Encyclopedia
The
Ottoman Empire , is also sometimes known in the
West as the
Turkish Empire. At the height of its power in the
16th and
17th centuries, its territory included
Anatolia, the
Middle East, parts of
North Africa, and much of south-eastern
Europe to the
Caucasus. It comprised an area of about 2.1 million square miles . The empire interacted with both
Eastern and
Western cultures throughout its 624-year history, the Eastern influence being dominant, however, in both pre and post industrial times.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was among the world's most powerful political entities, with the powers of eastern Europe constantly threatened by its steady advance through the
Balkans, the
Kingdom of Hungary and the southern part of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its navy was also a powerful force in the Mediterranean. On several occasions, the Ottoman army invaded central Europe, laying
siege to
Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683 in an attempt to conquer the
Habsburg domain, and was finally repulsed only by great coalitions of European powers at sea and on land. It was the only non-European power to seriously challenge the growing influence of the West between the
15th and
20th centuries, eventually becoming an integral part of European balance of power politics, hence blurring the distinctions.
The dissolution of the empire was a direct consequence of
World War I, when the
Allied Powers defeated the
Central Powers in Europe as well as the Ottoman forces in the
Middle Eastern theatre. At the
end of the war, the Ottoman government collapsed and Ottoman territory was divided among the victorious powers. Subsequent years saw the creation of new states from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, the
Republic of Turkey among them. The new republic declared most of the former ruling elite, including the Ottoman Dynasty, persona non grata of Turkey. In 1974, after 50 years, the
Grand National Assembly of Turkey granted the right to re-acquire
Turkish citizenship to the descendants of the former ruling dynasty.
Ertugrul Osman V, head of the House of Ottoman, repatriated in 2004.
History
The history of the Ottoman Empire spans more than seven centuries, and primary documentation of the empire's relations with other powers is to be found in the archives of thirty-nine nations. Earlier historiography of the empire was based largely upon analysis of Ottoman military victories and defeats; current approaches take a wider perspective, the scope of which includes the social dynamics of territorial growth and dissolution, and examination of economic factors and their role in the empire's eventual stagnation and decline.
An examination of Ottoman history from a political and military viewpoint will be presented here; a socioeconomic analysis is treated in separate articles, divided between two periods, the classic period , and the reform period . As the fullest understanding of Ottoman history may be achieved only through comparative study of these differing perspectives, rather than either alone, both are recommended to the attention of the interested reader.
Origins
The ancestors of the Ottoman Dynasty were part of the
Turkic migrations from Asia, which began during the 10th century. The Kai tribe of Oghuz Turks were one of the main groups taking part in this migration, and it was they who established what became the Ottoman Empire in western
Anatolia. When the Kayi first settled in Anatolia in the 12th century, they were under the suzerainty of the Seljuk State of Anatolia. With the westward territorial expansion of the
Mongol Empire, the Kayi became a puppet and vassal of the
Il Khanate of the Mongols. The Seljuk system allowed the Kayi protection from outsiders, which gave them a chance to develop their own internal structure; moreover, their position on far eastern fringe of the Seljuk state enabled them to build military power through cooperation with the non-Turkic populations of eastern Anatolia, among whom were many Christians.
When the Seljuk state was in the process of collapse, the various
beyliks, or territories, of Anatolia came into conflict with one another, with the Ottoman
beylik eventually emerging as the supreme power in the region. In 1299, Osman I declared the independence of the Ottoman
beylik, which had gradually been developed by the now-settled Kayi. The history of the tribe before Osman I extended back through Osman's father Ertugrul to his grandfather Süleyman Shah, who was drowned in the river Euphrates in the year 1227 whilst fleeing the advance of the Mongol hordes.
Rise
The rise of the empire defined the characteristics and nature of the state. The Ottomans definitively carved out their own preserve in history under the rule of Mehmed II.
The Ottoman state existed before Osman I . However he is regarded as the founder of the empire, as he named it and was the first
bey to declare his independence. He extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlement towards the
Byzantine Empire, while other Turkish beyliks suffered from infighting. Under Osman I, the Ottoman capital moved to
Bursa. In centuries to come, his age would be recalled with the phrase, "May he be as good as Osman".
Ottoman historians attached great importance to "
Osman's Dream" and its supposed significance in the
foundation of the Empire. The dream is also an example of Turkish oral tradition. The historian von Hammer cites the story.
It was in this period that a formal
Ottoman government was created; it was to last in the form in which it was instituted for nearly four centuries before being reformed. In contrast to many contemporary states, the Ottoman bureaucracy tried to avoid military rule, . Although the Ottoman Empire was primarily a military state, its civics and economy did not reflect a policy of aggression. The expansionist policies of the Ottoman Empire did not lead to
total war, given the fact that the Ottoman raids in the Balkans were not undertaken with the aim of destruction, but with the goal of Ottoman settlement in the area. Ottoman cultural artifacts are distributed throughout the Balkans with a direct relation to the time of ruling.
The strategic conquest or
fall of Constantinople was crucial for Ottoman rule to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans. In 1389, the Ottoman victory at the
Battle of Kosovo effectively marked the end of
Serbian power in the region, and paved the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. Mehmed II was only 12 years old when he became
sultan for the first time, and he was reputed to have been a capable warrior. Mehmed II enjoyed the full support of the empire, and used this to reorganise the structure of both the state and the military. He demonstrated his military prowess by the
fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 ; the city became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire, being renamed
Istanbul .
Growth
There are two reasonably distinct periods in this era. From the conquest of
Istanbul in 1453 to the death of
Suleiman I in 1566, the Ottoman state grew to its zenith as a dynamic engine of conquest and government. The Sultans of this era were committed and effective leaders, and under their guidance innovative and disciplined military, social and bureaucratic structures were established. In the second period after Suleiman's death, these structures were put under strain by diminishing territorial gains, economic difficulties and a protracted period of weak Sultans. Nonetheless, the empire remained a major expansionist power until the disaster at Vienna in 1683.
Expansion and apogee
Sultan Selim I dramatically expanded the empire's eastern and southern frontiers, defeating the young
Safavid Shah of
Persia,
Ismail I, in the Battle of Chaldiran, establishing Ottoman rule in Egypt and a naval presence in the
Red Sea. Selim's successor, Suleiman the Magnificent , further expanded upon Selim's conquests. After capturing
Belgrade in 1521, Suleiman struck a major blow against the
Kingdom of Hungary at the 1526
Battle of Mohacs, causing that kingdom to fall into anarchy. He then laid
siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take the city, being forced to retreat before the onset of winter. Soon
Transylvania,
Walachia and, intermittently,
Moldavia became tributary principalities of the Ottoman Empire. In the east, Suleiman took
Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, giving the Ottomans control of
Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf.
Under Selim and above all Suleiman, the empire briefly became a highly proficient and dominant naval force, controlling the eastern Mediterranean and exerting an effective offensive capability into the western sector. The Ottoman admiral
Barbarossa Khair ad Din Pasha ended the Spanish occupation of
Tunis and
Algeria. During the
Spanish Inquisition, he evacuated Muslims and Jews from Spain to the safety of Ottoman lands, particularly
Salonica,
Cyprus, and the newly conquered and empty city of
Istanbul. In 1543 the forces of the French king
Francis I and Barbarossa combined to capture
Nice on behalf of France. France was the empire's major European ally in this period; both powers were united by their mutual opposition to Hapsburg Spain, and the Ottomans' grant of the right to trade within their empire without levy of taxation was an economic boon for France.
The newly global reach allowed by improved naval capability, and the need to balance the influence of the European states, saw efforts to combat the European powers in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Spice Islands. The strain on the empire's resources, and the logistics of maintaining lines of supply and communication across such vast distances, rendered these efforts unsustainable and ultimately unsuccessful. Crucially, the empire's two main theatres of war, Austria-Hungary and Iran, lay in opposite directions from the capital, Istanbul, at gruelling distances, and the overriding military need for defence in these areas, which marked the western and eastern frontiers of the empire, rendered effective long-term engagement elsewhere impossible. Nevertheless, the Ottomans' strategic vision in this period, and their partial success in global campaigning, was striking and ambitious. With the Ottomans blockading sea lanes to the East and South, the European powers were driven to find another way to the ancient Silk and Spice routes, now under absolute Ottoman control.
The Ottoman Empire reached its apogee during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. It was by now a highly significant and accepted part of the European political sphere and entered into an alliance with
France,
England and
Holland against Habsburg Spain, Italy and Habsburg Germany.
Revolts and Revival
The Ottoman blockade of eastern trade routes was a factor in driving European exploration of previously unknown areas of the world and in forging a coalition of European powers allied against the Ottomans. The Ottoman defeat at the naval
Battle of Lepanto weakened the Ottoman grip on the waters of the
Mediterranean Sea, and was considered by earlier historians to mark the beginning of Ottoman decline. By the end of the 16th century, the era of sweeping conquest and territorial expansion by the empire was over. The
Habsburg frontier in particular became a more or less permanent border, with relatively minor battles, mostly concentrated on possession of individual fortresses, defining the nature of engagement. This was partly a reflection of simple geographical limits—in the pre-mechanised age,
Vienna marked the furthest point that an Ottoman army could effectively reach from Istanbul during the early-spring-to-late-autumn campaigning season, as Suleiman had discovered. It also reflected the difficulties imposed by the military need of the Ottomans to maintain two separate fronts, the second countering the persistent ideological and territorial threat posed by the
Shi'ite Safavid empire of
Persia.
On the battlefield, the Ottomans were gradually falling behind Europe in military technology as growing religious and intellectual conservatism stifled the innovation that had marked the empire's forceful expansion. The
Sipahi cavalry was becoming an obsolescent force, and relaxations of recruitment policy and excessive growth of the
Janissary corps to the detriment of other Ottoman military units led to chronic problems in maintaining the discipline and unit cohesion necessary for effective military performance.
Economically, the huge inflow of Spanish silver from the New World caused a sharp devaluation of the Ottoman currency and rampant inflation. This had serious negative consequences across all strata of Ottoman society, including widespread lawlessness and rebellion in Anatolia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries , and Janissary revolts that toppled Sultans and ministers.
Nevertheless, modern historians have been reassessing the conventional view of the 17th century as an era of pure stagnation and decline, instead viewing it as the key period in which the Ottoman state and its structures began to adapt to new pressures and new realities, internal and external. The relative ineffectiveness of most individual Sultans led to actual governance devolving to various proxies; at first to powerful members of the
Harem, and, later, to the Grand Viziers, important among whom were the sternly reactionary Mehmed Koprullu , and his more moderate son Fazil Ahmed Koprullu , under whom the state reasserted itself with some vigour. The warrior Sultan Murad IV , who recaptured Erivan and
Baghdad from the
Safavids, is the lone example in this era of a Sultan who wrested effective control of the empire into his own hands.
Despite internal conflict within the Ottoman bureaucracy and military, the 17th century saw the empire expand its frontiers to their furthest reach, with notable gains under the Koprullu administration in
Crete, Southern
Ukraine and
Podolia.
The defeat of Ottoman forces led by Grand Vizier
Kara Mustafa Pasha at the second siege of
Vienna in 1683, at the hands of the combined armies of
Poland and the
Holy Roman Empire under
Jan III Sobieski, was the decisive event that swung the balance of power in the region in favour of the European nations. Under the terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz, which ended the Great Turkish War in 1699, the Ottomans ceded nearly all of
Hungary,
Transylvania, the
Morea and
Podolia. They also acknowledged, for the first time in their history, that the Austrian Empire could treat with them on equal terms.
Decline
The decline era is generally divided into two main periods; first, an era of attempts at reform, and, second, an era of modernisation. The military and political details of this period are covered in two separate articles; the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire , when the empire began to lose territory along its western borders, but managed to maintain its stature as a great regional power, and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, when the empire lost territory on all fronts, and there was administrative instability due to the breakdown of centralised government.
Reform
Further wars were lost, and territories ceded, to Austria in the
Balkans. Certain areas of the empire, such as
Egypt and
Algeria, became independent in all but name, and subsequently came under the influence of the
United Kingdom and
France. The 18th century saw centralised authority giving way to varying degrees of provincial autonomy enjoyed by local governors and leaders. A series of
wars were fought between the Russian and Ottoman empires from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
During the "
Tulip Era" , named for Sultan Ahmed II's love of the
tulip flower and its use to symbolise his peaceful reign, the empire's policy towards Europe underwent a shift. The region was peaceful between 1718–1730, after the Ottoman defeat of Russia in the Pruth Campaign in 1712 and the subsequent Treaty of Passarowitz brought about a pause in warfare. The empire began to improve the fortifications of cities bordering the Balkans to act as a defence against European expansionism. Other tentative reforms were also enacted:
taxes were lowered; there were attempts to improve the image of the Ottoman state; and the first instances of private investment and entrepreneurship occurred. These measures, however, failed to halt the empire's decline.
Ottoman military reform efforts Sultan
Selim III made the first major attempts to modernise the army along European lines. These efforts, however, were hampered by reactionism, partly from the religious leadership, but primarily from the
Janissary corps, who had become anarchic and ineffectual, jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change. Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic
Mahmud II, who massacred the Janissary corps in 1826. During Selim's reign, the French, led by
Napoleon, invaded and occupied
Egypt from 1798 until their defeat and expulsion by the British in 1801. This was only the beginning of gradual European invasion and occupation of Ottoman territory during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
There were efforts at
educational and technological reforms, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as
Istanbul Technical University. These measures, however, failed to halt the empire's decline. The
technological and scientific advantages the Ottomans had once enjoyed over the European powers had long since evaporated, in part due to the regressive influence of conservative
guilds of writers ; this attitude was responsible for such things as the 100-year lag between the European invention of the printing press and its introduction into the Ottoman Empire.
Modernisation
The period of the Ottoman Empire's decline was characterised by the reorganisation and transformation of most of the empire's structures in an attempt to bolster the empire against increasingly powerful rivals.
The
Tanzimat period lasted from 1839 to 1876. During this period, many significant changes were implemented: a fairly modern conscripted army was organised; the banking system was reformed; and the
guilds were replaced with modern
factories. Economically, the empire had difficulty in repaying its loans to European banks; at the same time, it faced military challenges in defending itself against foreign invasion and occupation: Egypt, for instance, was occupied by the French in 1798, while
Cyprus was occupied by the British in 1876. In a significant shift in military and diplomatic policy, the empire ceased to enter conflicts on its own and began to forge alliances with European countries. There were a series such alliances with France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Russia. As an example, in the
Crimean War the Ottomans united with the British, French, and others against
Imperial Russia.
The
rise of nationalism swept many countries during the 19th century, and the Ottoman Empire was not immune. A burgeoning
national consciousness, together with a growing sense of
ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported by the Ottoman empire, as it was forced to deal with nationalism-related issues both within and beyond its borders. There was a significant increase in the number of revolutionary political parties. Uprisings in Ottoman territory had many far-reaching consequences during the 19th century and determined much of Ottoman policy during the early 20th century. Many Ottoman Turks questioned whether the policies of the state were to blame: some felt that the sources of ethnic conflict were external, and unrelated to issues of governance. While this era was not without some successes, the ability of the Ottoman state to have any effect on ethnic uprisings was seriously called into question.
Despite the empire's label as the "sick man of Europe", from an economic perspective, the empire's actual weakness did not reside in its developing economy, but the cultural gap which separated it from the European powers. The empire's problems were, in fact, the result of an inability to deal with the new problems created by the conflict between external
imperialism and rising internal
nationalism.
The era of the empire's
First Constitutional government , was short-lived; however, the idea behind the movement proved influential. A wide-ranging group of reformers known as the Young Ottomans, primarily educated in Western
universities, believed that a
constitutional monarchy would provide an answer to the empire's growing social unrest. Through a
military coup in 1876, they forced Sultan Abdülaziz to abdicate in favour of Murad V. Unfortunately, Murad V proved to be mentally ill, and was deposed within a few months. His heir-apparent Abdülhamid II was invited to assume power on the condition that he declare a constitutional monarchy, which he did on 23 November 1876. The subsequent constitution—called the
Kanűn-i Esâsî ,written by members of the Young Ottomans—was in effect for only two years.
These reforms did not halt the rise of nationalism in the
Danubian Principalities and
Serbia, which had been semi-independent for almost 6 decades; in 1875
Serbia,
Montenegro,
Bosnia,
Bulgaria,
Wallachia and
Moldova declared their independence from the Empire; following the Russo-Turkish war, independence was formally granted to
Serbia,
Bulgaria,
Romania and
Montenegro, with the other territories remaining under Ottoman control .
Dissolution
The period of the Ottoman Empire's final dissolution began with the onset of the
Second Constitutional Era . This era is symbolised by the
Committee of Union and Progress and the movement that would become known as the "Young Turks" . The
Young Turk Revolution began on 3 July 1908 and quickly spread throughout the empire, resulting in the sultan's announcement of the restoration of the 1876 constitution and the reconvening of parliament. The Committee of Union and Progress managed to win the elections that were held in that year; once in power, the Young Turks introduced a number of initiatives intended to promote the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire. They supported industrialisation and administrative reform, and their restructuring of provincial administration quickly led to greater centralisation of government. In addition, they implemented the secularisation of the legal system and subsidies for the education of women, and altered the administrative structure of the state-operated primary schools. Their domestic reforms were in some ways quite successful, but their foreign policy proved to be disastrous.
The
Balkan Wars, following the
Italian occupation of
Libya in 1911, were the first real test for the Committee of Union and Progress. The new
Balkan states formed at the end of the 19th century sought additional territories from
Albania, Macedonia, and
Thrace, on the grounds of ethnic nationalism. Initially, with Russia acting as an intermediary, agreements were concluded between
Serbia and
Bulgaria in March 1912, and between
Greece and
Bulgaria in May 1912. Montenegro subsequently concluded agreements between Serbia and Bulgaria in October 1912. The Serbian-Bulgarian agreement specifically called for the partition of Macedonia, which was the chief
casus belli of the
First Balkan War; the
Second Balkan War followed soon after the first. The political repercussions of the Balkan Wars led to the coup of 1913, and the subsequent rule of the Three Pashas.
The Ottoman Empire took part in the
Middle Eastern theatre of
World War I, under the terms of the Ottoman-German Alliance. The Ottoman met with some military success in the early years of the war, particularly at the
Battle of Gallipoli; there were setbacks as well, however, such as the disastrous
Caucasus Campaign against the Russians. The
Russian Revolution of 1917 gave the Ottomans the opportunity to regain lost ground; however, in the face of continued British offensives on other fronts, these effort
