Penguin Books.

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