In 1512 the aged Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid II, was ill, and his three sons were fighting each other for his throne at the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. Those special warriors, the Janissaries were a power behind the throne and chose as the new sultan the son that was most warlike: Selim. Bayezid was dethroned, and Selim secured his rule by having his two brothers and their sons executed by strangulation, Selim becoming Selim I. Then he embarked on a war against what he saw as the heresy of Shi'ism. He is reported to have exterminated thousands of Shi'a Muslims in Asia Minor. Then he launched a war against the Shi'a king of Persia: Isma'il. Selim's armies advanced through northern Mesopotamia, and, in August 1514, with artillery, he defeated the Isma'il's army west of Tabriz, taking a thousand of that city's famous craftsmen for the empire and massacring some others. Next, Selim moved against the Mameluk rulers who had allied themselves with the Persians. In 1516 his troops moved southward and captured Damascus, Beirut, Gaza and Jerusalem. In 1517 the Ottomans defeated the Mameluk Sultan Tuman outside Cairo. The last of the Abbysid family making a feeble show of authority in religious matters, under Mameluk rule in Egypt, came to an end as Selim took the family head to Constantinople as a prisoner. The Ottoman Empire now included all of Mesopotamia, Armenia, lands to the Caspian Sea, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. In nine years, Selim had almost doubled the size of the Ottoman Empire. He became known as a great conqueror, and a bright man, he was as well an accomplished poet in three languages.
Selim became ill in 1520. He died and was succeeded by his only son, Suleiman, who was twenty-six. Suleiman inherited a well organized nation, a treasury filled with taxes drawn from far and wide, and a disciplined army. In Europe he was to be called Suleiman the Magnificent because of wealth and grandeur, although amid his wealth he was thought to be a man of discipline and simplicity -- in the tradition of Abu Bakr and Umar ibn-al-Khattab -- aside from the harem that he had inherited, filled with 300 women under the age of twenty-five, almost all of them Christians, guarded by eunuchs. Suleiman was commander of the faithful, a man of sincere religious convictions, with more kindness and tolerance than his father. But he believed that he should conquer as had his father. He believed that he should unite the peoples of the East and West as had Alexander the Great.
During Suleiman's first year as sultan he moved against Belgrade. Europeans were too distracted by conflict among themselves to rally to Belgrade's defense. Suleiman surrounded the city and bombarded it with heavy canon, and Belgrade fell to the Ottomans in August, 1521.
Next, Suleiman aimed at conquest of the Christian island of Rhodes. The Ottomans viewed the knights there as cutthroats and pirates and were annoyed with their attacks on Ottoman ships taking goods to Egypt and pilgrims to Mecca. The conquest over Rhodes was to eliminate all threats to Ottoman naval power in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas.
The assault on Rhodes began in 1522, Suleiman sending an armada of 400 ships to Rhodes and leading 100,000 men over land to a point just opposite the island. The Ottomans employed their artillery again -- known to be the best in the world -- and they reinforced their bombardments with sappers and explosives. And after a siege of 145 days, Rhodes capitulated. The island's inhabitants were allowed to depart if they wished, and those who stayed were promised freedom of worship and freedom from taxation for five years.
Four years after his victory over Rhodes, Suleiman aimed against at conquest in Europe. In 1526 he overran Buda and Pest on the Danube River in Hungary. He moved against Vienna, but lacking enough soldiers he returned to Constantinople and tried again in May,1529. His troops had to endure much rain. At Vienna's walls the Ottomans applied their light canon, musketry and skilled archery. Suleiman's army made a gap 150 feet wide in Vienna's wall, but with ferocious resistance the Christians stopped the Ottomans from pouring through. Ottomans losses were heavy. Suleiman's army was essentially a summer force, and with winter approaching Suleiman lifted his siege against Vienna. The Ottomans set fire to their camps, massacred their prisoners except for those young enough to qualify for their slave markets and returned home, to be harassed by Christian cavalry and bad weather along the way. In Vienna, the sight of the Ottoman withdrawal was followed by the ringing of bells and great celebration. Suleiman had suffered his first defeat. Christian Europe saw itself as having been delivered from Islam and the Ottomans.
Under Suleiman, the Ottomans made further gains in empire along the coast of North Africa west of Egypt. In the early 1500s, Islamic pirates there, the most famous of which the Christians called Barbarossa, a Turk from Lesbos, had been in conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish. The pirates held territory along the coast of North Africa. Barbarossa's brother, Arüj, the ruling pirate, was killed by the Spanish in 1518. Barbarossa took over, assuming title of Khayr ad-Din, and fearing loss of territory to the Spanish he offered homage to Suleiman. That same year, Suleiman sent Khayr ad-Din reinforcements. In 1529, Khayr ad-Din took control of Algiers and made it the base for piracy. Suleiman made Khaya ad-Din admiral-in-chief of his navy, and in 1534 Khayr ad-Din captured Tunis. Charles V, the Hapsburg emperor of Spain, sent a force that retook Tunis. Then in 1538 Khayr ad-Din defeated Charles' navy at the Battle of Préveza. Twice -- in 1533 and 1544 -- Khayr ad-Din defeated the Italian admiral Andrea Doria, giving the Ottomans control over the Mediterranean Sea until 1571. Khayr enjoyed a great presence at court until his death in 1546. Suleiman lived until 1566.
Chapter 21
DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
.. The Ottoman Empire, the greatest empire in the world in the 1500s, was ruled by a sultan, who was commander-in-chief of the military and top in membership in the Janissaries. He looked upon his male subjects as soldiers of Islam -- more important that being a farmer or landlord. A primary source of wealth for his empire had been loot from conquests, which had stopped well before the 1600s. He was not much interested in detailed economics or in advancing the science of agriculture. His rule was a theocracy and he was dedicated to the advance of Islam -- the Sunni branch of Islam. Ottoman sultans had seen it as their responsibility to extend Islam as far as they could. The Ottomans had been keeping up with Europeans in the development of military hardward, and they were watching the retreat of Islam to the north, where the Russians, in 1552, had driven the Tatars out of Kazan and were continuing to push against the Tatars. The Ottomans still held onto the Balkans, just short of Vienna, and to maintain their strength the Ottomans had been equipping their armies with European firearms. This required more money for waging war. To meet the increase in cost, farmers were burdened with greater taxes. And institutional changes were underway. The Ottoman cavalry had been built upon the fief system (land to the horse-warriors as their reward for service), and this system was being abandoned. The Janissaries, previously the heart of the Ottoman army and the world's most effective military unit, were not what they had been. The Janissaries had been allowed to marry, causing them to shift their first loyalty from the military to their families. By the 1600s the Janissaries were involved in trade on the side. And, in place of Janissaries in the Ottoman armies, the unemployed were being recruited.
The spirit of the warrior had been the primary tactic in the Ottoman military. The Ottomans believed that the military could be adequately led by an unschooled amateur. Faith in Allah was paramount, and the study of military complexities had been lacking. The muskets that had been acquired by the army were not to be used so much as organized fire laid down by a team as it was to be used by individuals acting with the same courage involved in fighting with a sword.
A part of the decline in military power was the weakness in political leadership. The education of sultans had declined. The sultans after Suleiman I tended to be men of little ability, training or experience. Some were mentally defective. They were reared and influenced by eunuchs and women with no education. The harem was the center of their life. Similar to the rest of the world, power passing to the eldest male of the royal family did not always put top leadership among the Ottomans in the most able hands.
The Ottomans managed to drive the Cossacks back from Azov in 1641. Then, rather than considering that the world had changed, they tried to resume their conquests. The Ottomans decided to try another assault on Vienna, and the assault was led by the grand vizar -- the man chosen by the sultan, Mehmed IV, as his prime minister. The grand vizar was an incompetent court favorite, Kara Mustafa. Mustafa was trying to revive the military spirit of the Ottomans. For two months, beginning in mid-July, 1683, he had his army surround Vienna. He bombarded the city. His army penetrated the outer fortifications on September 2. He knew of but ignored the approach of an army of 70,000 Hapsburg and Polish troops coming to rescue Vienna. The Christian forces routed the Turks and pursued them. By 1687, the Austrians had pushed the Ottomans out of Hungary and its city of Budapest. And Venice, taking advantage of what they saw as Ottoman weakness, drove the Ottomans out of Greece's Morea Peninsula, and the Greek cities of Corinth and Athens.
The defeats upset people around Mehmed IV so much that in 1687 they deposed him, replacing him with his brother, Suleiman II, who had spend much of his forty-five years in the royal harem. Suleiman appointed Mustafa's younger brother as grand vizar, but the military losses continued. In 1688 the Austrians drove the Ottomans out of Belgrade. In 1690, the Ottomans retook Belgrade, but in 1697 the Russians drove the Ottomans out of Azov, and that year the Ottomans were defeated at the battle of Zenta -- about one hundred miles southwest of Budapest. Under diplomatic pressure from the Dutch, the British and the Venetians, the war that began in 1683 was ended in 1699, the Ottomans feeling obliged to sign a treaty with Austria, Poland and Venice. This was Treaty of Karlowitz, a dictated treaty at which most European nations were represented. The Ottomans gave up territory in the Balkans. The Ottomans were expanding their control on the island of Crete, but the glorious days of Ottoman conquest were over.
Ottoman Society
Ottoman society continued with its traditions. There were no political revolutions as had occured in Europe. In Turkey no intellectually challenging or stimulating conflicts over ideas had arisen as between Catholics and Protestants in Europe. Muslim scholars remained intellectually conservative. They were convinced of the superiority of their Islamic civilization, of the way of doing things as they believed was prescribed in the Quran. And few of them were aware of the significance of changes that had been taking place among the infidels of Europe. Moreover, the Ottoman religious establishment was being infiltrated by the Sufi orders, which added to conservatism and increased an other-worldliness rather than a view toward revolutionizing society's institutions.
Rebellions did occur, among those hurting from excessive taxation, but the rebellions were crushed. The burdensome taxes were a part of a system that was corrupt. In the 1600s the Ottoman historian, Haji Khalifa (1608-1657) saw Ottoman society resting on four pillars: the mullahs (Islamic clerics) the army, the merchants and the farmers. The economic well being of society depended upon its farmers. People in agriculture outnumbered the others, but they were the most ill-treated. Haji Khalifa described Ottoman society as sick because of high taxation, oppression of the masses and the sale of offices to the highest bidder.
Sale of offices to the highest bidder had been adopted by the sultans as a way of raising cash, in part so they could continue to live in the luxury to which they were accustomed. This replaced the selection of people for administrative offices based on training, competence and talent. Instead, government offices were going to people who had money. Promotion by merit, which earlier had been the practice became less common, replaced by nepotism and favoritism. Corruption spread to the provinces where an official would buy his office, then squeeze more taxes from the populace to reimburse himself. There were frequent shifts in judicial as well as civil officials, with justice also sometimes for sale.
Government sold the job of tax collecting, and the buyer of this position had to collect enough in taxes to satisfy the income wants of the government office above and to satisfy others up to the sultan, and leave an satisfactory amount for himself. It was the tax collector who decided how much to tax, and, of course, he taxed those with the least power the most.
In the 1500s, Ottoman society had substantial population growth, and poor peasants had been moving into the towns, creating large-scale unemployment. The unemployed sought relief by joining religious organizations, and became students within such organizations. But this brought them little relief. Nor did their rioting that followed bring relief. In the 1600s, war had created economic exhaustion. Ottoman society suffered economic depression and had no leadership that knew what to do about it, or were willing to make necessary adjustments. A decline in tax revenues occurred despite the higher taxes. Government lost some of its power to control, which benefited merchants, but the poverty of common people did not allow them to do much buying from merchants.
Economically, Islamic society was still very much alive and trade would continue to flourish, but agriculture was not developing commercially as it had among the Dutch, and the rise in manufacturing that accompanied the development of agriculture in Europe failed to develop in the Ottoman Empire. Some manufacturing continued, such as cotton weaving and the production of raw silk. Some improvements in agriculture were taking place. In Islamic Rumania, Bulgaria, Thrace and Macedonia, farmers had begun using maize from the Americas to feed their animals, and they were able to export more wheat and cattle because crops from the Americas were more effective than the crops they had been using. But in the Ottoman Empire, money to invest in the growth of manufacturing was diminished by government taxation.
War and military expansion had been a source of botty and income for Islamic society, but when that ceased with the rise of European military power, rulers increased unpredictable taxes and property seizures against merchants and entrepreneurs, most of whom were not Muslims. Anyone who could afford to invest in a new enterprise became an obvious target for tax collection and bribery by officials. As a conseqence, less wealth was invested in industry, and the Ottomans did little exporting, while Europeans goods were being purchased -- producing an unfavorable balance of trade and a diminishing supply of gold. And as manufactured goods flowed into the Ottoman Empire, local handicraft industries suffered. Manufacturing remained largely a peasant operation -- home industry. Foot-operated treadle reels, hand-operated looms and silk-twisting machines were to be used in the Ottoman Empire into the 1800s.
Moreover, a shift had taken place in world trade away from the Mediterranean Sea and overland routes. The new center of trade was in Western Europe -- a seagoing trade. The Ottomans had been world traders, but, accompanying their decline as an economic and scientific power, they were in decline as a naval power, and power on the seas belonged to Western powers. Violence on the Mediterranean Sea was rampant and hurt economies connected to the Medeterranean, while the British and Dutch were taking over trade between northern and southern Europe, and, working the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were extending their sea power. The bulk of world trade was bypassing the Middle East and transit across Ottoman lands. Spices from Asia were being shipped directly to Europe, leaving the Turks without their percentage take.
European merchants were scurrying across the globe looking for raw materials, markets and profits, while the Ottomans were more concerned with internal matters. A growing middleclass -- more frugal or economic-minded than the sultan and more materialistic than the mullahs -- had been looked upon by the sultans as a threat to their authority. And the sultans had succeeded, in part unintentionally, in inhibiting the growth of the middleclass.
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