Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire

["physicians and the publication of modern medical books medicine 361 in Turkish. The first French-Turkish medical dictionary Lugat-\u0131 T\u0131bbiye, prepared by Turkish-speaking physicians administration. In 1850 the position of the hekimba\u015f\u0131 was who founded the Ottoman Medical Society (Cemiyet-i abolished and thereafter court physicians acted merely as T\u0131bbiye-i Osmaniye), was published in 1863. The Turkish private physicians to the sultan. journal of military medicine (Ceride-i T\u0131bbiye-i Askeriye) was launched in 1871. Ottoman medicine followed Euro- A crucial advance in public health was the early pean medicine very closely in this respect. Medical facul- development and widespread use of vaccines, especially ties were founded in Damascus and Beirut, staffed by against smallpox. Following Louis Pasteur\u2019s discovery of Turkish-speaking faculty. rabies vaccine in 1885, two professors from the Military Medical School and a veterinarian traveled to Paris in And while it is not often regarded as having been a 1886 to present Pasteur with a mecidiye decoration from politically beneficial event, the Crimean War, too, made Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid II and a contribution to the Institut for important contributions to the contemporary medi- Pasteur. At the institute they learned about the prepara- cal infrastructure in Europe and the empire. Despite its tion of the vaccine, its application, and recent develop- grave consequences, the war was crucial to the intro- ments in microbiology and virology. As a result, a rabies duction of new medical practices and institutions in the laboratory (Da\u00fc\u2019l-kelb Ameliyathanesi) opened in the Ottoman Empire. One of these was the Medical Society Military Medical School in 1887 under the direction of of Constantinople (later, the Imperial Medical Society), Alexander Zoeros Pasha (1842\u20131917) for the production founded in 1856 through the initiative of Peter Pin- of rabies vaccine. coffs (1815\u201372) and other physicians serving under the Allies. The society provided a continuous flow of knowl- The establishment of the Imperial Bacteriological edge from Europe and its journal, the Gazette M\u00e9dicale Laboratory (Bakteriolojihane-i \u015eahane) in 1894 was also d\u2019Orient (est. 1857), published research articles, excerpts realized in collaboration with Institut Pasteur. Andr\u00e9 from European medical journals, and the minutes of Chantemesse (1851\u20131919) and Maurice Nicolle (1862\u2013 the society\u2019s meetings where members presented and 1932), were commissioned from France to organize this discussed case studies. The war years saw a surge in the institute in Istanbul, where early experiments on vac- number of European physicians practicing in the empire. cines were conducted and an antiserum for diphtheria It was in this period that legislation on medical and was produced for clinical use. A second bacteriological sanitary services was drafted. Missionary hospitals were laboratory (Bakteriyolojihane-i Baytari) opened in the established, mostly in the eastern provinces of the empire Veterinary School under the supervision of Mustafa Adil and in Palestine. (1871\u20131904), who was trained at the Alfort Veterinary School; serums for diphtheria and rinderpest were pro- PUBLIC HEALTH duced there in 1897. The first International Sanitary Conference was held As an outgrowth of these activities, experiments in Istanbul in 1866. The Ottoman government, while were conducted in 1811 in Istanbul to prepare the small- reforming medical education, undertook the reorgani- pox vaccine from cattles infected with cowpox. By 1880 zation of the public health administration and here, too, Giovanni Battista Violi (1849\u20131928) from Modena the military influence was significant. Among the most established his Institut Vaccinog\u00e8ne in Istanbul, success- important changes in public health policy was the 1837\u2013 fully preparing smallpox vaccine derived from calves. 38 establishment of a Sanitary Office (Daire-i S\u0131hhiye) By 1894, with the establishment of the Imperial Vaccine within the Ministry of War to administer the medi- Institute (Telkihhane-i \u015eahane) and due to the efforts of cal issues of the military. At the same time, the Sanitary its founder and director Dr.H\u00fcseyin Remzi (1839\u20131896), Board (Meclis-i Umur-i S\u0131hhiye) was authorized to deal ample smallpox vaccine was being produced and distrib- with epidemics and enforce quarantine measures. The uted to allow for the control of this disease in the empire. Sanitary Board established disinfection stations in the empire\u2019s municipalities and was otherwise instrumental 20TH-CENTURY MEDICINE IN THE in combating the cholera epidemics spreading from Asia EMPIRE AND AFTER during the 19th century. A Medical Board (Conseil des Affaires M\u00e9dicales) founded within the Military Medi- By the turn of the 20th century, Ottoman medicine had cal School was responsible for physicians\u2019 qualifications undergone an incredible transformation in large part due and the licensing of pharmacies within the Ottoman to the open cooperation between Ottoman and European Empire. In addition to these other reforms, the authority medical experts and public health advocates. Two modern and responsibilities of the hekimba\u015f\u0131 or chief physician training hospitals were established in Istanbul. The G\u00fcl- of the court were transferred to councils in the sanitary hane military hospital opened in 1898 and was admin- istered by a Prussian staff; the Hamidiye Etfal, which opened in 1899, was a benevolent children\u2019s hospital and an acclaimed research institution. The military and civil- ian medical schools were merged together in 1909, in the","362 Medina Many Muslims include a visit to the city as part of the hajj to Mecca, which lies approximately 200 miles to the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. A class south of the city. As was the case with Mecca, the Otto- for dentistry was initiated in this new school and phar- mans used their control of Medina to advance the legiti- macy education was separated from that of medicine. macy of their rule. This required the restoration of the Mosque of the Prophet and annual subsidies to the city\u2019s International collaboration was emphasized during residents. The Ottomans were sensitive to local suspi- the Balkan wars of 1912\u201313 and numerous medical mis- cions about their intentions and usually appointed a local sions from abroad (United States, Belgium, Egypt, India) Bedouin leader to serve as the sheikh of the city. There arrived in the Ottoman capital to deal with increasing war was also, on occasion, an Ottoman governor assigned to casualties and to combat epidemics. During World War the city, but at other times, a local tribal leader held both I (1914\u201318), as the war raged on many fronts, troops and offices. civilians were ravaged by the devastating effects of typhus, cholera, and influenza. In response to this suffering, the The fact that the main mosque in Medina was built Ottomans entered into medical cooperation with Ger- around the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s grave seemed to the many, conducting successful field research in the endemic religiously conservative Muwahhidun, better known as diseases of the eastern Mediterranean. Wahhabis, as an affront to Islam. In their view, such veneration of a mere mortal, even the man chosen as the The health policy of the Turkish Republic after 1923 prophet of God, distracted the devotion of the believers was radically different from that of the Ottoman Empire that should be directed to God alone. In their crusade in that the primary objective of the new government was against what they considered to be a corrupted Islam, to combat major communicable diseases such as malaria, the Wahhabis seized Medina in 1804. They plundered tuberculosis, and trachoma, all of which were prevalent the shrine and pulled down the dome over the Prophet\u2019s among the Anatolian population. With this focus on pub- grave. Until their defeat at the hands of the Egyptian lic health, the new Turkish Republic added to the number army in 1813, the Wahhabis prevented pilgrims from of physicians, nurses, and hospitals, made child health showing any reverence at the Prophet\u2019s grave. In a stun- and social hygiene a priority, subsidized the national ning reversal of their rejection of the legitimacy of the pharmaceutical industry, and established a central labo- Ottoman sultan\u2019s right to rule, the political head of the ratory for vaccine production in the capital, Ankara. movement, Muhammad ibn Saud, acceded to Ottoman sovereignty over Medina and Mecca in 1815 as he recog- Feza G\u00fcnergun nized he did not have the military resources to dislodge \u015eeref Etker an army equipped with artillery. There was no further threat from this movement in the city as long as Ottoman Further reading: N. Varl\u0131k Akarsu, \u201cDisease and control of the Hejaz continued. Empire: A Study of Plague Epidemics in the Ottoman Empire (1453\u20131600),\u201d (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, In 1908, the Hejaz Railroad reached Medina. 2005); Feza G\u00fcnergun, \u201cDiseases in Turkey: A prelimi- Besides offering easier access to pilgrims on the hajj, the nary study for the second half of the 19th century,\u201d in The railroad would greatly facilitate the movement of Otto- Imagination of the Body and the History of Bodily Experience, mans troops to Arabia should the need arise. With the edited by S. Kuriyama (Kyoto: International Research Center arrival of the railroad, Medina was transformed into a for Japanese Studies, 2001), 169\u2013191; Feza G\u00fcnergun, \u201cSci- garrison town. In 1916, when Faysal ibn Husayn al- ence in the Ottoman World,\u201d in G. N. Vlahakis, I. M. Mala- Hashimi proclaimed the Arab Revolt, the Ottoman quias, N. M. Broots, F. Regourd, F. Gunergun, and D. Wright, governor of Medina was able to hold the town against Imperialism and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa attack from the Arab irregulars. The city only surren- Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2006), 71\u2013118; Feza G\u00fcnergun dered to the Arab army in January 1919, months after and \u015eeref Etker, \u201cWaqf endowments and the emergence of Faysal\u2019s men had entered Damascus. modern charitable hospitals in the Ottoman Empire: the case of Zeynep-Kamil hospital in Istanbul,\u201d in The Development of Bruce Masters Modern Medicine in Non-Western Countries, Historical Per- spectives, edited by H. Ebrahimnejad (London: Routledge, in Mehmed I (Mehmed \u00c7elebi [Prince Mehmed], press); Rhoads Murphey, \u201cOttoman Medicine and Transcul- K\u0131r\u0131\u015f\u00e7\u0131 [Young Lord]) (b. 1387?\u2013d. 1421) (r. 1413\u2013 turalism from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.\u201d 1421) Ottoman sultan, second founder of the Ottoman Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 66 (1992), 376\u2013403; G\u00fcl state Mehmed I, the son of Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402) A. Russel, \u201cPhysicians at the Ottoman Court.\u201d Medical His- and Devlet Hatun (daughter of the emir of Germiyan, an tory 34, no.3 (July 1990), 243\u201367. Anatolian Turkoman principality), emerged victorious from the internecine wars of the interregnum (1402\u201313) Medina (Medinah; Ar.: al-Madina al-Munawwara) As the site of the mosque of the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s grave, Medina is considered by most Muslims to be sacred.","that followed the Ottoman defeat at the hands of the cen- Mehmed I 363 tral Asian conqueror Timur or Tamerlane at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. He is considered the second founder extended his rule through the Gallipoli peninsula. When of the Ottoman state because he reunified the Ottoman S\u00fcleyman returned from Anatolia to reassert his rule in realms after defeating his brothers in 1413, although at the Balkans, Musa defeated and killed him at Edirne in the time of his death in 1421 the territories of the Otto- February 1411. man state were still smaller than those held by his father, Bayezid I, prior to the debacle at Ankara. Musa\u2019s aggressive policy alienated the Ottomans\u2019 former Christian vassals in the Balkans who sided with After the Battle of Ankara, Timur restored most of Mehmed, considered at this point less powerful and thus Anatolia to the Turkoman emirs or lords whose princi- less dangerous to them. Musa also besieged the Byzan- palities had recently been absorbed into Sultan Bayezid tine capital Constantinople, albeit unsuccessfully, for he I\u2019s expanding Ottoman state. What remained of the feared that the Byzantines could use his brother Kas\u0131m Ottoman realms became contested territory among Sul- or Prince S\u00fcleyman\u2019s son, Orhan, both residing in Con- tan Bayezid I\u2019s sons. Of the sultan\u2019s six sons still alive stantinople as hostages, to instigate rebellion against him. in 1402 (S\u00fcleyman, \u0130sa, Kas\u0131m, Mustafa, Musa, and The siege convinced Emperor Manuel that Musa was the Mehmed), Prince Mustafa was taken to Timur\u2019s capi- bigger threat, and thus he also supported Prince Mehmed tal Samarkand (in present-day Uzbekistan), along with against Musa. With the help of Serbia, Byzantium, the Bayezid himself. In the next decade or so, princes S\u00fcl- Turkish frontier lords in the Balkans, and several Ana- eyman, \u0130sa, Mehmed, and Musa (whom Timur also tolian emirates, Mehmed eventually managed to over- captured at the battle but later released) fought against come Musa in July 1413 at a battle fought south of the each other to attain sole control over the remaining present-day Bulgarian capital Sofia. Musa himself was Ottoman territories. Prince Kas\u0131m, who had been in killed when his horse stumbled. Bursa at the time of the Battle of Ankara, was taken by his older brother S\u00fcleyman to the Balkans and then Having emerged as victor from the decade-long sent as hostage to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II internecine struggle for the Ottoman throne, Prince (r. 1391\u20131425); he remained in the Byzantine capi- Mehmed, known from now onward as Sultan Mehmed tal Constantinople until his death in 1417. Of the four I (r. 1413\u201321), set out to consolidate his rule over the remaining princes, S\u00fcleyman established himself in Ottoman realms. The former Ottoman vassal or client the Balkans, ruling over the Ottoman territories there, states (including Wallachia, Serbia, and Byzantium) while Mehmed controlled the Tokat-Amasya region in acknowledged Mehmed\u2019s suzerainty and in turn received north-central Asia Minor. From here, Mehmed moved assurances that the new Ottoman sultan would pursue a to Bursa, capturing the city from his brother \u0130sa. When peaceful policy in the Balkans. Reassured by these sub- \u0130sa moved against Mehmed in alliance with the ruler of missions, Mehmed I crossed to Asia Minor to subdue the Black Sea coastal emirate of Kastamonu, Mehmed those Anatolian Turkoman emirs who had supported his defeated and killed him at Eski\u015fehir in 1403\u201304. Soon, rivals. The resistance of the emir of Karaman in central however, Prince S\u00fcleyman crossed into Anatolia and Turkey, and C\u00fcneyd, the emir of Ayd\u0131n based in Izmir in captured Bursa from Mehmed, who retreated to Tokat. western Turkey, was especially robust. Mehmed defeated At this point it seemed that Prince S\u00fcleyman would C\u00fcneyd in 1414 and turned his realm into an Ottoman emerge as the sole ruler of the Ottoman territories on subprovince or sancak, appointing C\u00fcneyd as gover- both sides of the Bosporus. Indeed, some historians nor of Nikopol on the Danube in present-day Bulgaria. accept him as sultan, and name him S\u00fcleyman I, num- Although Mehmed defeated the Karamanids in 1415, bering the much better known 16th-century S\u00fcleyman their emirate proved to be a much stronger enemy, as the Magnificent (r. 1520\u201366) incorrectly as S\u00fcleyman II. Mehmed and his successors were soon to discover. However, Prince S\u00fcleyman was never the sole ruler of the Ottoman lands; he soon lost control over his realms Mehmed\u2019s successes alarmed the Byzantine emperor and was defeated and killed. Manuel. In a desperate move he released Prince S\u00fcl- eyman\u2019s son Orhan to Wallachia, whose voievod also From his base in Tokat Mehmed now encouraged opposed the consolidation of Ottoman power in the Bal- his brother Musa to challenge S\u00fcleyman. Musa appeared kans. However, Mehmed captured and blinded Orhan in the eastern Balkans in 1406, accepting the invitation before he could reach Wallachia. The sultan\u2019s troubles of the voievod (governor) Mircea of Wallachia (part were far from over. In 1415 Mehmed\u2019s brother Mustafa of present-day Romania), who tried to prevent the con- appeared first in Anatolia and then in Wallachia where solidation of Ottoman power in his region. He thus sup- he started negotiations with the Byzantines, Venetians, ported Musa, who married Mircea\u2019s daughter. By May and Wallachians regarding a joint assault on Mehmed. 1410 Musa captured S\u00fcleyman\u2019s capital at Edirne and Although Mehmed and later Ottoman chroniclers con- sidered him an impostor and thus dubbed him \u201cFalse Mustafa,\u201d it is plausible that he was indeed Mehmed\u2019s brother, released by Timur\u2019s son and successor Shah","364 Mehmed II in the marketplace of Serres in Macedonia. Although Bedreddin was defeated, his ideas remained popular Rukh (r. 1405\u201347), who also considered the consolida- among the Bektashi order of dervishes and their sup- tion of Ottoman power under Mehmed in Anatolia, porters, the Janissaries, the sultans\u2019 elite infantry. in the vicinity of his Persian lands, undesirable. In any case, the trouble Mustafa and his allies (including the After the suppression of these popular uprisings in former rebel and newly appointed governor of Nikopol, Anatolia and the Balkans, Mehmed punished those who C\u00fcneyd) had caused proved short-lived, for they were had supported the rebels. In 1419 the sultan defeated Mir- defeated by Mehmed and found refuge in the Byzan- cea of Wallachia and forced him to accept Ottoman suzer- tine city of Salonika. By the autumn of 1416 Mehmed ainty. Mehmed also managed to impose vassalage upon managed to secure an agreement with Emperor Manuel the Karamanid Turkoman emirate. Weakened by poor according to which Mustafa and C\u00fcneyd were to be held health, the sultan\u2019s major concern in his last years was in Byzantine custody for the duration of Mehmed\u2019s reign to secure the throne for his eldest son Murad. He con- in exchange for an annual compensation of 10,000 gold cluded an agreement with Emperor Manuel that Murad ducats. would be acknowledged as Mehmed\u2019s successor, his son Mustafa would remain in Anatolia, and the two youngest Mustafa was not the only threat to Sultan Mehmed sons, Yusuf and Mahmud, aged eight and seven, would be in 1416. Southwest of the Danube delta in the Deli handed over to Manuel, who would keep them, in custody Orman or Wild Forest (in present-day southern Roma- in Constantinople along with Mehmed I\u2019s brother Mus- nia and northeastern Bulgaria) a dangerous rebellion tafa and would get an annual sum for their upkeep. When erupted against Mehmed\u2019s rule, led by the charismatic Mehmed I died on June 25, 1521, he was indeed suc- Muslim judge (kad\u0131) and mystic Sheikh Bedreddin. Bed- ceeded by his eldest son Murad II (r. 1421\u201344; 1446\u201351). reddin was born in 1358 in Simavna (Kyprinos in north- eastern Greece), a son of the local Muslim judge and his G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston converted Greek wife. Bedreddin studied with his father, Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream: The then went to Konya (the center of the Mevlevi order Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (New York: Basic of dervishes) to study logic and astronomy. In the early Books, 2005), 22\u201336; Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cMeh.emmed I,\u201d in Ency- 1380s he studied in the Mamluk capital of Cairo with clopaedia of Islam, online edition (by subscription), edited by famous theologians, lawyers, and physicians, and was P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and appointed tutor of the future Mamluk Sultan Faraj (r. W. P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. 21 May 2007 http:\/\/ 1399\u20141412). Originally an enemy of Sufism, in Cairo www.brillonline.nl\/subscriber\/entry?entry=islam_COM- Bedreddin met the Sufi Sheikh Husayn Akhlati and 0728; H.J. Kissling, \u201cBadr al-D\u012bn b. K. \u0101d. \u012b Sam\u0101wn\u0101,\u201d in Ency- under his influence he himself became a Sufi, perfect- clopaedia of Islam, online edition (by subscription), edited by ing his knowledge in Tabriz and Ardabil (the center of P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and the Safaviyya mystical order and the later Safavid dynasty W. P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. 31 May 2007 http:\/\/ of Iran) in the early 1400s. He later went to Asia Minor www.brillonline.nl\/subscriber\/entry?entry=islam_SIM-1017 on a missionary journey, where he developed his ideas regarding common ownership and the \u201coneness of being\u201d Mehmed II (Mehmed Fatih; Mehmet II; Mehemmed that sought to eliminate differences between religions II) (b. 1432\u2013d. 1481) (r. 1444\u20131446; 1451\u20131481) Otto- as well as between rich and poor. Around 1410, Prince man sultan Mehmed II was the fourth son of Murad Musa appointed Bedreddin military judge in Edirne, but II (r. 1421\u201344; 1446\u201351) and the seventh Ottoman ruler, his tenure ended with the victory of Mehmed, who in whose first reign covered the period from 1444 to 1446 1413 banished him to Iznik. It was probably in Iznik that and whose second reign spanned three decades, from 1451 Bedreddin acquainted himself with a popular movement to 1481. Mehmed was born on March 30, 1432 in Edirne, that by 1416 culminated in an uprising in Anatolia led by which was then the Ottoman capital. The name and eth- Torlak Kemal and B\u00f6rkl\u00fcce Mustafa. Sheikh Bedreddin, nicity of his mother have been the subject of much fruitless who appears to have been the ideological leader of the speculation but her identity remains unknown; she must in movement, crossed to the Balkans and instigated another any case have been of non-Muslim slave origin. Mehmed\u2019s rebellion southwest of the Danube Delta. He enjoyed the early years are equally obscure. According to some sources, support of many marcher lords (rulers of borderlands) in 1434 he was sent with his mother to Amasya, where who opposed Mehmed because he had revoked the land Mehmed\u2019s half-brother Ahmed \u00c7elebi (1420\u201337, the eldest grants given to them by Bedreddin in the name of Prince son of Murad II) was governor, and where Murad\u2019s second Musa. However, Mehmed\u2019s troops swiftly apprehended son, Alaeddin Ali \u00c7elebi (b. 1425?\u201343), also appears to Bedreddin. He was accused of disturbing the order of have been in Mehmed\u2019s retinue. When Ahmed \u00c7elebi died the sultanate by advocating for communal ownership of suddenly in 1437, the five-year-old Mehmed became the property and the similarities between religions and their prophets. He was publicly hanged on December 18, 1416,","Painted by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini in 1480 during Mehmed II 365 his stay in Istanbul, this portrait of Mehmed II depicts the sul- tan as a Renaissance prince and, according to the left plaque into the Balkans and was finally halted by the Ottoman on the painting, a \u201cworld conqueror\u201d (Victor Orbis). The dis- army in a bitter winter battle between Sofia (capital of tinctively western European style of the portrait, with its three- present-day Bulgaria) and Edirne in December. Although quarters profile, had an important impact on later Ottoman hostilities were terminated in June 1444 by a 10-year portraiture. (Erich Lessing \/ Art Resource) truce signed by Murad at Edirne, to be ratified later by the king of Hungary, the truce was soon broken by Hun- provincial governor of Amasya and Alaeddin Ali \u00c7elebi gary under papal dispensation and an even larger cru- was sent to govern Manisa, in western Anatolia. Two years sading army was assembled and began its march toward later, in 1439, both princes were brought to Edirne for Ottoman territory. Already engaged in another military their circumcision, after which Murad had his sons switch campaign against Ibrahim Bey of Karaman in Anatolia, positions, sending Mehmed to Manisa and Alaeddin Ali to Murad II swiftly defeated the Karamanids, returned by Amasya. It is widely believed that Alaeddin Ali, who par- forced march to Edirne, and went on with his army to ticipated with his father in a successful campaign against confront and defeat the crusaders at the Battle of Varna Ibrahim Bey, the ruler of Karaman, was the sultan\u2019s favor- (November 10, 1444). ite, but in the spring of 1443, shortly after the campaign against Ibrahim Bey, Alaeddin \u00c7elebi was assassinated. In Edirne, the sultan had left the 12-year-old Mehmed While the episode is shrouded in mystery, some historians as regent of the state\u2019s Balkan territories. At this time believe the assassination was the result of an order from Mehmed was under the tutelage of his father\u2019s chief Murad; others suggest it was a consequence of political vizier, \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil Pasha, and his kad\u0131asker (army infighting among the sultan\u2019s leading men. Regardless of judge), Molla H\u00fcsrev. During this period the young its cause, the death of Alaeddin \u00c7elebi left nine-year-old regent was exposed to several crises, including the death Mehmed as the sole living heir of Murad II. In July 1443 of the leader of the radical Hurufiyya Sufi movement Murad brought his son from Manisa to Edirne to reside at who gained many adherents as well as the protection of court and gain experience in affairs of state. Prince Mehmed himself before being proscribed by the authorities and executed. During the same period, a Janis- In the later months of 1443 a crusading army, which sary revolt ended in the burning of the market quarter had left the Hungarian capital of Buda, advanced deep and the attempted destruction of one of Mehmed\u2019s spe- cial advisors,\u015eihabeddin Pasha, a man of the dev\u015firme, or child levy. When Murad returned from fighting the crusaders in late November or early December 1444, he abdicated in favor of his young son, retiring to Manisa and leaving Mehmed to rule as sultan under the tutelage of \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil Pasha and Molla H\u00fcsrev. Mehmed\u2019s first reign as sultan was as troubled and difficult as had been his earlier regency; little more than 18 months after his enthronment and accession cer- emony Mehmed was deposed and packed off to Manisa and Murad II resumed the sultanate. It is not clear why Murad was recalled to Edirne by Halil Pasha. It may have been that Mehmed was planning an offensive against Constantinople which would have been supported by men of the dev\u015firme while being vehemently opposed by \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil Pasha; it may have been that the Janissar- ies were unhappy with Mehmed. Despite being deposed, Mehmed continued to work with his father, taking part with him in military campaigns in 1448 against a further Hungarian invasion (the second Battle of Kosovo, Octo- ber 1448) and again in 1450 in Albania. He seems to have ruled western Anatolia intermittently from Manisa as a virtual fiefdom, from which he undertook naval campaigns against Venetian possessions in the Aegean. When Murad II died at Edirne in February 1451, Mehmed was once again in Manisa. His second reign began when he acceded to the throne in Edirne on Feb- ruary 18, 1451, confirming all his father\u2019s ministers in","366 Mehmed II Built just before the 1453 siege of Byzantine Constantinople, Rumeli Hisar\u0131 (the Rumelian castle) on the European shore of the Bophorus was used along with the Anadolu Hisar\u0131 (the Anatolian castle) to seal off the city from the straights and deny it any pos- sible relief. (Photo by G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston) their posts, including \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil as grand vizier, autumn of 1452 and spring of 1453 in Edirne planning and ordering the judicial murder of the youngest son of the final conquest of Constantinople. He ordered Murad II, then an infant, in an act that historians have the casting of huge siege guns, assembled land and sea seen as the initiation of the so-called Ottoman \u201claw of forces, and moved a vast array of soldiers and equipment fratricide,\u201d although considerable doubt remains on this from Edirne to the land walls of the Byzantine capital. point. Mehmed was now 19, marked by the traumatic experiences of his childhood and youth, and determined Mehmed left Edirne late in March 1453 and began to exercise absolute authority as sultan. to besiege Constantinople on April 6. The siege lasted 54 days, the outcome remaining uncertain until the The first months of his reign were apparently tran- final storming of the city walls on May 29, after which quil: existing truces with Serbia, Venice, and lesser Mehmed gave the city over to his soldiers for three days Aegean and Balkan entities were renewed, a three-year of pillaging. Mehmed entered the city later on May 29 truce was negotiated with Hungary, and particular and proceeded to the famed metropolitan church of assurances of Mehmed\u2019s benevolence were accorded to Hagia Sophia which he transformed into a Muslim the Byzantine Empire, leaving Mehmed free to warn mosque, called Aya Sofya. Most of the surviving pop- off Ibrahim Bey of Karaman from his pretensions to ulation of the city were enslaved and deported. The Ottoman territory in Anatolia. Soon, however, the situ- Byzantine Empire was now effectively at an end, and ation changed and the determining features of Mehmed\u2019s Constantinople was renamed Istanbul. The conquest reign began to manifest themselves: a sharp increase in of Constantinople also marked the end of the old, pater- state expenditure; lavish buildings works, including a nalistic Ottoman state of Murad II. Within a brief time vast new palace complex at Edirne; and an aggressive for- \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil Pasha, whose attitude toward the siege eign policy, manifested first against the Byzantine Empire had been equivocal at best, was dismissed and later and signaled by the construction in 1452 of the fortress executed. He was replaced as grand vizier by Zaganos of Rumeli Hisar\u0131 on the European shore of the Bospo- Pasha, a product of the dev\u015firme, whose more aggres- rus, effectively blockading the Straits and isolating the sive attitudes would henceforth dominate the affairs of Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Mehmed spent the the sultanate.","By the conquest of Constantinople Mehmed had Mehmed II 367 realized an Islamic ambition that dated back to the first sieges of the city by the Arabs in the mid-seventh cen- The Yedikule (or \u201cSeven Towers\u201d) Fortress was built by tury. The Ottoman state was now an empire, controlling Mehmed II using the existing Byzantine defensive walls. The the \u201ctwo lands\u201d (Anatolia and Rumelia) and the \u201ctwo fortress continued to be used as a treasury and a prison after seas\u201d (the Black Sea and the Aegean). Mehmed himself it ceased to have any defensive purpose. (Photo by G\u00e1bor was henceforth known by the sobriquet \u201cFatih,\u201d or \u201cthe \u00c1goston) Conqueror,\u201d arrogating to himself not only the Muslim title of sultan, first claimed by Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402), colonies in the Crimea and to bring the Giray dynasty, but two additional titles implying universal sovereignty, the Crimean Khanate, into a vassal relationship (1478), the old Turkish title of Khaqan and the Roman-Byzan- thus controlling territories on all sides of the Black Sea, tine title of Qaysar (Caesar). It is in the light of his self- which for almost three centuries was given the sobriquet image as world-ruler and his ambitions for universal of the \u201cOttoman lake.\u201d monarchy, contrasted with the practical limitations on the realization of that policy, that the complex record of In Anatolia, Mehmed went on to control most of the Mehmed\u2019s activities during his almost 30-year reign can remaining Muslim dynasties, employing a combination be best understood. of strategies that included forced annexation and dynas- tic marriages. These dynasties were themselves largely of In the first place, Istanbul was rapidly restored to its Turkoman origin, such as the Isfendiyarid in northern historic position as a true imperial capital. The city was Anatolia, with its valuable Black Sea port of Sinop and progressively redeveloped and was repopulated by suc- its copper mines in the vicinity of Kastamonu. Kara- cessive waves of forced immigration from newly con- man, long a thorn in the Ottomans\u2019 side, was neutralized quered areas. Moreover, Mehmed rebuilt the city through in 1468 and re-annexed in 1474; the eastern Anatolian the development of new residential and mercantile quar- Turkoman confederacy of the Akkoyunlu (or \u201cWhite ters grouped around a mosque complex or a market. Sheep\u201d Turkomans), led by Uzun Hasan, proved more Edirne was quickly abandoned by Mehmed as an impe- difficult to subdue, but the confederacy was much dimin- rial residence in favor of new palaces built within the ished by Mehmed\u2019s 1473 victory over Uzun Hasan in the walls of Istanbul, the first being the so-called Old Palace Battle of Tercan (Otluk-beli). and the second being the New Palace, better known as the Topkap\u0131 Palace, built at the furthest extremity of In the latter years of Mehmed\u2019s reign, when he was the city, overlooking the confluence of the Bosporus, the already in poor health, the practical limitations of his Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmara. Secondly, the almost continuous warfare that marked Mehmed\u2019s reign can be seen as an attempt to expand Ottoman territory by the elimination or neu- tralization of all competing polities, Muslim as well as Christian, that stood in the way of the realization of his imperial ambitions. The remaining fragments of territory where Byzantine rule still endured were rapidly absorbed by Mehmed\u2019s burgeoning empire. Most of the Balkan states that still formed part of the Christian Orthodox world were also incorporated by a combination of war- fare and diplomacy (Serbia, 1457; Bosnia, 1461\u201363), while Venetian possessions in the east came under sus- tained Ottoman attack with the Ottoman-Venetian war of 1463\u201379 and the capture of Negroponte in 1470. North of the Danube River, the Ottomans were still not strong enough to take Belgrade (although they besieged it unsuccessfully in 1456) or to do more than ravage Hungarian territory by ceaseless razzias intended to pre- empt any hostile presence on the lower Danube. The Bal- kan territories of Wallachia and Moldavia remained a military danger zone for the Ottoman armies and an area of abiding contention. Conversely, toward the end of his reign Mehmed was able to eradicate the Genoese trading","368 Mehmed III father\u2019s fiscal and military policies, Mehmed\u2019s reign was one of undeniable achievement, the conquest of Constan- policies became more apparent. Success had brought its tinople and its subsequent transformation being foremost own problems, including confrontations with the Egyp- amongst his accomplishments. tian Mamluk Empire and with Hungary, which would not be solved in the Ottomans\u2019 favor until the reign of Colin Heywood Mehmed\u2019s grandson, Selim I (r. 1512\u201320). There is no Further reading: Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Con- doubt also that Mehmed harbored a deep desire to con- queror and His Time, translated by Ralph Manheim, edited quer Italy and to bring Rome, as well as Constantino- by William C. Hickman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer- ple, under his domination, but an expedition mounted sity Press, 1978), a work to be used with caution, and read against southern Italy in 1480 was a disastrous failure, in conjunction with Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cMehmed the Conqueror and the Ottoman bridgehead at Otranto was abandoned (1432\u20131481) and His Time,\u201d Speculum, xxv (1960), 408\u2013427, the following year, after Mehmed\u2019s death. Likewise, a reprinted in Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, Essays in Ottoman History (Istan- complex amphibious operation in the same year against bul: Eren, 1998), 87\u2013110; Michael Doukas, The Decline and the crusading Knights of St John and their island for- Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. H. J. Magou- tress of Rhodes was a costly failure. lias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975); Colin Heywood, \u201cMehmed II and the Historians: The Reception While Mehmed Fatih is known primarily for his of Babinger\u2019s Mehmed der Eroberer during Half a Century\u201d military successes, especially for the conquest of Con- (to appear in Turcica, 2009); Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cThe Policy of stantinople, and for his impressive role in expanding the Mehmed II towards the Greek Population of Istanbul,\u201d Ottoman Empire, there were other important aspects of Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 23\u201324 (1969\u201370), 231\u2013249; Kri- his long reign. Mehmed\u2019s attempts to build up a unified tovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. C. T. and centralized empire strained the state\u2019s finances, forc- Riggs (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954); ing several devaluations of the Ottoman currency and Bernard Lewis et al., The Fall of Constantinople: A Sympo- requiring the extension of the state\u2019s monopolistic and sium Held at the School of Oriental and African Studies 29 unpopular tax-farming system. Through these measures, May 1953 (London: School of Oriental and African Stud- and despite vast and continuous military expenditure, ies, 1955); Julian Raby, \u201cA Sultan of Paradox: Mehmed the the state treasury still contained some three and a half Conqueror as a Patron of the Arts.\u201d The Oxford Art Journal, million ducats of ready money at the time of the sultan\u2019s 6, no. 1 (1982), 3\u20138; Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constan- death. At the same time, these actions and the frequent tinople (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); confiscation of private lands by the state alienated most Tursun Beg, The History of Mehmed the Conqueror, edited of the old Ottoman landed families and society at large, and translated by Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k and Rhoads Murphey (Min- creating strong social discontent. neapolis: Bibliotheka Islamica, 1978). Altogether, it is difficult to arrive at a balanced Mehmed III (b. 1566\u2013d. 1603) (r. 1595\u20131603) Ottoman account of Mehmed\u2019s reign. His complex personality sultan and caliph Mehmed III was the son of Murad has been endlessly discussed but still defies satisfactory III (r. 1574\u201395) and his Albanian-born concubine Safiyye analysis. Mehmed seems to have been affected by both Sultan. Mehmed\u2019s birth in May 1566 coincided with the the perils and humiliations of his early years and possibly last months of the reign of his great-grandfather S\u00fcley- by the influence of what may be termed the \u201cwar party\u201d man I (r. 1520\u201366), who gave him the name Mehmed in at the outset of his reign. Attempts to describe him as a homage to the famous Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; renaissance figure and a free thinker must be viewed 1451\u201381), the conqueror of Constantinople. In 1574, with some misgivings in light of his preoccupation with when his father succeeded to the throne, Mehmed also enforcing strict religious orthodoxy. The darker aspects moved to Istanbul and began to live in the Topkap\u0131 of his nature continue to defy analysis; although these are Palace. In 1582 his circumcision was celebrated with well documented, they stand in contrast to the historical grandiose feasts and spectacles that occasioned an picture we have of both his father, Murad II, and his son, impressive dynastic propaganda. Two years after his cir- Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481\u20131512). cumcision, in the last days of December 1584, Mehmed III departed for Manisa to assume his post as prince-gov- Mehmed II died on May 3, 1481 while encamped ernor or sancakbeyi of the Saruhan subprovince or san- with his army on the first stages of a campaign in Ana- cak. Four of his five sons were born during Mehmed\u2019s tolia, possibly directed against Rhodes or the Mamluk 11-year stay in Manisa, including the future Ahmed I (r. Empire. There is substantial circumstantial evidence 1603\u20131617) in 1590 and Mustafa I (r. 1617\u201318, 1622\u2013 that Mehmed was poisoned, possibly at the behest of 23) in 1591. Upon the death of his father, Mehmed was his eldest son and successor, Bayezid. Mehmed\u2019s death invited to Istanbul, and acceded to the throne in 1595. unleashed a short-lived but violent Janissary revolt and then a lengthy succession struggle between Bayezid and his brother Cem, who long contended for the throne. Although Bayezid immediately reversed many of his","Mehmed III\u2019s reign coincided with serious social, Mehmed III 369 economic, and political unrest. Aggravated financial problems, sociopolitical disturbances in Anatolia, and queen mother (valide sultan) Safiyye Sultan who acted a costly war with the Habsburgs all added up to a crisis almost as a regent. The empowerment of queen moth- that was hard to manage. The Long Hungarian War with ers was a direct result of the emergence of the court as the Habsburgs (1593\u20131606), which had begun during the the new center of power politics in the late 16th century. reign of Murad III and would continue after Mehmed Like her predecessor Nur Banu, who had become a major III died, is very telling in terms of the position of the late power figure in Murad III\u2019s court until her death in 1583, 16th-century sultans in the business of rule and the pos- Safiyye dominated court politics during the reign of sibilities of fulfilling the image of warrior sultan. Mehmed III through a network of allegiances that was composed of the power figures of both the bureaucracy Beginning with the reign of Selim II (r. 1566\u201374), and the palace. Ottoman sultans began to abstain from participating in military campaigns. They became increasingly immo- However, Safiyye\u2019s dominance over the Ottoman bile within the close quarters of the Topkap\u0131 Palace. This court during the reign of her son Mehmed III also immobility was not caused by a deficiency in their train- brought serious opposition from various groups. The ing or experience; rather, the emergence of the court cul- Janissaries, the sultan\u2019s elite military corps, resisted the ture as the central political arena required the constant emergence of the court as the central political arena. In presence of the sultans in the palace rather than on the April 1600 Safiyye\u2019s Jewish kira or lady-in-waiting, Espe- battlefield. In the changing political setting of the late ranza Malchi, was murdered by the standing cavalry 16th century, Mehmed III, like any other power con- (sipahi). Although the reason behind Esperanza Malchi\u2019s tender of the court, could not risk being an absentee in murder at first seemed to have been her mismanagement court politics. Thus in 1596, when Mehmed decided to of a special tax farm, the sipahis accused her of interfer- lead his armies after 30 years of sultans\u2019 absence from ing with the business of rule. battlefields, his decision was not made voluntarily. Like his father and grandfather, he would have preferred to In January 1603 another sipahi uprising, which tar- stay in Istanbul and send field marshals to the ongoing geted the highest-ranking servants of the palace, revealed war with the Habsburgs. The principal figure who con- the networks of power and the complex framework that vinced Mehmed III to lead the campaign was Grand maintained Mehmed in his position as sultan. Inefficient Vizier Sinan Pasha. According to the argument of this handling of the revolts that plagued Anatolia after the tried statesman, who occupied the highest office of the 1596 Hungarian campaign contributed to fomenting this empire five times, if the grand vizier was appointed as uprising. Outraged sipahis claimed that the serdars or field marshal, the deputy vizier, in order to discredit the field marshals sent to put down the Celali revolts in grand vizier, would avoid sending the necessary provi- Anatolia were not chosen for their competence but were sions. If one of the viziers became the field marshal then appointed through a bribery network. In order to present the grand vizier would consciously neglect the needs their complaints, the sipahis pressed hard to see the sul- of the field marshal in order to ensure his failure. Thus tan in person. Seeing the sultan in person was a necessity, Mehmed III had personally to lead the campaign in the they argued, because the viziers and courtiers deliber- style of his ancestor Sultan S\u00fcleyman the Magnificent. ately kept Mehmed III uninformed about the situation in Anatolia. The rebels demanded the execution of the two Mehmed III, who had been troubled by the power highest-ranking servants of the palace, Gazanfer Agha, struggles among his viziers, must have found Sinan the chief white eunuch, and Osman Agha, the chief black Pasha\u2019s argument persuasive. When Mehmed III\u2019s partici- eunuch, as well as the former deputy vizier, Saat\u00e7i Hasan pation in the campaign was also supported by his tutor Pasha. During the meeting, Osman Agha and Gazanfer Sadeddin Efendi, the sultan became a reluctant warrior. Agha\u2014who had been one of the major power figures of But when the Ottomans emerged victorious in the 1596 the court since the reign of Selim II\u2014were murdered. field battle (Ha\u00e7ova\/Mez\u0151keresztes), the last example of However, when Hasan Pasha showed the letters of Safiyye which had been fought in 1526, Mehmed III earned the Sultan, which commanded him not to inform Mehmed title \u201cwarrior.\u201d III about anything, good or bad, he not only escaped exe- cution but also justified the claims of the rebels. Despite this victory, neither leading his armies in battle nor earning the title of warrior brought Mehmed Mehmed III\u2014like his father Murad III and his grand- III control over the business of rule in his remaining father Selim II\u2014reigned in a political setting that was reign. Unlike his father Murad III, Mehmed seemed to characterized by the rules of court politics. The emer- fail in creating a favorite who would bring the business gence of the court as the central political arena required of rule to his immediate grasp. When he was not able to the presence of sultans in the court rather than in the bat- practice his sultanic authority his place was filled by the tlefield. Therefore it was not his sedentary sultanate in the close quarters of the Topkap\u0131 Palace but rather his success in leading his armies in the Hungarian (Eger) campaign","370 Mehmed IV environment and led to major rebellions and tumults in Istanbul and the country. For instance, in these years, that should be considered as atypical for a sultan of the there were at least four major rebellions in the capital, late 16th century. In terms of his success in the business of and no fewer than 13 grand viziers were appointed. rule, Mehmed III seems to have been less successful than his father, mostly because of his inability to create court In 1656 another bloody turmoil erupted, again insti- favorites who would be dependent on him. gated by the issue of debased coins. The major military rebellion lasted for weeks this time and forced Mehmed \u015eefik Peksevgen to sacrifice several of his favorites, including S\u00fcleyman Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream: The Agha and other aghas and officials in the palace. Soon, Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (London: John however, with the appointment of K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc Mehmed Murray, 2005), 152\u2013195; Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Pasha as grand vizier, all unruly groups and alterna- Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: tive foci of power were subdued or eliminated by the Oxford University Press, 1993). iron-handed new grand vizier. Henceforth, until the end of Mehmed IV\u2019s reign, the K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc family and their Mehmed IV (Mehemmed IV; Mehmet IV; Avc\u0131 clients occupied and dominated the key offices in the Mehmed) (b. 1642\u2013d. 1693) (r. 1648\u20131687) Ottoman government and court. During this period the K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fcs sultan and caliph Son of Sultan Ibrahim (r. 1640\u201348) were able to establish a stable and comparatively reform- and his concubine Hatice Turhan, Mehmed was born and ist government that successfully ended the Cretan War in raised in the imperial Harem in Istanbul. In 1648, at the 1669 and conquered new lands in Europe, achievements age of seven, he was placed on the throne following a coup due particularly to the management of Mehmed Pasha\u2019s that deposed his father, who was assassinated soon after. son, Faz\u0131l Ahmed Pasha. At the time, he was the youngest sultan ever to have suc- ceeded to the throne, and his 39-year reign was surpassed With the K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc household guiding state affairs, in length only by that of Sultan S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366). Mehmed settled his court and household in Edirne, the Mehmed\u2019s sobriquet Avc\u0131 or \u201cHunter\u201d derives from his former Ottoman capital, having acquired a distaste for zeal for hunting, a pastime developed in childhood. Istanbul during his childhood and youth. By choosing the Edirne Palace as his chief residence, Mehmed initi- The first eight years of Mehmed\u2019s reign witnessed ated a pattern for his successors, and the city became one of the severest and most turbulent periods of crisis the principal seat for the Ottoman dynasty and its court in Ottoman history. He was represented during this time until 1703. Although Istanbul remained the official capi- of his minority by two regents, the old Queen Mother tal, Mehmed regarded the city as troubled and prone to (Valide Sultan), K\u00f6sem Mahpeyker Sultan, his grand- rebellion, and he rarely returned to Istanbul, which was mother, and the young Queen Mother, Turhan Sultan, his devastated by fire in 1660. Mehmed largely gave him- own mother, who was only in her early twenties. While self over to personal and domestic pleasures in Edirne. acting as Mehmed\u2019s regents, both women ran their own Among these were the grand imperial festivities of 1675. rival factions, each supported by different segments in During this time Mehmed decreed a 15-day celebra- the military corps and the artisan guilds of the capital. tion for the circumcision of his sons, Mustafa (11) and In 1651, during the revolt of the Janissaries, who rose Ahmed (2), and 18 days of festivities for the marriage of against the payment of their salaries in debased coins, his daughter Hatice Sultan (17) to his favorite and sec- K\u00f6sem Sultan was assassinated in the Topkap\u0131 Palace ond vizier, Musahib Mustafa Pasha. Mehmed IV also while conspiring to dethrone Mehmed and replace him indulged in extended hunting trips, although he also with his brother S\u00fcleyman. The death of K\u00f6sem resulted used hunts for political purposes, preferring grounds in in the dissolution of her court faction and the elimina- proximity to military campaign routes so that he could tion of the ringleaders of the Janissary uprising. With the assess the progress of his armies and commanders. He death of K\u00f6sem Sultan, Turhan Sultan\u2019s partisans came to also used the hunts as an opportunity to inspect the dominate court politics, led mainly by S\u00fcleyman Agha, countryside, to hold audiences with his ministers, and the chief eunuch of the palace. to listen to the complaints of his subjects and personally dispense justice. During this early period, the empire of Mehmed IV was characterized by incessant factionalism and rivalry Mehmed IV was determined to portray himself as an in the capital, the direct involvement of the military active and able warrior-sultan. He personally led the Otto- corps in practical politics and power struggles, increas- man army during the campaign of 1672 against Poland, ing and fluctuating prices, and extraordinary taxes levied taking with him his favorite concubine Rabia G\u00fcln\u00fc\u015f to balance the budget deficit or to finance the ongoing Emetullah and their son, Prince Mustafa. Mehmed used war with Venice over Crete (1645\u201369). At the same the occasion to teach his heir-apparent, rather than keep- time, the empire was troubled by plagues and poor har- ing him in seclusion in the palace, a practice that had vests. Altogether, these factors created a highly unstable","been habitual since the early years of the century. Prince Mehmed VI 371 Mustafa would eventually follow his father\u2019s example, personally leading his own army soon after he became In 1911 the Italians attacked the last directly gov- sultan in 1695. erned North African province of Tripolitana (in pres- ent-day Libya). While the war in Libya continued, the Mehmed\u2019s reign ended with a coup similar to that of Balkan neighbors (Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and his father. In the years following the second unsuccessful Greece) formed an alliance and attacked the Ottoman siege of the Austrian capital Vienna in 1683 (see sieges of Empire (see Balkan wars). As a result the Ottomans lost Vienna), the Ottomans were fighting against the armies both Libya and nearly all of the Balkan provinces. Under of the Holy League, formed by the Austrian Habsburgs, these conditions, the CUP organized a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat and Poland-Lithuania, Venice, and the papacy. Mehmed\u2019s terminated the multiparty regime (January 1913). armies were now required to operate on multiple fronts, and eventually the Ottomans suffered several defeats and Under the military dictatorship of the CUP, Mehmed experienced unprecedented territorial losses. By 1687 V acted as a symbolic head of state. When the Ottomans almost all Ottoman possessions in Hungary had been joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers lost to the Habsburgs. The disgruntled Ottoman soldiers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria) in 1914, the revolted and marched on the capital, demanding that CUP urged the sultan to use his authority as the caliph of Mehmed be replaced by his brother S\u00fcleyman. Mehmed world Muslims to declare jihad, or holy war, against the was deposed by a joint decision of ministers and religious Allied Powers (France, Russia, Great Britain, and Italy). dignitaries in Istanbul, a decision he apparently accepted without protest. Retiring to Edirne, Mehmed died there Sultan Mehmed V ruled the Ottoman Empire for nine in 1693 and was buried at the imperial tomb complex of years and two months and died on July 3, 1918, shortly his mother\u2019s mosque (Yeni Djami) in Istanbul. before World War I ended. Known as Sultan Re\u015fad (\u201cpur- suer of the right path\u201d) among his people, Mehmed lived G\u00fcnhan B\u00f6rek\u00e7i a comfortable life during the reign of his uncle, Sultan Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream Abd\u00fclaziz (r. 1861\u20131876), but was imprisoned when (London: John Murray, 2005), 253\u2013328; M.T. G\u00f6kbilgin and his brother, Abd\u00fclhamid II, became sultan. He spent R.C. Repp, \u201cK\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc,\u201d in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. most of his time reading, was immersed in Islamic cul- 5, edited by C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, B. Lewis, and ture, was well versed in both Arabic and Persian, was a Ch. Pellat (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 256\u2013263; Cemal Kafadar, talented poet and calligrapher, and a devoted member of \u201cThe City that Ralamb Visited: The Political and Cultural the Mevlevi Order of dervishes. Climate of Istanbul in the 1650s,\u201d in The Sultan\u2019s Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657\u20131658 Selcuk Ak\u015fin Somel and the Ralamb Paintings, edited by Karin Adahl (Istanbul: Publication of Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2006), Mehmed VI (Mehmed Vahdettin; Mehmed Vahid- 58\u201373; Metin Kunt, \u201cNaima, K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc and the Grand Vezi- eddin) (b. 1861\u2013d. 1926) (r. 1918\u20131922) last Otto- rate,\u201d Bo\u011fazi\u00e7i \u00dcniversitesi Dergisi 1 (1973), 57\u201362. man sultan Mehmed VI, son of Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I (1839\u201361), acceded to the throne on July 3, 1918 upon Mehmed V (Re\u015fad) (b. 1844\u2013d. 1918) (r. 1909\u20131918) the death of his brother, Sultan Mehmed V (r. 1909\u2013 Ottoman sultan and caliph Mehmed V was the son of 1918), known as Re\u015fad. At that time the Committee of Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I (1839\u201361) and G\u00fclcemal Kad\u0131n Union and Progress (CUP) still controlled the state. Efendi. He was born on November 2, 1844, in Istanbul. When the Ottomans surrendered at the end of World He acceded the throne at the age of 65, on April 27, 1909, War I on October 30, 1918, the leaders of the CUP fled when Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. 1876\u20131909) was deposed by the the empire, leaving Mehmed VI with the opportunity to Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) follow- assume personal control over the government and rein- ing the revolt of March 31, 1909. During his sultanate force his authority by appointing grand viziers loyal to Mehmed acted within the limits of a constitutional mon- him. Following the Ottoman Empire\u2019s loss to the Allied arch. The principal members of CUP, Talat Pasha and Powers, the sultan considered it in his best political inter- Enver Pasha, administered the empire. ests to cooperate with them, especially with the British. As an enemy of the CUP, Mehmed punished former The early months of his rule witnessed Armenian members of this party and ordered the dissolution of revolts in eastern Anatolia and in Cilicia (southern Ana- parliament on November 23, 1918. When the Greeks tolia). This was followed by a major Albanian insurrec- occupied Izmir on May 15, 1919, Mehmed convened a tion in 1910. At the request of the CUP, Mehmed V made consultative assembly (saltanat \u015furas\u0131) on May 26, 1919. a trip to Salonika, Skopje, and to the Kosovo region in Mehmed sent a young Ottoman officer, Mustafa Kemal order to calm the Albanians. Pasha (see Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk) to pacify the Black Sea region. However, Mustafa Kemal instead worked to organize a national resistance in Anatolia against the","372 Mehmed Ali Egypt. The government in Istanbul later confirmed that appointment. The Ottoman government was further dis- Allied Powers. The sultan regarded this movement as a tracted from affairs in Egypt by the coup that deposed continuation of CUP political activities and thus did Sultan Selim III (r. 1789\u20131807) in 1807. In the absence everything to hamper the national resistance that ulti- of direct Ottoman involvement in Egyptian politics, mately gave rise to the modern Turkish republic. Since Mehmed Ali secured his position by eliminating his only Mehmed VI considered it unrealistic to oppose the Allied possible local rivals, the Mamluks. This he accomplished Powers, he approved the Treaty of S\u00e8vres (August 10, in 1811 when he invited the Mamluks to a feast and then 1920), which stipulated the partitioning of Anatolia. had them executed. The few who escaped the treachery fled to Upper Egypt. Once there, they no longer offered a When the Anatolian resistance movement proved threat to Mehmed Ali\u2019s ambitions. successful, Mehmed VI and his government tried to come to terms with the movement\u2019s leaders, based in Ankara. Mehmed Ali was able to strengthen his position in However, the empire\u2019s last sultan had already lost politi- Cairo by dispatching his son Tosun, at Istanbul\u2019s request, cal legitimacy, and when the Allied Powers invited repre- to Arabia in 1811 to free the Holy Cities from their sentatives from both Ankara (nationalist republicans led Muwahhidun occupiers, better known as Wahhabis. by Mustafa Kemal) and Istanbul (imperial government Tosun took Mecca in 1812 and Medina in the follow- under Mehmed) to a major peace conference in Laus- ing year. Following the campaign in Arabia, Mehmed anne, the Turkish National Assembly of Ankara publicly Ali enlarged his holdings by sending troops into what declared the end of the imperial reign and officially dis- is today northern Sudan. His ambitions required a big- solved the sultanate (November 1, 1922), thus implying ger and better army, so to meet the manpower needs, he that the republican government was the only legitimate authorized slave raids in Sudan to acquire mature males Turkish political authority. This bold move paid off, as who might be molded into a modern army. Thousands Mehmed VI subsequently fled the country aboard a Brit- of slaves were brought to Egypt, but most died from dis- ish warship to Malta. His later attempts to reinstate eases and other causes. himself as caliph in the Hejaz proved unsuccessful. He died on May 16, 1926, in San Remo, Italy. As the last Faced with the loss of thousands of men and the Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI has been a controversial financial investment that had gone into procuring them, figure. Turkish national historiography has regarded him Mehmed Ali abandoned the experiment. He instituted as a traitor to the national cause. conscription of peasants in its place. This was an unheard- of innovation in Islamic history and many of the peasants Selcuk Ak\u015fin Somel responded by either flight or armed rebellion. But Mehmed Ali persevered and by 1824 his army was impressive Mehmed Ali (Ar. Muhammad Ali) (d. 1849) (r. 1805\u2013 enough that Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808\u201339) requested his 1849) ruler of Egypt Mehmed Ali was an adventurer help against the insurgency in Greece. The success of an who rose to be the ruler of Egypt and a formidable chal- army commanded by Mehmed Ali\u2019s son, Ibrahim Pasha, lenger to the Ottoman royal house\u2019s monopoly over the alarmed European powers, who sided overwhelmingly right to rule the Ottoman Empire. He was born in Kavala with the Greek rebels and attacked the imperial troops. in northern Greece; most historians assume that he was The British and French fleets sank a combined Ottoman- an Albanian because the unit he commanded when sent Egyptian fleet at Navarino in 1827 and Ibrahim was forced to Egypt was made up of Albanian irregular troops. But to withdraw his troops from Greece. he may have been a Muslim of Greek or Slavic origin, and European visitors to his court reported that he spoke In order to build and maintain his army, Mehmed fluent Greek. Ali took control of much of the agricultural lands of Egypt to grow products such as sugar, indigo, and cot- When the French expeditionary force that was ini- ton that could either be used to make uniforms or that tially commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte and that could be exported to Europe in exchange for weapons. had occupied Egypt in 1798 withdrew from Egypt in He also sought to impose monopolies in many areas of 1801, Ottoman Sultan Selim III (r. 1789\u20131807) sent an production in order to start an Egyptian industrial base Albanian unit to restore his sovereignty over the country. to supply his army with the weapons they otherwise had Mehmed Ali assumed command of the unit in 1803; in to import. For making all these radical changes, some 1804 he succeeded in temporarily driving the remain- historians have called Mehmed Ali the \u201cFather of Mod- ing Egyptian Mamluk elite out of Cairo. By May 1805, ern Egypt,\u201d but it would seem that ruling Egypt was not however, the ulema of Cairo was growing increasingly his only ambition. In 1827 Mehmed Ali asked the sul- fearful of the anarchy in the city and complained to the tan to grant him the governorship of Syria. When the chief judge that the Ottoman governor, H\u00fcr\u015fit Pasha, sultan refused, Mehmed Ali ordered the Egyptian army was not doing enough to control his troops. When he into Syria in October 1831, saying that the Ottomans had failed to act, the ulema appointed Mehmed Ali viceroy of","given asylum to Egyptian peasants who had fled into the Melkite Catholics 373 empire to avoid conscription. mon Semitic word for king (Syriac melk, Arabic malik). Ibrahim Pasha, the commander of the Egyptian It was originally applied to Middle Eastern Christians forces, enjoyed a number of quick successes. By Decem- who stayed loyal to the official teaching of the church ber of 1832 he had reached the central Anatolian city of the Byzantine Empire after the Council of Chal- of Konya, where he defeated an army led by the grand cedon in 451, when many of the region\u2019s Christians vizier. At that point, nothing stood in his way for a victo- were accused of following a doctrine identified as her- rious march on the capital. Mehmed Ali claimed that he, esy. As the Byzantine emperors\u2014called simply \u201ckings\u201d as sultan, would restore the empire to its true glory; the in Arabic\u2014promoted this version of Christianity, the Western powers were stunned. They applied pressure in Arab Muslim conquerors of Syria in the seventh cen- both Istanbul and Cairo; the result was the Convention of tury referred to those who followed the Byzantine rite K\u00fctahya in May 1833 that recognized Ibrahim Pasha as as the \u201cking\u2019s men.\u201d Although the name seems to have governor of Syria and the southern Anatolian province of gone out of general use by the Ottoman period, when Adana. Ibrahim then implemented in Syria many of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Syria began to court same centralizing reforms that his father had imposed Orthodox Christian clergy with the possibility of their on Egypt. They proved to be as unpopular among the entering into communion with the pope in Rome, the region\u2019s Muslim population as they were in Egypt and name was revived as a convenient way to distinguish revolts against his rule began in 1834. the Orthodox Christians of Syria from those of the rest of the Ottoman Empire. Encouraged by reports of revolts, the Ottomans attempted to retake Syria in 1839 but again received a Over the course of the 17th century, many of the resounding defeat at the hands of Ibrahim Pasha at the men who held high ecclesiastical office in Syria (either Battle of Nezip. But by 1840, much of Syria had risen in as patriarch of Antioch, housed in Damascus, or as rebellion against Egyptian occupation, and British pres- metropolitans (bishops) in Aleppo or in the Lebanese sure led Ibrahim Pasha to withdraw. In return for the coastal towns of Sidon and Tripoli) hosted the mis- withdrawal, the sultan recognized Mehmed Ali as gover- sionaries and allowed them to open schools for Ortho- nor of Egypt for life and promised that, upon his death, dox Christian boys. Promising young men from the the post would go to his sons. After the Syrian campaign, community were sent to Rome where they attended Mehmed Ali embarked on no further foreign adventures the Maronite College and were ordained as Catholic although his regime introduced programs for modern- priests. In reaction, the Orthodox ecumenical patriarch ization, especially in education. By the end of his reign, in Istanbul sought to influence the process by which Mehmed Ali had become incapacitated by senility, and the patriarch of Antioch was chosen. Traditionally, a Ibrahim governed in his place. Mehmed Ali died on council of clergy and laity in Damascus had chosen the August 2, 1849. Egypt continued to be ruled by his direct men who would hold that office, but in 1672 the ecu- descendants until the revolution of 1952. menical patriarch intervened to replace the candidate chosen by the council with one perceived as being more Bruce Masters loyal to orthodoxy. Further reading: Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- The political struggle between the Catholic and versity Press, 1984). Orthodox factions led to a fracture in 1725 and the emergence of two claimants to the position of patriarch Mehmed Pasha K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc See K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc family. of Antioch, one supported by the ecumenical patriarch and the sultan and the other by the Catholic faction and Mehmed Pasha Sokollu See Sokollu family. eventually the Roman Catholic Church. From that point onward, the Catholic faction was called either the Mel- mehter See music. kite Catholic Church or the Greek Catholic Church, a name that is sometimes confusing to outsiders, as the Melkite Catholics Melkite Catholics, or Greek members of the Church were typically Arab Christians Catholics as they are sometimes known, were the and not ethnic Greeks. Throughout the 18th century, Orthodox Christians of Syria who chose to accept the the Melkite Catholic Church functioned as an under- spiritual authority of the Roman Catholic pope in the ground church in the empire in that it received no 18th century. The term Melkite derived from the com- official recognition from the sultan and the Orthodox higher clergy could bring charges against anyone sus- pected of Catholic sentiments. From this time in 1725 until the Greek War of Independence almost a cen- tury later, the Ottoman Empire engaged in the system- atic repression of Melkite Catholics in Damascus, while","374 menzil\/menzilhane menzil\/menzilhane The terms menzil or menzilhame refer to a stage or halting place on the road, particularly, in Aleppo and the Lebanese port cities, Catholic mer- from the 15th to the early 19th century, a post and relay chants and French consular officials often had to bribe station of the Ottoman state courier system. The Otto- Ottoman authorities to ignore what were officially ille- mans, like most of the post-Mongol land empires of gal religious services. Eurasia, made use of a state post and courier system for communicating orders from the imperial center to pro- With the start of the Greek War for Independence in vincial authorities and for the transmission of news from 1821, the Orthodox clergy in Istanbul came to be viewed the provinces and frontiers of the empire. As an Ottoman as disloyal to the Ottoman sultan. Seizing the opportu- institution, this courier system, the ulakl\u0131k (from Turkish nity, the Melkite Catholics emphasized their own loyalty ulak, ula\u011f, a term used for the state courier and for the to the sultan and their separation from the ethnic Greek institution itself) derives in its essentials from the jam clerics in the capital. In these circumstances, the Mel- (Persian yam), the empire-wide courier system of the kite Catholics of Aleppo received imperial permission to Mongols in the 13th to 14th century, and not from com- practice their rites publicly without interference. Simi- parable institutions in earlier Islamic polities, such as the lar rights were extended to Melkite Catholics elsewhere Abbasid barid. in Syria, but the community did not receive recognition as an independent millet, or officially represented reli- It is not certain exactly when the Ottoman men- gious unit, until 1848. zilhane system emerged as a fully developed state insti- tution. It is clear that in the early period of the state\u2019s On many levels, the creation of the Melkite Catho- history, in 1453 certainly and possibly up through the end lic Church represented no major break with the past of the 15th century, the ulakl\u0131k was an ad hoc institution. other than switching allegiance from patriarch to pope. The couriers charged with the transmission of orders The interior of the Melkite Catholic Churches continued from the sultan or other high officials were empowered to resemble those of other Eastern Orthodox with icons by their possession of a sultanic or vizirial courier order instead of statues and the clergy wore vestments similar (known as ulak h\u00fckmi, \u201ccourier order,\u201d or yol emri, \u201croad to those of their Orthodox counterparts. Melkite Catho- order\u201d) to requisition at will horses from travelers on the lic seminarians were allowed to marry before they took road. This unregulated courier system was, naturally, their final vows, although married priests, like those in subject to considerable abuse, and by the time of S\u00fcley- the Orthodox Church, could not be elevated to higher man I (r. 1520\u201366) or even earlier, its reform had become ranks within the church. a matter of some urgency. Lutfi Pasha, grand vizier in the middle years of S\u00fcleyman\u2019s reign, has traditionally\u2014but The main difference between the Orthodox and on the basis of his own testimony\u2014been credited with Catholic factions in the see, or jurisdiction, of the patri- overseeing the construction of post and relay stations arch of Antioch lay in the use of Arabic as the language (menzil, menzilhane) along the major routes (ulu yollar) of the Melkite Catholic Church. Although some prayers of the empire. In both Anatolia and Rumelia (the Asian remained in Greek, the liturgy of the Church shifted and European parts of the empire, respectively), there increasingly to Arabic. Emphasizing the role of Arabic were three principal routes, known as the route of the in the Melkite Catholic Church, Athanasios Dabbas, the left (sol kol), the route of the middle (orta kol), and the metropolitan (bishop) of Aleppo, established the first route of the right (sa\u011f kol), radiating (in Rumelia) from printing press using the Arabic script in the Ottoman Istanbul or Edirne, or from \u00dcsk\u00fcdar (in Anatolia). Empire in 1706. Additionally, Melkite artists produced a The Rumelian sa\u011f kol ran nominally from Istanbul (but dazzling array of religious icons using Syrian themes and administratively from Tekfur Ta\u011f\u0131 [Rodosto, Tekirda\u011f]) inscribed in Arabic rather than the traditional Greek. in Thrace, three stages (130 km) from the imperial Citing those developments, some historians have sought capital, from whence it extended in 23 stages (850 km; to portray the emergence of the Melkite Catholic Church 185 hours\u2019 riding time) to the menzilhane at G\u00f6rd\u00fcs in Syria as an early triumph of Arab nationalism. But the (Corinth), located at the entrance to the Morea (Greek driving force behind the discontent felt in the 18th cen- Peloponnese). The Rumelian orta and sa\u011f kols extended tury by formerly Orthodox Christians with regard to respectively to Belgrade and from thence to Buda and church hierarchy iseems to been driven by local concerns to Bender (Bendery, Ukraine), then across the southern rather than national ones, and it was not until the late Ukrainian steppe to Taman on the Sea of Azov. These 19th century that spokesmen would refer to the Melkite routes were much longer, as were the three routes across Catholic Church as an Arab church. Anatolia leading respectively to Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo. Much information on the issuing of courier Bruce Masters orders and the administration of the system from the Further reading: Robert Haddad, Syrian Christians in Muslim Society: An Interpretation (Princeton, N.J.: Princ- eton University Press, 1970); Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).","mid-16th century onward is to be found in the M\u00fchimme merchant communities 375 Defterleri (Registers of important affairs). same time, the introduction of a European-style public By the later 16th century and into the 18th century postal system and a telegraph system provided a mod- the Ottoman ulakl\u0131k, benefited substantially from the ernized mode of communication for the resurgent state reforms of Grand Vizier Lutfi Pasha and those made by absolutism that characterized the reign of Abd\u00fclhamid the K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc family. Each of the menzilhanes, or post II (1876\u20131909) stations, were established at distances ranging from 3 to 10 or more riding-miles (yol saat\u0131) apart along the ulu Colin Heywood yollar, or major routes. Branch lines diverged at intervals Further reading: Colin Heywood, \u201cThe Ottoman Men- to serve administrative centers that lay at some distance zilhane and Ulak System in Rumeli in the Eighteenth Cen- from the major routes and to connect with other signifi- tury\u201d in T\u00fcrkiye\u2019nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Tarihi, 1071\u20131920, cant routes, for instance, the western end of the Rumelian edited by Osman Okyar and Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k (Ankara: Metek- sol kol with the middle Morava valley and Belgrade. Each san, 1980), 179\u2013186 (reprinted in Colin Heywood, Writing menzilhane possessed an allocation of post-horses (men- Ottoman History: Documents and Interpretations (Aldershot, zil bargiri) and was in the charge of a postmaster (men- UK: Variorum, 2002), item X); Colin Heywood, \u201cThe Via zilci); under him was a staff of stable orderlies, smiths, Egnatia in the Ottoman Period: The Menzilhanes of the Sol and s\u00fcr\u00fcc\u00fcs, boys responsible for bringing back to the Kol in the Late 17th\/Early 18th Century,\u201d in The Via Egna- menzilhane the post-horses that the couriers had com- tia under Ottoman Rule, 1380\u20131699, edited by Elizabeth mandeered. The provision of horses was frequently made Zachariadou (Rethymnon: Crete University Press, 1996), the responsibility of the Ottoman taxpaying subjects or 129\u2013144 (reprinted in Writing Ottoman History: Documents reaya of particular villages in the vicinity of the menzil- and Interpretations (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 2002), item hane, the inhabitants of which were given tax exemptions XI); Colin Heywood, \u201cTwo Firmans of Mustafa II on the in return for their services. Reorganisation of the Ottoman Courier System (1108\/1696) (Documents from the Thessaloniki Cadi Sicills),\u201d Acta Ori- Supervision of the menzilhanes in a particular kaza entalia Hungarica, liv\/4 (Dec. 2001), 485\u2013496; Colin Hey- or judicial district was the responsibility of the local wood, \u201cTwo Firmans of Mustafa II on the Reorganisation of kad\u0131, who entered into his registers (sicill) details of the the Ottoman Courier System (1108\/1696) (Documents from traffic passing through the menzilhanes under his juris- the Thessaloniki Cadi Sicills), Appendix: Plates\u201d (Wendover, diction. From the 1690s into the 18th century kad\u0131s were UK: Dragomanate Press, 2002, [1]; 3 folding plates); Colin responsible for drawing up separate detailed registers Heywood, \u201cUlak,\u201d in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd. ed., vol. (menzil defteri) that gave a more or less full record of the 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013 ), 800a\u2013800b (with extensive fur- operation of local menzilhanes. These registers were usu- ther bibliography). ally drawn up twice a year, ending on Ruz-i H\u0131z\u0131r (April 23) and Ruz-\u0131 Kas\u0131m (October 23), that is, on dates that merchant communities Before the 19th century, long- mark the spring equinox (and the opening of the cam- distance trade in the Ottoman Empire was controlled by paigning season for the Ottoman army and navy) and networks of merchants who were linked by ties of fam- the traditional beginning of winter (and the end of the ily and ethnicity. These proved remarkably resilient to campaigning season), used for accounting purposes since changes in trade patterns, political upheavals, and foreign the days of the Persian Empire. Existing in large numbers competition. Before the 17th century, Italian merchant in the Turkish archives, these registers form a valuable communities from Genoa and Venice had dominated the source for the study of the operation of the system as it trade between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. These existed from the late 17th to the early 19th century. shared informal links similar to those of local Ottoman merchants in that they were not regulated or controlled A further development of the system also took place by trading companies but functioned as individual mer- in the late 17th century. As a result of the pressure placed chant houses based on extended families. But by the end on the system, particularly in Rumelia, by the interne- of the 16th century, the Italians were largely replaced by cine wars of the late 17th century, steps were taken to western European merchants who were agents for joint abolish the existing system and to replace it with a fee- stock companies with headquarters in Marseille, Amster- based (\u00fccret ile) one in which the requisitioning of post- dam, or London. The networks that handled trade to and horses was placed on a franchised basis, with a variable from the port cities of the Mediterranean by caravan fee charged depending on the length of the next stage continued to be dominated by local merchant communi- and the number of horses taken. This reformed system ties well into the 19th century. appears to have survived into the 19th-century Tanzi- mat reform era. At this point the Ottomans abandoned The most successful of these merchant communities the term be\u00e7 ula\u011f\u0131\u201d (Vienna post courier) and introduced were the Armenians of New Julfa in Iran. Shah Ismail, a new term with the same meaning, Viyana kuriri. At the ruler of Iran from 1502 to 1524, destroyed the original town of Julfa, which was located on the Araxes River, and","376 merchants trade, whereas mustemen merchants started to be inter- ested in Ottoman domestic trade. moved its Armenian inhabitants to a suburb outside his capital of Isfahan. He then gave the Armenian merchants Two terms were used for foreign merchants in a monopoly over the export of Iran\u2019s silk to the West. These Ottoman lands, mustemen and harbi. Even though it is merchants made connections with fellow Armenians unclear when exactly the term \u201cmustemen merchant\u201d already scattered across the Ottoman Empire. By the end of was first used, state records show that it was sometime the 16th century there was a network of Armenian trad- around 1740. With the exception of the limited trading ers that reached west as far as Amsterdam and east to the done by European merchants, mustemen merchants led port cities of India. In the Ottoman Empire, the main Ottoman foreign trade by the time of Selim III (r. 1789\u2013 hubs of commercial activity for these resident Armenian 1807). The rights and responsibilities of mustemen merchants were Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul. merchants were determined by ahdname (privileged agreement). According to provisions of the ahdname, With the decline of Iran\u2019s silk production in the 18th mustemen merchants and their commodities were pro- century, the network established by the Julfa Armenians tected by the empire while they sailed across Ottoman- collapsed. Local Ottoman Armenians established smaller controlled seas and traveled across Ottoman lands. They networks of their own that dominated commerce in were exempt from all regular taxes, except customs taxes. Anatolia and, to a lesser extent, Bulgaria. Syrian Mel- Mustemen merchants could go to their countries\u2019 consul- kite Catholics and Iraqi Jews established similar trad- ates for disputes among themselves. However, disputes ing networks in the 18th and 19th centuries, following between Ottoman citizens and foreign merchants were the pattern established two centuries earlier by the Julfa usually handled by local courts, although cases whose Armenians. The Syrian Catholics controlled much of the disputed amount exceeded 4,000 ak\u00e7e were processed by trade of Egypt while the Iraqi Jews moved to the colonial the courts in Istanbul. Merchants who died had their cities of British India and Southeast Asia, and eventually assets and commodities protected and given to legal to Hong Kong and Shanghai. inheritors by the Ottoman state. Bruce Masters Customs rates for mustemen merchants were very Further reading: Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade close to those of Muslim merchants during the 18th in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, century and sometimes even lower. By the 18th century, 1984). customs rates were 3 percent for Muslim merchants, 4 percent for non-Muslim merchants, and 5 percent for merchants Although the Ottoman state itself played mustemen merchants. In the following years, however, a major role in trade using its power of monopoly, the customs duties for mustemen merchants were lowered to empire also embraced an extraordinarily diverse and idio- 3 percent, and additional exemptions were established. syncratic set of merchant communities that included For instance, mustemen merchants did not have to pay merchant groups and individuals such as wholesalers, transit tax (bac) and internal tax in Ottoman cities and retailers, urban businessmen, and rural area merchants towns. who attended weekly bazaars and seasonal fairs. The orga- nized merchant class played a significant role in Ottoman Although foreign merchant classes had more trading trade. advantages than other merchant groups, they sometimes violated Ottoman customs regulations. They also became The Ottoman merchant class can be divided into enormously active in trading commodities that they three major merchant groups. The first group is foreign themselves produced and marketed. merchants, known as mustemen merchants; the second group is non-Muslim Ottoman citizens, called European In spite of their comparatively weak position in for- merchants; and the final group is Muslim Ottoman citi- eign trade, Ottomans were still dominant in the domes- zens or hayriye merchants. European merchants and hay- tic trade of the empire. Moreover, non-Muslim citizens riye merchants were not institutionalized until the end of played a role at the intersection between Muslim and for- the 18th century. eign merchants. Gradually, Greek, Jewish, and Armenian merchants gained new privileges to trade with European Until the 19th century, foreign merchants dominated countries. Later, the non-Muslim Ottoman merchants the Ottoman international trade, while Muslim and were recognized as European merchants. non-Muslim Ottoman merchants controlled the domes- tic trade. The predominance of Mustemen merchants in Berat (a title of privilege) and tercuman (interpreter- international trade was the result of trade privileges and ship) were two critical elements in the first appearance of conveniences granted them by capitulations previ- European merchants. The term berat described gradua- ously imposed on the Ottoman Empire. After the turn tion or assignment orders given by the sultan to individ- of the 19th century, both Muslim and non-Muslim Otto- uals appointed to different civil and public positions in man merchants became increasingly involved in foreign the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 18th cen-","tury merchants under foreign protection participating in Mevlevi Order 377 external and internal trade, such as mustemen merchants, were called beratl merchants (merchants with the title of Further reading: Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k and Donald Quataert, privilege). Many argue that the term beratl merchants eds., An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, was also first used to also describe European merchants 1300\u20131914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); around the beginning of the 18th century. Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cImtiyazat\u201d, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 1179\u201389; Bruce McGowan, A non-Muslim Ottoman citizen who wanted to Economic Life in the Ottoman Empire: Taxation, Trade and be a European merchant had to apply in writing to the the Struggle for Land, 1600\u20131800, (Cambridge: Cambridge Divan-\u0131 H\u00fcmayun (Imperial Council) to request a berat. University Press, 1981); Bruce Masters, The Origins of West- He also had to designate two Istanbul merchants as his ern Economic Dominance in the Middle East, Mercantilism substitutes and pay a fee to the Ottoman state treasury. and the Islamic Economy in Aleppo, 1600\u20131750, (Cambridge: European merchants might also hire their own servants Cambridge University Press, 1988). along with their two merchant substitutes. These ser- vants were usually hired from big trading cities, such as Mevlevi Order (Mevlevi Order of dervishes) The Istanbul and Izmir, to organize and maintain European Mevlevi Order of dervishes claimed to have originated merchants\u2019 trade activities. with the mystical Persian poet Jalal al-Din Rumi, who died in the city of Konya in 1273. His followers called him Muslim merchants began to raise objections to the Mevlana, or \u201cour teacher,\u201d and the order takes its name trade privileges granted to European merchants under from that title of respect. Rumi left as part of his legacy a Selim III. Similar complaints charging unfair competi- compendium of poems written in Persian known as the tion were also made to Mahmud II (r. 1808\u201339). Mus- Masnavi. For many adherents of Sufism, the Masnavi is lim merchants sought privileges and conveniences like considered the most sacred Islamic text after the Quran. those that European merchants enjoyed, including Besides his poetry, which has been translated into a num- travel, customs, judicial, and tax-related benefits. In ber of languages, Rumi is best remembered for introduc- the following years the Bab-\u0131 \u00c2li (Sublime Porte) pro- ing music and dance into Sufi practice as he said that vided similar privileges to Muslim Ottoman merchants, through dancing, one could reach the union with God expecting that the merchants would gain the same that Sufis sought. Rumi taught his disciples that, once that considerable profits previously reserved for European union was achieved, only poetry and music could convey merchants. This positive development for Muslim mer- the experience because simple language could not express chants led to a newly named merchant class, the hayriye the emotion that such a union could produce. His follow- merchant. ers ritualized the dance with an elaborate choreography and were called \u201cwhirling dervishes\u201d by Western visitors Hayriye merchants had to follow similar procedures to the Ottoman Empire. The word dervish is derived from as European merchants to receive their berat. The only the Persian word darvish or \u201cmystic.\u201d difference between the two was that hayriye merchants had to make smaller advance payments than European Rumi\u2019s son, Bahauddin Walad, reputedly started merchants. Like mustemen merchants, hayriye merchants the order and successive pirs, as the heads of the order were also able to trade commodities from Islamic coun- were called, built a lodge (tekke) of dervish cells around tries domestically or internationally. To make sea trad- the tomb of Rumi in Konya. The members of the order ing more convenient for hayriye merchants, maritime cultivated close relationships with men in political power trading was regulated by the Naval Arsenal (Tersane-i and by the 15th century, the Mevlevi Order had become Amire). If a hayriye merchant who was engaged in mari- closely associated with the Ottoman ruling elite. The time trade passed away, his eldest son would automati- pirs of the order wielded a great deal of power due to the cally be eligible to receive a new berat to continue his spiritual influence and wealth they derived from endow- father\u2019s business. ments made in the Mevlana\u2019s name. For these reasons the Ottoman sultans, while embracing the order spiri- Because of the hayriye merchants\u2019 affiliation with tually, often came into conflict with individual pirs and Muslim wholesalers and retailers in the Ottoman mar- removed them from their positions. But the leaders of kets, their religious and ethical background received the Mevlevi Order generally chose to avoid confrontation considerable attention. They and their employees were with the state and were rewarded by endowments to the expected to be honest, religious, and righteous. Hayriye order made by the royal family. merchants had to obtain a letter of goodwill confirming their good reputation from local officials in the place Since members of the order often taught music and where they resided and attach a power of attorney for calligraphy, the Mevlevi lodges became cultural centers two people to their berat applications. in the towns where they could be found. Also, as the Masnavi was written in Persian and the order valued Co\u015fkun \u00c7ak\u0131r See also dragoman; Janissaries.","378 Midhat Pasha One of the most important dervish orders in the Ottoman Empire, the Mevlevi dervishes are shown here in 1910 shortly before all dervish orders were banned in the early years of the Turkish Republic. (Postcard, personal collection of G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston) collections of the works of other Persian mystical poets, duties. Unlike his more successful contemporaries, he the Mevlevi lodges were among the few places where did not establish patronage relationships (intisab) with aspiring Ottoman intellectuals could study Persian lan- more powerful men. He did, however, do his job exceed- guage and literature. The dervishes also translated many ingly well and went on many fact-finding missions to of the texts they valued into Ottoman Turkish, making the empire\u2019s provinces where he gained an insight into them available to a wider audience. The Mevlevis were the realities of provincial life that was rare in the elite major contributors to what would become classical Otto- circles of power in Istanbul. Using that knowledge, Mid- man poetry (see classical Ottoman literature), hat helped to draft the new provincial law code of 1864 music, and the art of book illustration, as most of the and was assigned to the post of governor to the newly empire\u2019s artists were members of the order and learned formed Danube Province, in what is now Bulgaria. their skills in the Mevlevi lodges. It was meant to be a model province and Midhat, by all accounts, did an admirable job. He was recalled to Istan- Bruce Masters bul in 1868, but soon clashed with the powerful Grand Vizier Ali Pasha, which led to his appointment as gover- Midhat Pasha (Ahmet \u015eefik Midhat Pasha, Ahmed nor of the province of Baghdad in 1869. \u015eefik Midhat Pasha) (b. 1822\u2013d. 1884) Ottoman reformer, governor, and prime minister Ahmed \u015eefik Midhat\u2019s appointment to Baghdad, which was about Midhat Pasha, commonly known as Midhat Pasha, was as remote a posting as was possible, was clearly intended one of the leading activists in the Tanzimat reform as an exile to punish his brashness. Undeterred, he threw period (1839\u201376) of the Ottoman Empire. He was born himself enthusiastically into various projects that he in Istanbul into a well-established family of Muslim hoped would push the province into modernity, includ- scholars. He was given a traditional education, but he ing the destruction of Baghdad\u2019s city walls. During his also served as an apprentice in the government bureau- brief tenure as governor, Midhat Pasha built a tramway, cracy. He took his work seriously and often clashed with a hospital, schools, an orphanage, and factories to supply those above him who he thought were derelict in their the local military garrison. In addition, Midhat sought to extend Ottoman sovereignty into eastern Arabia by","re-establishing the Ottoman province of al-Ahsa along military acculturation 379 the Persian Gulf, in present-day Saudi Arabia. His most ambitious plan involved land reform, but here his lack military acculturation The term acculturation has of practical knowledge of Iraqi politics hurt his ambi- been used widely in the social sciences and has acquired tions for reform. The peasants, fearing that registration many definitions, with those associated with colonialism of land in their names might lead to their sons\u2019 conscrip- and imperialism being decidedly negative. The term is tion, preferred that their land instead be registered in more widely used, however, to refer to the mutual borrow- the names of their sheikhs. The land then passed legally ings between cultures such as those that occurred between into the hands of the tribal sheikhs, further impoverish- the Ottomans and their European rivals in the areas of ing the peasantry Midhat had hoped to help. Despite that military knowledge, culture, and technology. Contrary setback, the locals remembered him after he left Iraq to the usual understanding of the relationship between in 1872 as one of the few good governors the city had Europe and the Ottomans that posits uninterrupted and known. mutual hostilities, jihad and crusade were not the only ways in which these political powers engaged. While it Midhat returned to Istanbul with some success in is true that the Ottomans and their Christian adversaries Iraq to his credit, and Sultan Abd\u00fclaziz (r. 1861\u201376) devoted considerable resources to wars waged against one appointed him to the position of grand vizier in 1873. another, the rivalries between the European states and the But again, he found it difficult to work with his superior constant shifting in the European balance of power often and was dismissed after two months. For the next three led to temporary European-Ottoman alliances. Equally years, Midhat served on the Council of Ministers but his importantly, Europeans and Ottomans learned about one most important task was the drafting and implementa- another and, using this knowledge, they changed their tion of a constitution. Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. 1876\u2013 policies and updated their military capabilities. 1909) promulgated the Ottoman constitution in 1876 and Midhat was again appointed grand vizier in Decem- THE NATURE OF RELATIONS ber 1876. However, Midhat ran afoul of Abd\u00fclhamid, who had not wanted the constitution in the first place. Beginning with Venice in 1454, all major European powers Dismissed from his post in February 1877 and sent into stationed resident ambassadors in Istanbul, often shared exile in Europe, Midhat was again appointed to an Otto- information about their rivals with the Ottomans, and man governorship, this time through the intervention concluded peace and commercial treaties with the Otto- of the British. In 1878 he began a two-year term as gov- man government, known in Europe as the Sublime Porte. ernor of the newly reorganized and renamed province Despite prohibitions by the papacy and European mon- of Syria. As was the case in his tenure as governor of archs, European merchant ships\u2014especially those belong- Baghdad, Midhat threw himself into the reform of the ing to France in the mid-16th century and the Protestant province. He founded a public library in Damascus and states of England and the Dutch Republic in the 17th cen- greatly expanded the number of government schools in tury\u2014engaged in contraband trade, bringing weapons the province. Although Midhat faced Druze resistance and ammunition, as well as other prohibited goods, to to his centralizing policies, he was again genuinely pop- Istanbul and Ottoman port cities. In return, the Ottomans ular, as he had been in Baghdad. He resigned his post granted trade, legal, and religious privileges, known as in 1880 as he felt Istanbul was not giving him the sup- capitulations, to friendly European states, whose mer- port he needed to govern effectively. Midhat then served chants supplied Istanbul with weapons and with such stra- briefly as governor of Izmir but he was recalled in 1881 tegically important raw materials as tin and lead. to Istanbul where he was tried and convicted for the murder of Sultan Abd\u00fclaziz, a charge that most histori- There was never any iron-curtain-like separation ans believe was trumped up. British pressure prevented between the Ottomans and Europe. The two groups fre- the sultan from imposing the death sentence upon him quently came into contact with one another in direct so he was imprisoned in Yemen, which served as the military conflicts between Ottomans and their Christian Ottoman Empire\u2019s Siberia. He was assassinated there in adversaries in the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Hungary, his cell three years later. and the Black Sea littoral, as well as in prohibited trade in weaponry and war materials, Christian captives, and in Bruce Masters the passage of Christian renegades and adventurers who Further reading: Shimon Shamir, \u201cThe Moderniza- served in the Ottoman military. These were all channels tion of Syria: Problems and Solutions in the Early Period of by which the opposing parties learned effectively about Abd\u00fclHamit,\u201d in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle their adversaries\u2019 weaponry and tactics. East: The Nineteenth Century, edited by William Polk and Richard Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, CHANNELS OF ACCULTURATION: 1968) 351\u201382. MILITARY TREATISES Until the end of the 16th century the Ottomans were mil- itarily superior to their Christian adversaries, and before","380 military acculturation tises, the Tractatus of Ser Mariano di Giacomo Vanni, (\u201cil Taccola,\u201d 1381\u2013ca. 1458) reached the sultan before the the 1800s, they continued to represent a major military siege of Constantinople in 1453. Pietro Sardi\u2019s L\u2019 Arti- threat to Europe. Consequently, Europeans were careful glieria (Venice, 1621), one of the most celebrated books to study the Ottomans\u2019 art of warfare. The hundreds on cannon and siege warfare in 17th-century Europe, of treatises written in Latin and other European lan- was translated into Ottoman Turkish and was used by guages that were published before 1600, in addition to the sultan\u2019s gunners. Muslims from Spain also played an the thousands of unpublished ambassadorial and con- important role in the transmission of knowledge regard- sular reports preserved in the archives of Venice, Paris, ing the art of war. The Manual de Artilleria, an Islamic Marseilles, and Vienna, clearly demonstrate this interest. treatise on artillery, was written by Andalusian sailor and Italian, Spanish, German, and Hungarian military com- master gunner Captain Ibrahim b. Ahmad (also known manders and experts who fought against the Ottomans as al-Rais Ibrahim b. Ahmad al-Andalusi) in Tunis in the Mediterranean or in Hungary authored several between 1630 and 1632 in the author\u2019s native Spanish valuable treatises on the Ottoman military. The works but using Arabic script. Besides his own experience, the written by Lazarus Freiherr von Schwendi (Emperor author relied heavily on Louis Collado\u2019s Pl\u00e1tica Manual Maximilian II\u2019s captain-general in Hungary in 1565\u201368), de Artiller\u00eda (1592, Italian original from 1586), the most Giorgio Basta (Emperor Rudolf II\u2019s commander in Hun- famous European treatise on gunnery in the late 16th gary and Transylvania in 1596\u20131606), Raimondo Mon- and 17th century. In 1638, Captain Ibrahim found an tecuccoli (field marshal and commander in chief of the able translator, the former interpreter of the sultan of Habsburg armies in 1664\u201380), and Mikl\u00f3s Zr\u00ednyi (Nikola Morocco and a fellow Morisco (\u201cLittle Moor,\u201d or former Zrinski, a Hungarian\/Croatian statesman and military Spanish Muslim who became a baptized Christian), who, leader, 1620\u201364) contain some of the best observations with his assistance, rendered the work into Arabic. Later regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the Ottoman the translator\u2019s son made several manuscript copies of the military and gave the Europeans useful advice on how Arabic work, one of which was dedicated and sent to Sul- to defeat the Ottomans. Luiggi Ferdinando Marsigli\u2014a tan Murad IV (r. 1623\u201340). Bolognese military engineer and polyhistor who fought against the Ottomans in Habsburg service in the 1680s The systematic translation and publishing of West- and 1690s\u2014compiled the best concise description of the ern military and technical books in the Ottoman Empire contemporary Ottoman army (Stato militare dell\u2019Imperio began in connection with the military reforms of sultans ottomano, 1732). Selim III (r. 1789\u20131807) and Mahmud II (r. 1808\u201339) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The first among Several military, scientific, and technical treatises these, published in Ottoman Turkish in the early 1790s, in Europe were also inspired by the \u201cTurkish peril\u201d and were French military treatises and textbooks, often older aimed at strengthening Europe\u2019s military against the ones such as the treatises on warfare, sieges, and mines Ottomans. Italian mathematician Niccol\u00f2 Tartaglia hesi- by S\u00e9bastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633\u20131707). These tated at first to publish his Nova Scientia and make public texts were originally written between the 1680s and the his discoveries regarding the path of cannon balls. How- early 1700s, though some were printed only in the 1730s. ever, he decided to print his work in 1537 and dedicated Many of these works were translated for students in the it to the Duke of Urbino so as to better prepare the duke\u2019s newly established military technical schools: the Impe- gunners in the face of a \u201cTurkish threat.\u201d rial Naval Engineering School (M\u00fchendishane-i Bahri-i H\u00fcmayun), the Artillery School (Top\u00e7u Mektebi), and Although linguistic and cultural barriers signifi- the Imperial Land Engineering School (M\u00fchendishane- cantly limited the extent to which the Ottomans could i Berr-i H\u00fcmayun). In addition to these, lecture notes profit from the thriving European literature on the art of of French and other foreign teachers at the military and war, some of the best works written in Europe reached naval schools were also translated and printed in either the government in Istanbul. It is uncertain whether the the French Embassy\u2019s Istanbul press or in one of the printed copy of De re militari (1472) by Roberto Valturio newly established Ottoman printing houses. (1413\u20131484), the first technical military treatise to appear in print, reached the Ottomans during the reign of Sultan CHANNELS OF ACCULTURATION: EXPERTS Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381), but it is known that a manuscript copy of the work was sent to him in 1461. While these and similar works may have played some It is possible that the printed treatise now in the Topkap\u0131 role in the diffusion of European military technology Palace Library was obtained only in 1526 during the reign to the Ottomans, the knowledge brought to Istanbul by of Sultan S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366) from the library of the European military experts was more significant. There Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus (r. 1458\u201390), when were many ways by which European military experts the Ottomans captured the medieval Hungarian capital of came to the Ottoman Empire. Some\u2014such as Master Buda. However, Mehmed II acquired other works. A copy of one of the most influential 15th-century military trea-","Orban, a Hungarian by nationality and possibly German military acculturation 381 by birth, whose cannons played an important role in the capture of Constantinople in 1453\u2014offered their services also employed Christian artillerymen from Serbia, Bos- to the sultan hoping for a better salary and the possibility nia, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. Ottoman pay registers of social advancement. Others, like J\u00f6rg of Nuremberg, from the latter part of the 15th century and the first half were captured in wars and raids; when their skills were of the 16th century list Christian smiths, stone carvers, discovered, the Ottomans forced them to use their skills masons, caulkers, and shipbuilders in Ottoman Balkan for the benefit and glory of the sultan. J\u00f6rg was captured fortresses. In the 16th century there were Marrano (or in 1460 in Bosnia and subsequently worked for the Otto- seciet Jews), Jewish, French, Venetian, Genoese, Spanish, mans for 20 years. Others arrived in Istanbul through a Sicilian, English, German, Hungarian, and Slav experts state-organized mass resettlement policy (s\u00fcrg\u00fcn) prac- working at the Ottoman cannon foundries. French and ticed mainly in the 15th and 16th centuries. English military engineers aided the Ottomans in the 17th century. Some worked for the Ottomans voluntarily, Foreign military experts\u2014especially French and others were captured during wars and raids and were English\u2014played an important role in the military reforms forced to serve the sultan. In addition to Bonneval and of the 18th and 19th centuries. The French renegade Tott, some 300 French officers and engineers worked for Claude-Alexandre Comte de Bonneval, known in the the Ottomans in the 1780s. empire as Humbarac\u0131 Ahmed Pasha, established a new Corps of Bombardiers (Humbarac\u0131 Oca\u011f\u0131) in 1735. The With regard to the development of Ottoman nautical bombardiers and their officers were, for the first time in technology and naval warfare, European renegades and the history of the corps, trained in military engineering, corsairs of Christian origin were especially important. ballistics, and mathematics. Their instructor was another Italian artisans worked in the Ottoman shipyards, and French renegade called M\u00fchendis (\u201cengineer\u201d) Selim, many of the experts aboard Ottoman vessels were Italians who had been educated in military engineering and for- and Greeks. The Barbary states, too, were a rich source tress building in France. Although the corps faltered after of expert sailors. Many of the admirals of the Ottoman its founder\u2019s death in 1747, it was revived under Selim III navy came from there. Several of the corsairs started and Mahmud II. The corps proved to be an ideal environ- their careers as Christian converts to Islam, like the Alge- ment for acculturation and the synthesis of European and rian corsair-turned-admiral Ulu\u00e7 Ali Pasha, originally Ottoman culture: an Ottoman engineer, Mehmed Said from Calabria; he was the most experienced Ottoman Efendi, who taught geometry at the corps, invented a new commander at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto and later instrument for land surveying by combining the Euro- became the grand admiral of the Ottoman navy. Such pean telescope and the Ottoman quadrant. corsairs of Christian origin provided the Ottoman navy with vital information concerning the geography of the Another well-known European in Ottoman ser- Italian and Spanish Mediterranean as well as the military vice was Baron Fran\u00e7ois de Tott, a French cavalryman and naval skills of Istanbul\u2019s Christian adversaries. of Hungarian origin, and France\u2019s consul in the Crimean Khanate in the late 1760s. Although Tott remained on The employment of foreign military technicians and France\u2019s payroll, between 1770 and 1775 the Ottomans artisans was not unique to the Ottomans as it was also a occasionally contracted with him to help them rebuild well-established practice in Europe. Venice, the Ottomans\u2019 the forts of the Dardanelles, cast cannons, and train artil- main adversary in the Mediterranean in the 15th century, lerymen. As a former cavalryman in France\u2019s famous hus- also relied on foreign\u2014mostly German\u2014gunners. This sar regiment, Tott had only limited knowledge of fortress changed only in the mid-16th century after the estab- building, siege warfare, and cannon casting, and thus lishment of the Italian scuole de\u2019 bombardieri or training the value of his services to the Ottomans is uncertain. schools for gunners. Spain, Istanbul\u2019s main rival in the However, his Memoirs, in which he unashamedly exag- 16th-century Mediterranean, also lacked expert native gerated his role in Ottoman service, suited the tastes of ironworkers and employed Italian, German, and Flemish his European readers and enjoyed unmatched popularity. foundrymen. Employing foreign technicians from coun- His often superficial observations and inflated comments tries that were considered to be on the cutting edge was are partly responsible for perpetuating myths regarding the major means throughout Europe to acquire new mili- the 18th-century Ottoman Empire and its military, such tary technology. The Ottomans were very much a part of as the Ottomans\u2019 supposed preference for giant cannons this transfer of early modern military technology. and their alleged conservatism. What made the Ottoman case unique, however, was The great majority of European experts, however, that Istanbul was ideally placed for technology diffusion. were not known by name. Professional miners from While experts from the mining centers of medieval Serbia, Novo Brdo in Serbia were used by Mehmed II in 1453 to Bosnia, Greece, and Asia Minor brought their knowledge dig mines under the walls of Constantinople. Mehmed II of metallurgy to Istanbul, Muslim blacksmiths contrib- uted their knowledge of the metalworking techniques of the Islamic East that produced the world-renowned","382 military engineering schools fostered by the frequency of interstate violence within Europe, it was Ottoman pressure and military superi- Damascus blades. Istanbul, with its Turkish and Persian ority in central and eastern Europe that constituted the artisans and blacksmiths, Armenian and Greek miners greatest challenge and required adequate countermea- and sappers, Bosnian, Serbian, Turkish, Italian, German, sures. Likewise, Ottoman methods of resource mobiliza- and later French, English, and Dutch gun makers and tion and warfare were taken into consideration during engineers, as well as its Venetian, Dalmatian, and Greek the reorganization of the Muscovite military under Ivan shipwrights and sailors, proved to be an ideal center for IV (Ivan the Terrible, grand prince of Moscow 1533\u201347; technological dialogue. All this was possible because of czar of Russia 1547\u201384), whose reforms were in turn the pragmatism of the elite and the flexibility of the Otto- influenced by the observations of the Ottoman military man system. by Ivan Peresvetov, the early Russian social critic who presented his Two Books to Ivan the Terrible. Peresvetov THE OTTOMANS\u2019 ROLE IN THE DIFFUSION OF regarded the Ottoman Empire and the armed forces of MILITARY TECHNOLOGY Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381) as a model wor- thy of emulation. In the long run, the \u201cTurkish threat\u201d Another notable feature of European-Ottoman mili- and Ottoman military superiority fostered widespread tary acculturation is the Ottomans\u2019 role in the diffusion technological and scientific experimentation and military of gunpowder technology in the Middle East and Asia. reforms in central and eastern Europe. Ottoman experts played roles of varying importance in the transmission of gunpowder technology to the khan- G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston ates in Turkestan, the Crimean Khanate, Abyssinia, Further reading: G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston, \u201cBehind the Turk- Gujerat in India, and the sultanate of Atche in Suma- ish War Machine: Gunpowder, Technology and Muni- tra. Istanbul sent cannons and hand-held firearms to tions Industry in the Ottoman Empire, 1450\u20131700,\u201d in The the Mamluk sultanate, Gujarat, Abyssinia, and Yemen Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War through the (before the latter two were incorporated into the empire). Age of Enlightenment, edited by Brett Steele and Tamera And Ottoman experts Ali Kulu, Rumi, and Mustafa Dorland (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 101\u2013133; played a significant role in the diffusion of firearms Virginia Aksan, Ottomans and Europeans: Contacts and technology and Ottoman methods of warfare in Babur\u2019s Conflicts (Istanbul: Isis, 2004); Ekmeleddin \u0130hsano\u011flu, Sci- Mughal India. Even Safavid Iran, the Ottomans\u2019 main ence, Technology, and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: rival in the East, acquired Ottoman artillery and muskets Western Influence, Local Institutions, and the Transfer of when Prince Bayezid rebelled against his father Sultan Knowledge (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004); Rhoads Mur- S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366) and escaped to Iran in 1559. phey, \u201cThe Ottoman Attitude towards the Adoption of Ottoman artillerymen, or rumlu tofangchis as they were Western Technology: The Role of the Efrenc\u00ee Technicians in known in Iran, were members of the Safavid army under Civil and Military Applications\u201d in Contributions \u00e0 l\u2019histoire Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524\u201376). \u00e9conomique et sociale de l\u2019Empire ottoman, edited by Jean- Louis Bacqu\u00e9-Grammont and Paul Dumont (Leuven: OTTOMAN IMPACT ON EUROPE Peeters, 1983), 287\u2013298. Perhaps the most significant legacy of Ottoman military military engineering schools See education; M\u00fch- culture, however, at least in terms of the development of endishane. modern Europe, is the influence of the Ottoman army\u2019s growth, development, and actions on the European art military organization See warfare. of war and military infrastructure. Ottoman expan- sion and military superiority, especially in the 16th military slavery Military slavery was a well-known century, played an important role in Habsburg military- practice in the Islamic world from the 830s, when the fiscal modernization and in the creation of what became Abbasid Caliphate (750\u20131258) that ruled much of the known as Habsburg central Europe. In order to match Muslim world from Baghdad began to recruit Turkish- Ottoman firepower, Europeans took countermeasures. speaking bodyguards and later mounted archers from These included the modernization of fortress systems Central Asia, predominantly as slave soldiers (ghulam, (the introduction of Italian bastioned fortifications that mamluk). Though only few thousand in number, the could withstand cannon sieges, known as trace italienne, ghulams\u2019 new military technique (mounted archery), into central and eastern Europe); an increase in the qual- tactics (feigned retreat), skills in horsemanship, and the ity and production of the armaments industries; a change endurance of their horses significantly enhanced the in the cavalry-infantry ratio; improvements in the train- ing and tactics of field armies; and the modernization of the state\u2019s administration and finances. While all these were part of a larger phenomenon, often referred to as the European military revolution, and were undoubtedly","Muslim armies\u2019 speed, maneuverability, and firepower. millet 383 Soon, most armies of the Islamic heartlands had Turkish slave soldiers, and they often became key military figures. empire, assisted their relatives and compatriots, such Since military and administrative careers were not sepa- as Mehmed Pasha of the Sokollu family, who served rated, members of this caste also rose to become promi- as grand vizier from 1565 to 1579. Born into a Serbian nent in the administration and bureaucracy as viziers, family, educated in a monastery, and recruited through generals, and governors. the dev\u015firme, Mehmed Pasha, then serving as the empire\u2019s third in command after the grand vizier and The military slave system not only revolutionized the second vizier, played a crucial role in re-establishing Muslim warfare, it also had far-reaching political conse- the Serbian Patriarchate (1557) in Pe\u0107, whose first patri- quences. Recruited from among outsiders with no pre- arch, Makariye, was either Mehmed Pasha\u2019s nephew or vious political allegiance and entirely dependent on the brother. From the mid-16th century onward, nepotism state for its subsistence, the slave army was a loyal and and favoritism among the sultan\u2019s slave administrators, effective force in the hands of caliphs and other Muslim as well as their ethnic-regional rivalry in the highest rulers. However, isolated from the rest of society, their echelons of the Ottoman administration and army, did main concern was to preserve their status by dominating much to weaken the empire, as did the deterioration of the government and policy. This led to the weakening of the once elite Janissary corps. the Abbasid Caliphate and the emergence of local dynas- ties and military dictatorships that engaged in bitter wars G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston against one another. Further reading: David Ayalon, The Mamluk Military Society (London: Variorum Reprints, 1979); David Ayalon, Of the military regimes established by Turkish Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in Power Relation- slave soldiers in the Middle East, the Mamluk Empire ships (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999); Sussan Babaie, Kathryn (1250\u20131517) of Egypt and Syria was the most sophis- Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad, ticated, with a professional cavalry capable of mobilizing Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran (London: I.B. between 40,000 and 70,000 troops in the late 13th cen- Tauris, 2004); Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131650 tury. The Safavid dynasty that ruled Iran from the early (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Metin Kunt, \u201cEth- 16th century through the 1730s also employed military nic-Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century slaves in the army and administration. Recruited mainly Ottoman Establishment.\u201d International Journal of Middle from among Georgians, Armenians, and the peoples of East Studies 5 (1974): 223\u201339. the northern Caucasus, they were established to coun- terbalance the Ottoman Janissaries, the sultan\u2019s elite millet The word millet comes from the Arabic word standing infantry whose members were also of slave for nation, milla, but in the Ottoman Empire it came to origin. The Safavid slave army was also instrumen- mean a religious community, specifically, non-Muslim tal in strengthening the authority of the Safavid ruler religious minorities represented within the empire by against the Turkoman tribes of Persia, dominated by the an official political leader. Official Ottoman correspon- K\u0131z\u0131lba\u015f. dence dealing with the non-Muslims of the empire in the early 19th century consistently affirmed that non- The Ottoman Janissaries differed from the slave sol- Muslims were organized into three officially sanctioned diers of the Islamic heartlands in one important respect. millets: Greek Orthodox, headed by the ecumenical Unlike the Abbasids or the Mamluks, who purchased patriarch, Armenians, headed by the Armenian patri- their slave soldiers from outside the lands of Islam, the arch of Istanbul, and Jews, who after 1835 were headed Ottoman sultans recruited their slave troops through the by the hahamba\u015f\u0131 in Istanbul. The bureaucrats further dev\u015firme, or child levy system, from among the empire\u2019s asserted that this had been the tradition since the reign Christian subjects. This practice continued despite the of Sultan Mehmed I (r. 1413\u201321). fact that Islamic law (sharia) forbade the enslavement of Christians and Jews who, as dhimmis or \u201cpeople of the The millets as constituted in the 19th century were book,\u201d lived under the protection of a Muslim ruler. hierarchically organized religious bodies with a decidedly political function. Each was headed by a cleric (patriarch The Ottomans believed that the enslaved, forcibly or chief rabbi, known in Ottoman Turkish as the millet converted to Islam, became better soldiers than the ba\u015f\u0131) who was appointed by the sultan, usually from a list Turks, because after their conversion they became zeal- of candidates provided by the community\u2019s leaders, and ous for their new religion and hostile to their former resident in Istanbul. But beyond that, the millet ba\u015f\u0131 was kin. This belief was only partly true. Sources indicate largely free to order the affairs of his community as long that the youths recruited for military and state ser- as he remained loyal to the sultan. More importantly, as vice through the child levy system did not forget their an officially sanctioned bureaucracy, the millet\u2019s leader- native language, culture, or homeland. Many, especially ship could command the civil forces of empire, such as those who attained high government offices in the","384 miniature painting ish communities soon followed, although their experi- mentation was much less democratic than that of the governors and kad\u0131s, to implement its will over an errant Armenians. flock. Some historians have seen this trend in local gov- Many historians have accepted the 19th century ernance among the various religious communities as bureaucrats\u2019 claim at face value and have asserted that the contributing to the rise of nationalist sentiments among millet system as it existed in the 19th century had been the various Christian communities where religion and a part of Ottoman rule since the 15th century. Recent nationality could be conflated. The children of the com- scholarship has shown it was, in fact, a relatively recent munities were educated separately from Muslims and Ottoman political innovation, even if its workings were primarily in the language of their community. They were always cloaked in the rhetoric of an ageless tradition. also taught the separate history of their community and its culture. It is this separate education that many believe By the late 18th century, the Ottoman authorities inspired these groups to see themselves as separate were consistently intervening in disputes within and peoples. among the religious communities to support the estab- lished religious hierarchies against internal dissent. This Bruce Masters was especially true within the Christian communities Further reading: Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, where there was conflict between Catholic and Orthodox eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 2 vols. Christian factions that eventually split every Christian (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982). millet into two competing bodies. miniature painting See illustrated manuscripts Unlike the Christian churches, the Jews of the empire and miniature paintings. did not have a pre-existing clerical hierarchy. In the place of patriarchs and bishops, their religious communities missionaries Christians in western Europe viewed functioned autonomously in each of the Ottoman cit- the Ottoman Empire as a promising field for missionary ies they inhabited. Although the Jews were recognized activity. It seemed to them that its inhabitants were sunk as a separate religious community by both Muslim legal in misery and ignorance, waiting to receive the spiritual scholars and Ottoman officials, the Jews did not seek for- truth they could provide. Both Roman Catholic and, mal status as a millet until 1835 when the Ottoman gov- later, Protestant missionaries were aware that any attempt ernment, in its attempt to standardize the way it dealt to convert Muslims would result in the death of the mis- with each of the minority religious communities, pushed sionary and the convert alike. Their efforts therefore the Jewish community leaders to name a chief rabbi were initially directed at the empire\u2019s Jews. But as these (hahamba\u015f\u0131) for the empire. remained stubbornly resistant, both Protestant and Cath- olic missionaries soon turned their spiritual attention to After the start of the Greek War of Independence the sultan\u2019s Christian subjects. in 1821, the prestige of the Orthodox ecumenical patri- arch in Istanbul plummeted and the special relationship CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES that had existed between the Greek Orthodox Church and the sultan ended. Faced with pressure from the Euro- Catholic missions to the Ottoman Empire began in pean Catholic powers, notably France and Austria, the the 17th century. The Catholic strategy, born out of Ottomans recognized the Catholics as a millet in 1830. the Counter-Reformation that followed the fracture of Later, that millet would only include the Armenian Cath- the Church in the 16th century, was to woo the higher olic community, as the various other Uniate communi- clergy of the Orthodox Christian churches into com- ties (those Christian sects that recognized the Roman munion with Rome, thereby securing them from the Catholic pope as their spiritual head) pressed for recog- possibility of contagion by what Catholics viewed as nition on their own behalf. By the end of the empire, the the Protestant \u201cheresy.\u201d In the process, Roman Catho- Ottoman officials recognized 12 separate Christian com- lics were content to overlook many existing doctri- munities as millets. nal differences and allow the outward symbols of the faith\u2014icons, clerical vestments, and titles\u2014to remain During the Tanzimat reform period of the mid- as they had always been. Indeed, the Roman Catho- 19th century, the Ottoman government pushed the mil- lic clergy usually donned the cassocks and turbans of lets to reform their internal governance, including school their Eastern-rite counterparts while traveling in the systems directed independently within each community. Ottoman Empire. Their self-proclaimed spiritual mis- Reform was usually resisted by the clergy and advanced sion had decidedly political overtones as it was ulti- by the laity as a way of wresting some political author- ity away from the clerics. In 1863 the Armenians were the first community to write their own constitution gov- erning the internal laws of their millet. This constitution transferred much of the community\u2019s governance to an elected body of laity and clergy. The Orthodox and Jew-","mately designed to extend both the spiritual and the missionary schools 385 political authority of the pope by convincing the higher clergy of the churches of the East to accept the bishop oped into major universities that trained students from of Rome as the first among equals. But local Chris- all the religious communities in scientific and techno- tians had political goals of their own, and the process logical fields that were largely unavailable in govern- that led to the emergence in the Ottoman realms of the ment schools. These efforts did result in the conversion Uniate churches\u2014that is, churches that retained their of some few to Protestantism. In 1914 there were about own liturgies but recognized the spiritual authority of 65,000 Protestants in the Ottoman Empire out of a total the pope\u2014was often driven as much by those ambitions of 18 million people. Most of those were Armenians who as by dreams of a \u201cuniversal church\u201d with the pope, or converted from the Armenian Apostolic Church. In bishop of Rome, at its head. the same year there were approximately 250,000 Catho- lics, divided among five different groups. With relatively Most European Catholic missionaries left the Otto- few converts, the more important lasting impact of the man Empire by the end of the 18th century, especially missionaries, both Protestant and Catholic, on the inhab- after the Jesuit order was disbanded. But their presence itants of the Ottoman Empire was their introduction of was increasingly unnecessary as local priests who had Western-style education and the educational institutions converted to Catholicism, many of whom had been edu- they founded. cated in Rome, began to minister to their communities. Local seminaries were also established and at the start of OTTOMAN RESPONSE TO MISSIONARIES the 19th century, what had begun as a missionary church had become a mature, local institution. Although the Ottoman government never outlawed mis- sionary activity, it showed concern about the presence of PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES missionaries on Ottoman soil at several different times. In the 18th century, under pressure from the Orthodox The Protestant missionaries arrived in the Ottoman Christian clergy, the Ottoman authorities forbade the Empire with the Second Great Awakening in the Eng- Roman Catholic clergy from teaching Ottoman children, lish-speaking world at the start of the 19th century. Born giving medical treatment to local people, or offering in part out of a reaction to an emerging secularism in them the sacraments. In theory, the clergy\u2019s presence in their societies as elites in both England and the United the empire was to minister to Roman Catholic merchants States embraced the ideas of Enlightenment writers, this from western Europe under terms established in the movement stressed individual salvation and the neces- Capitulations. The stipulated limits of their activities sity for evangelization of those not yet \u201csaved\u201d whether were rarely enforced, however. During the reign of Sultan they were \u201cpagans\u201d or \u201cnominal Christians.\u201d Accord- Abd\u00fclhamid II (1876\u20131909), the concern was that Prot- ingly, the Protestants placed a high premium on Bible estant missionaries would proselytize among groups that literacy and sought the spiritual conversion of local were either heterodox Muslim, such as the Druze and Christians on an individual basis through Christian Alawi, or not Muslim at all, as in the case of the Yazi- education. Despite the attention to the salvation of the dis. Again, no move was made to forbid the missionar- souls of those to whom they ministered, the Protestant ies from converting Christians, but the sultan warned his mission had unintended political results in that it aided officials in the provinces to be vigilant to prevent non- the growth of nationalist sentiments among the empire\u2019s Christians from converting to Christianity. In part, the Christian populations. The missionaries made the con- government\u2019s attempt to bring a modern educational sys- scious choice to emphasize their students\u2019 vernacular tem to the provinces was propelled by fear that, without languages rather than teaching them in either the native an Islamic alternative, Muslim students would attend the English of most missionaries or in the state\u2019s official missionary schools. Ottoman Turkish, and that choice is seen by many his- torians as contributing to a nationalist consciousness Bruce Masters among those the missionaries taught. Further reading: Charles Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453\u20131923 (Cam- The American missionaries were drawn to the field bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Eleanor Tejirian of education as they felt that only when the peoples of the and Reeva Spector Simon, eds., Altruism and Imperialism: Ottoman Empire had been exposed to a \u201cmodern\u201d edu- Western Cultural and Religious Missions in the Middle East cation would they be intellectually and spiritually open (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). to their religious mission. To further that goal of creat- ing an intellectual elite, the Congregationalist Ameri- missionary schools While missionary activities had can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions started in the Ottoman territories as early as the 16th established Robert College in Istanbul in 1863 and the century, more organized American and European mis- Syrian Protestant College in Beirut in 1866. Both devel- sionary endeavors began in the 19th century. These","386 missionary schools The staff of Anatolia College, one of the colleges of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the Ottoman Empire, and their families in front of the main building of the college in Merzifon (a town in modern-day Amasya province, Turkey) (Photograph \u00a9 American Board Library, Istanbul) activities aimed both to bring Christianity to the peoples close connections with the papacy and Jesuit activi- of the Ottoman Empire and to revitalize Eastern Christi- ties were greatly restricted in France, Spain, and Por- anity in the region. Missionaries to the Ottoman Empire tugal, culminating in the suppression of the order by were also attracted to the Holy Land. Christian mission- the papacy in 1773. All French missionary societies aries were forbidden by imperial authorities from prose- were suppressed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809, lytizing among Ottoman Muslims. Therefore the Western ending French recruitment for a generation. However, missionaries concentrated primarily on the Jewish com- the Catholic missionary enterprise gained momentum munity and the many Christian minority groups in the in the mid-19th century mainly because of the restora- Ottoman Empire, including Armenians, Greeks, Bulgar- tion of the Jesuits in 1814, the rivalry between Catholic ians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Copts, and and Protestant missionaries, and the Tanzimat reform Maronites. period in the Ottoman Empire. This momentum led to better Jesuit schools in Istanbul in the 1850s, offering The Roman Catholic Church had long been attempt- a liberal education that included instruction in modern ing to bring Orthodox Christians into communion languages and fine arts. with Rome. In 1622, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) was created The 19th century was marked by the rapid and wide- by the pope in order to coordinate Catholic mission- spread expansion of foreign missionary activities on the ary activities. Protected by various European powers, part of many Protestant churches in the United States particularly France, a number of Catholic orders and and Europe, and by the late 19th century there had been brotherhoods, including the Capuchins, Franciscans, a tremendous growth in the Catholic missionary enter- Carmelites, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits, prise. Thus in Lebanon and Syria, Catholic missionaries worked in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. They established schools to compete with growing Protestant established schools mainly for the Eastern Christians, missionary educational efforts. By 1914, French Catholic but before the 19th century these were typically no better missionaries claimed to be teaching more than half of all than the local schools. the children enrolled in schools in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. By that same year the Jesuits, who had estab- The second half of the 18th century, when secu- lished the Universit\u00e9 St. Joseph in Beirut in 1881, were larism and anti-clericalism were on the rise in Europe, running 150 schools in the cities and rural areas of Leba- was a period of decline in missionary activity. The non and Syria. European Catholic monarchies resented the Jesuits\u2019","The Protestant missionary endeavor in the Ottoman missionary schools 387 Empire began in the early 19th century and was largely dominated by two organizations, the American Board stand the workings of the \u201cAnglo-American mind.\u201d Lan- of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), guage was always a major issue, and the ABCFM decided based in Boston, and the Church Missionary Society, that instruction in its schools should be in the vernacu- based in London. The ABCFM was born in 1810 in the lar. Thus Arabic was used in Mardin, Mosul, Syria, and midst of the Second Great Awakening, a diverse series of the other Arab provinces; Armenian was used in eastern religious revivals that resulted in the foundation of sev- Anatolia; Turkish was employed in central Anatolia; and eral benevolent societies and missionary organizations in Greek, Armenian, Turkish, and Bulgarian were the pre- the United States. By the 19th century, the ABCFM had ferred languages of instruction in western Anatolia and become the largest Protestant missionary organization in the Balkans. the world and the most substantial Protestant missionary organization in the Ottoman Empire. Levi Parsons and Another important Protestant missionary organiza- Pliny Fisk, the first American missionaries to the Holy tion was the Church Missionary Society (CMS), estab- Land sent by the ABCFM, set foot on Ottoman soil in lished in the period of British missionary revival in 1799. 1820, to be followed by many others. It began its operations in the Mediterranean in 1812. The CMS was strong in Palestine and Egypt and had 59 mis- The ABCFM founded its first school in Beirut in sionaries in Palestine by 1899. The CMS and the other 1824. In general the Tanzimat reform period, which British missionary societies had around 120 schools with began in 1839, provided a favorable environment for nearly 10,000 students in the Ottoman Empire by 1905. missionary activity. The ABCFM established an exten- sive network of schools at all levels in the hinterland of Many missionary societies of various sizes and dif- the mission stations, particularly in Anatolia. Educa- ferent denominations from almost all Western countries tion in the missionary schools was of good quality, and sent missionaries to the Ottoman Empire. The variety of it was reported that 85 percent of Ottoman Protestants European and American missionary schools established (mostly converted from Armenian Orthodoxy in Anato- in the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Arab provinces can be lia and from Greek or Syrian Orthodoxy in the Levant) gauged from a few examples throughout the empire: the could read and write by the 1870s. In 1870, the ABCFM French Catholic Brothers of the Christian Schools\u2019 edu- decided to limit its activities to Anatolia, while another cational activities in Izmir; the Italian Salesian school Protestant missionary organization, the Presbyterian in Antalya; the Russian Orthodox Imperial Pravoslavic Board of Foreign Missions continued to work in the Society\u2019s schools in Galilee; an Austrian Catholic girls\u2019 Arab provinces. The number of the ABCFM\u2019s missionary school in Edirne; the Prussian Protestant Kaiserswerth schools for Eastern Christians, particularly Armenians, Deaconesses\u2019 school in Jerusalem; the Scottish Protestant increased dramatically in the following years. In addition schools for boys and girls in Beirut; the French Lazarist to opening kindergartens and primary and secondary St. Benoit College in Istanbul; and the Quaker American schools in almost every city in the Ottoman heartland, Friends\u2019 schools in Ramallah. several colleges were founded: the American College for Girls in Istanbul (1871), Central Turkey College in Antep According to the Protestant missionaries, the spread (1876), Euphrates College in Harput (1878), Central of the Bible required the establishment of \u201ccivilized Turkey Girls\u2019 College in Mara\u015f (1880), Anatolia College Christian institutions,\u201d and literacy was a paramount in Merzifon (1886), and International College in Izmir requirement for gaining personal knowledge of the Bible (1898). Robert College (1863) and the Syrian Protestant and its teachings. Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire College in Beirut (1866, later the American University of did not limit their educational activities to the estab- Beirut) were not under the direct control of the Ameri- lishment of schools for boys but, as is evident from the can missionaries, but were closely connected with them. names of the schools, were also interested in educating girls as part of the general endeavor to reconstruct the The annual reports of the ABCFM and Presbyterian society. In addition to educational and medical work Board of Foreign Missions in 1914 stated that the Ameri- (operating hospitals), the missions established printing can missionaries in the Ottoman Empire directed 473 ele- presses to publish schoolbooks and copies of the Bible mentary, 54 secondary, and 4 theological schools, as well and other religious tracts in the vernacular, in order to as 11 colleges, teaching a total of 32,252 students. Most of reach those they referred to as the \u201cnominal Christians\u201d the colleges offered regular classes on history, literature, of the Eastern Churches. mathematics, science, economics, logic, and philosophy; religious instruction was also a part of the curriculum. As far as the Ottoman state was concerned, the mis- American missionary schools offered students not only sionary educational enterprise was a matter of concern a Protestant education but also an opportunity to under- for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries because the mission boards established their schools both with and without explicit permission from the Sublime Porte. Many Ottoman officials thought that the missionary schools constituted a threat to the empire and imple-","388 Mitwallis Music students of Anatolia College which opened its doors in 1886 and was closed in 1921. Students of the college were princi- pally Armenian and Greek, and the college relocated in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1924. (Photograph \u00a9 American Board Library, Istanbul) mented measures to control and limit their activities. between Continuity and New Beginnings: Modern Histori- This distrust deepened when many graduates of Robert cal Missions in the Middle East (Berlin: Lit, 2006); Eleanor College went on to become leading members of the inde- H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon, eds., Altruism and pendent Bulgarian government. Imperialism: Western Cultural and Religious Missions in the Middle East (New York: Middle East Institute, Colum- One unintended consequence of the ubiquity and bia University, 2002); Sel\u00e7uk Ak\u015fin Somel, \u201cThe Religious quality of these foreign missionary schools was that the Community Schools and Foreign Missionary Schools,\u201d in Ottoman administration was motivated to combat the Ottoman Civilization, edited by Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k and G\u00fcnsel allure of these institutions by improving and moderniz- Renda (Ankara: Ministry of Culture, 2003), 386\u2013401. ing its own educational system. Thus several new Otto- man schools for Muslim Turks were established in the Mitwallis See Shia Islam. 1880s in order to compete with the missionaries\u2019 efforts, and it is clear that the spread of missionary schools in the Moh\u00e1cs, Battle of (1526) Fought on August 29, Ottoman Empire accelerated the state\u2019s adoption of West- 1526, south of the Hungarian town of Moh\u00e1cs\u2014near ern educational models. During World War I, shortly the intersection of present-day Hungary, Croatia, and before the absolute demise of the empire, most mission- Yugoslavia\u2014this battle ended the independence of the ary activities in the Ottoman Empire were either cur- medieval Kingdom of Hungary and led both to direct tailed completely or severely restricted. Ottoman-Habsburg confrontation in central Europe and to Hungary\u2019s Ottoman occupation. Mehmet Ali Do\u011fan Further reading: Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New The causes of the 1526 Ottoman campaign are hotly Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East debated. Some historians claim that it was a response in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Leiden: to the \u201cprovocations\u201d of the Hungarian king Louis II (r. Brill, 2006); Frank Andrews Stone, Academies for Anatolia: 1516\u201326), namely the king\u2019s refusal of Sultan S\u00fcleyman A Study of the Rationale, Program and Impact of the Educa- I\u2019s (r. 1520\u201366) peace offers and the Hungarians\u2019 interfer- tional Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Tur- key, 1830\u20132005 (San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press, 2006); Martin Tamcke and Michael Marten,eds., Christian Witness","ence in the sultan\u2019s two Romanian vassal principalities, Moldavia 389 especially in Wallachia, whose voievod, or lord, repeat- edly rebelled against the Ottomans with Hungarian back- the insurmountable wall of the Janissaries and their fire- ing. Others maintain that these were mere pretexts and power that figured decisively in the Ottoman victory. that the conquest of Hungary had been S\u00fcleyman\u2019s objec- tive from the beginning of his reign and that he carried it Such a severe defeat had not been inflicted on the out according to his plan of gradual conquest. Given S\u00fcl- Hungarian armed forces since the Battle of Muhi against eyman\u2019s pragmatic and often reactive policy, the empire\u2019s the Mongols in 1241. King Louis II, most of the magnates multiple commitments and constraints, the insufficiently and prelates, about 500 noblemen, 4,000 cavalry, and understood nature of Ottoman ideology, propaganda, 10,000 infantrymen perished at Moh\u00e1cs. Hungary also and decision-making, it is wise not to overstate the lost its century-and-a-half-old struggle to contain the importance of religio-political imperatives with regard to Ottoman advance into central Europe. Ottoman imperial planning. More importantly for Europe, the battle led to In the 1526 campaign, the Ottoman army may have direct Habsburg-Ottoman military confrontation from numbered some 60,000 provincial cavalry (Rumelian and the 1520s on, for in 1526 a group of Hungarian aristo- Anatolian troops) and standing forces (Janissaries, cav- crats elected Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg, younger alry, and artillery) and perhaps another 40,000 to 50,000 brother of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, as their irregulars and auxiliaries. Due to the four-month march, king. Ferdinand, who ruled as king of Hungary until his rainy weather, and sieges, a number of these men had death in 1564, was able to control only the northwest- probably died before the army reached Hungary. Thus ern parts of Hungary, for the middle and eastern parts the estimate of Archbishop P\u00e1l Tomori, commander in (including the medieval capital city, Buda) were under chief of the Hungarian army, who put the whole fight- the rule of J\u00e1nos Szapolyai, also elected king of Hungary ing force of the sultan\u2019s army at about 70,000 men, seems (r. 1526\u20131540), whose pro-Ottoman policy temporarily more realistic than the inflated figures of 150,000 to postponed the clash between the Habsburgs and Otto- 300,000 men suggested by some later historians. How- mans. Szapolyai\u2019s death in 1540 and Ferdinand\u2019s unsuc- ever, even this more modest estimate suggests consider- cessful siege of Buda in the spring and summer of 1541 able Ottoman numerical superiority, for the Hungarian triggered the sultan\u2019s campaign that led to the Ottoman army that met the Ottomans near Moh\u00e1cs numbered occupation of central Hungary, and turned the country only about 25,000 to 30,000 men. A similar Ottoman into the major continental battleground between the superiority can be seen with regard to firepower: whereas Habsburgs and the Ottomans. the Ottomans deployed some 200 cannons, mainly small- caliber ones, the Hungarians had only about 80. G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston Further reading: G\u00e9za Perj\u00e9s, The Fall of the Medieval The battlefield was bordered by the marshes of the Kingdom of Hungary: Moh\u00e1cs 1526\u2013Buda 1541 (Boulder, Danube to the east and by a plateau 80\u201390 feet (25 to 30 Colo.: East European Monographs, 1989). m) high to the west and south. The Hungarian command planned to charge against the much larger Ottoman Moldavia (Ger.: Moldau; Rom.: Moldova; Turk.: Kara army in increments as the Ottomans descended from the Bo\u011fdan) Moldavia, a territory located in what is now steep and slippery plateau. The Hungarians initiated the the northeastern region of Romania, became an indepen- combat when only the Rumelian army was on the plain. dent state in 1359 under the voievod (governor) Bogdan S\u00fcleyman and his cavalry were still descending from I (r. 1359\u201365). As a voievodeship, Moldavia was usu- the plateau, and the Anatolian troops of the right flank ally under Hungarian control, but from time to time the were further behind. The skirmishes of the light cavalry state was held by Poland. Prior to 1359 the region was forces were already underway when the Hungarian artil- a contested area, claimed or defended by the Hungar- lery opened fire at the Rumelian army that was about to ian kings Andreas II (r. 1205\u201335), B\u00e9la IV (r. 1235\u201370), camp on the plain. This was followed by a cavalry charge and Louis the Great (r. 1342\u201382), but frequently attacked of the Hungarian right flank that broke the resistance of by Cumans (or Kipchak Turks) and Tatars or Mongols. the Rumelian cavalry. But instead of chasing the fleeing Drago\u015f, a Romanian knyaz (military chief), was sent enemy, the Hungarians made the strategic error of set- from Hungary to organize a defense zone in 1352\u201353. ting out to loot. By then the Janissaries had arrived and In 1359 Drago\u015f was expelled by Bogdan and Moldavia inflicted major losses on the Hungarians with their vol- became independent for a while. The territory was par- leys. Although the Hungarian infantry and left wing ticularly desirable (and thus highly vulnerable to military fought bravely, they were slaughtered by the Janissary and political interference) due to its strategic location volleys. Contrary to general belief, it was not the Otto- bordering present-day Ukraine. man cannons (which shot beyond the Hungarians), but The Ottomans called the territory Bo\u011fdan, Bo\u011fdan Iflak, or Kara-Bo\u011fdan, all names deriving from that of the first voievod. Petru I Mu\u015fat (ca. 1374\u201392) was the","390 Moldavia From the first half of the 16th century, the Moldavian voievods were confirmed in their position by the Otto- first voievod to send taxes to the Ottoman Empire in man sultans. From this time onward it is likely that they 1377; in the eyes of the Ottomans his payments to Sul- were given not ahdnames but berat-i \u015ferif (documents tan Murad I (r. 1360\u201389) denoted an acknowledgment of appointment), in which sultans gave orders about of Ottoman suzerainity. Like other Balkan states, the the form of rule, the extent of taxes, gifts to be given to Moldavians stood independent from the Ottomans dur- viziers, and the security of the property of the Muslims ing the Ottoman interregnum of 1402\u201313. Moldavia was residing in the voievodeship. The voievods of Moldavia first attacked by the Ottomans in 1420 when Ottoman were appointed to the throne either by the sultan or by a troops besieged Akkerman (Belgorod- Dnestrovsky) body consisting of boyars (high-ranking aristocrats) and without success; however, an archival source testifies to the Orthodox clergy. It was the sultan who had, without the fact that the Moldavian voievod Petru Aron (r. 1454\u2013 exception, the right of enthronement. 55, 1455\u201357) acknowledged Ottoman supremacy again in 1455 when he was compelled to pay a yearly tax of Upon appointment, the insignia of appointment and 2,000 golden coins to the much stronger Ottoman state the berat-i \u015ferif were presented to the voievod by a digni- under Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381). In 1456 Sultan tary from the Porte. The symbols of sovereignty, delivered Mehmed II promised Petru Aron that merchants in the to the new governor as symbols of the sultan\u2019s authority, Moldavian city of Akkerman could trade in the Otto- included a flag as well as two horse-tails. Voievods were man cities of Istanbul, Bursa, and Edirne without obliged to offer hostages from among their family mem- restriction. bers, usually their sons, who were kept in custody either at the Sublime Porte or in the interior of the empire. Petru\u2019s successor, Stephen the Great (\u015etefan cel Mare) (r. 1457\u20131504), was also considered an Ottoman Sharia, the Islamic sacred law, was not in use on the vassal but he maintained close connections with the territory of the voievodeship, which was dominated by Polish kingdom in the first years of his reign. From the Christian Orthodoxy, and the territory was thus subject mid 1470s onward he established still closer ties with to the jizya, an Ottoman tax on adult male non-Mus- the Hungarian king, Matthias I Corvinus (r. 1458\u201390). lims. The jizya in Moldavia in the 15th century was 2,000 Alarmed by what the Ottomans perceived as a challenge golden coins; from1527\u201328, 6,000 to 10,000 coins; in to Ottoman control, Ottoman troops invaded Moldavia 1538, 15,000 coins; in 1551, 25,000 coins; in 1568, 40,000 under the leadership of Had\u0131m S\u00fcleyman Pasha, beyler- coins; and from 1574 to 1575, 50,000 coins. The largest beyi (governor) of Rumelia. The voievod defeated them sum ever collected as jizya from Moldavia was 60,000 in the Battle of Vaslui on January 10, 1475. When the golden coins in 1591\u201392. This was reduced to 5,600,000 Ottomans besieged Caffa, held by the Genoese, in June ak\u00e7e (equivalent to 37,333 golden coins) around 1620. 1475, the voievod was again hostile to the sultan\u2019s action. A year later, in 1476, Stephen the Great took an oath of Despite the difference in religious culture between allegiance to the Hungarian king Matthias I Corvinus. the Ottomans and the Moldavians, the principality sometimes demonstrated its sympathy with Islam, as is In an attempt to restrain his rebel vassal, Sultan illustrated by the conversion of Voievod Ilia\u015f II Rare\u015f (r. Mehmed II himself went to war against the Moldavians 1546\u201351) to Islam during an audience with Sultan S\u00fcl- in 1476, defeating their troops at Valea Alb\u0103 (R\u0103zboieni) eyman I on May 30, 1551. To reward his faith, the sul- on July 26. The sultan ransacked the country, burned tan appointed Ilia\u015f II sancakbeyi or district governor its capital, Suceava, and then left Moldavia with a large of Silistra. Ilia\u015f was succeeded by his brother \u015etefan (r. amount of plunder. Mehmed II then prepared an ahd- 1551\u201352). name, or letter of contract, expressing his willingness to recognize the voievod as his subject again if the latter During the long Habsburg-Ottoman War of 1593\u2013 paid a tax of 6,000 golden coins instead of the former 1606, Moldavia again seceded from the Ottoman Empire 3,000. This document is of importance because it is the for a short time and concluded an alliance with Sigis- only extant ahdname given to the Romanian voievods by mund B\u00e1thory (r. 1581\u201397, 1598\u201399, 1601\u201302), Prince an Ottoman ruler. of Transylvania, who sided with the Habsburgs. The voievod of the neigboring principality of Wallachia, Soon war broke out again between Moldavia and the Mihai Viteazul (r. 1593\u20131601), conquered Moldavia for Ottoman Empire and in 1484 Bayezid II (r. 1481\u20131512) a short while after also occupying Transylvania, but the captured Akkerman and Kilia, two important fortresses Sublime Porte succeeded again in incorporating Molda- in the Danube delta. As a result the voievod, Stephen the via into the empire during the second reign of Voievod Great, began paying regular tribute. The voievodeship Ieremia Movil\u0103 (r. 1600\u201306). In the 17th century Voievod submitted completely to Ottoman suzerainty and suf- Gheorghe \u015etefan (r. 1653\u201358), in alliance with Prince fered further territorial losses in 1538 when Sultan S\u00fcl- Gy\u00f6rgy II R\u00e1k\u00f3czi of Transylvania (r. 1648\u201360), again eyman I (r. 1520\u201366) conducted a campaign against the tried to thwart Ottoman control of the principality in a Moldavian voievod Petru Rare\u015f (r. 1527\u201338, 1541\u201346).","confrontation with the troops of Grand Vizier K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc money and monetary systems 391 Mehmed Pasha (1656\u201361), but the voievod later fled. At the beginning of the 18th century Voievod Dimitrie case of the Ottoman Empire, the silver ak\u00e7e provided the Cantemir (r. 1710\u201311) attempted a similar tactic, chang- standard for the gold sultani and the copper mangir. ing his allegiance to the Russian czar, Peter the Great (r. 1682\u20131725), but when the Ottomans again conquered his The Ottoman governments originally adopted an forces at the river Prut in 1711, the defeated voievod went interventionist policy, meaning they took an active role to live on his estates in Russia. After the fall of Voievod in controlling and regulating their economic affairs. Dimitrie Cantemir the Porte enthroned voievods from This attitude peaked during the reign of the centraliz- among the reliable sons of wealthy Greek families from ing sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381). The state the Greek quarter of Istanbul called Phanar. created detailed law codes (kanunname) covering dif- ferent spheres of life during this period, and Mehmed In 1775 the Habsburg Empire took possession of II issued a large number of laws to regulate mint activ- the northwestern part of Moldavia, called Bukovina, and ity, the operation of mines producing gold and silver, in 1812 the Russian Empire seized Bessarabia, the ter- and the circulation and transportation of specie (coin) in ritory in the south. In the first half of the 19th century Ottoman lands. There are a number of reasons why these Russian influence increased until 1859 when Western codes present a misleading picture of Ottoman practices powers assisted in uniting the two Romanian voievode- with regard to monetary issues. For one thing, the reign ships\u2014Moldavia and Wallachia\u2014under the name of of Mehmed II was exceptional in terms of its monetary Memleketeyn. This union, however, remained an Otto- conditions. The Ottoman lands, together with much of man protectorate. The final secession of the principalities Europe, faced severe shortages of specie during the sec- from the Ottoman Empire was declared by the Treaty of ond half of the 15th century. These conditions allowed Berlin in 1878, which proclaimed Romania a sovereign the Ottoman ruler to declare the aforementioned codes state. and practices, many of which are among the most inter- ventionist in Ottoman history. Many of the codes dealing S\u00e1ndor Papp with monetary issues were rarely, if ever, enforced during Further reading: Mihai Maxim, Romano-Ottomanica: subsequent periods. Essays and Documents from the Turkish Archives (Istanbul: ISIS, 2001); Andrei O\u0163etea, ed., The History of the Roma- Interventions in the economy also did not guarantee nian People (Bucharest: Scientific Publishing House, 1970); that the government would see the desired outcome. Pre- S\u00e1ndor Papp, \u201cChristian Vassals on the Northwest Border modern states did not have the capability to intervene in of the Ottoman Empire,\u201d in The Turcs. Vol. III. Ottomans markets comprehensively and effectively, especially with (Ankara: Yeni T\u00fcrkiye Publications, 2002), 719\u201330; Peter short-term borrowing and lending within money mar- Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354\u20131804 kets. In comparison to goods markets and long-distance (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977). trade, it was more difficult for governments to control physical supplies of specie and regulate prices. Ottoman money and monetary systems Until the 16th cen- administrators were well aware that participants in the tury, Ottoman territories in Anatolia and the Balkans had money markets, merchants, moneychangers, and finan- a unified monetary system based on three coins: the sil- ciers were able to evade state rules and regulations more ver ak\u00e7e, the gold sultani, and the copper mangir or pul. easily than those in the commodity markets. After not- The ak\u00e7e was considered the basic unit of payment, and ing that interventionism did not guarantee success, gov- was commonly used in local transactions. While the sil- ernment interference in money markets became more ver value of the coin fluctuated with changes within the selective after the reign of Mehmed II, occurring mostly Ottoman government, the standards of the gold sultani during periods of extreme monetary turbulence or war. originally remained identical to gold coins of other states On the whole, Ottoman monetary practices shifted to around the Mediterranean, such as the Venetian ducat. an attitude of flexibility and pragmatism after the 15th This changed at the end of the 17th century when Otto- century. man expansion began unifying various territories. One of the most telling examples of Ottoman prag- When describing the Ottoman monetary regime, matism concerned the determination of exchange rates it is useful to adopt the same definitions of monomet- between different kinds of coinage. In an environment allism and bimetallism that were used in the 19th cen- of frequently recurring shortages of specie, the Ottoman tury. Accordingly, a monetary regime is characterized administrators knew that it was essential to attract into as monometallism if there is one standard commodity the Ottoman lands and maintain in circulation as much against which others are measured, even if the latter is coinage and bullion as possible. Their monetary practices composed of several metallic and paper elements. In the were guided more by this concern than by any other. They were also aware that the ratio between gold and silver as well as the value of different types of coins was subject to fluctuations. Under these conditions, a policy","392 money and monetary systems ver coin and unit of account in Egypt, the shahi in pres- ent-day Iraq and other areas neighboring Iran, and the of fixed exchange rates between different coins would square nasri in Tunis. These silver coins were issued by have driven the good or undervalued coins out of circula- the local Ottoman mints. They were regularly exchanged tion. The government allowed local markets to determine against each other or against Ottoman gold coins at the not only the exchange rate for the sultani but that for all market rates of exchange. The Ottoman governments types of coins, Ottoman and foreign. Additionally, the also allowed and even encouraged the circulation of for- government announced the official rates at which differ- eign coinage. ent coins, gold and silver, would be accepted as payment. Usually these rates did not diverge significantly from the CHALLENGES FOR MONETARY POLICY prevailing market rates for the same coins. Even with pragmatism and flexibility, the Ottomans As the Ottoman state expanded territorially to faced significant challenges. They dealt with problems become a full-fledged empire, however, this simple sys- common to all medieval and early modern states, such tem could not be continued. Newly conquered terri- as maintaining a stable flow of coinage that depended tories, each of which was subject to different economic on minting metals such as gold and silver. If a region forces and very different patterns of trade, already had experienced a trade deficit, specie flowed out and well-established currency systems of their own. The the money supply was adversely affected. Similarly, if Ottomans pursued a two-tiered approach to money and citizens lacked confidence in the market or feared an currency in these areas. They unified the gold coinage at unstable economy, they would often hoard these pre- the existing international standards but allowed the cre- cious metals, which caused a decrease in money supply. ation of multiple currency zones in silver to account for Most of the medieval and early modern states were in the sharply different commercial relations and needs of fact subject to recurring shortages of specie, which had the new provinces. negative consequences on the economy. The Ottomans were no different. In gold coinage, the sultani became the only Otto- man coin across the empire. This was due to both sym- The Ottomans also faced a number of other chal- bolic and economic reasons. With a single gold coin, the lenges arising from the size of the empire and its loca- ultimate symbol of sovereignty, the Ottomans unified the tion at the crossroads of intercontinental trade. From the empire from the Balkans to Egypt and the Maghrib. The Balkans to Egypt, from the Caucasus to the Maghrib, standards of the sultani, its weight and fineness, were kept different regions of the empire were drawn into various identical to those of the Venetian ducat that had become commercial relations. The Balkans, for example, engaged the accepted standard of payment in long distance trade in trade with central and eastern Europe and across the across the Mediterranean and beyond. Whether or not Black Sea. Egypt, on the other hand, was linked to the Ottoman gold coinage was issued in a given territory Indian Ocean and the trade of South and Southeast Asia. depended upon the territory\u2019s status\u2014if it was part of the These far-reaching commercial linkages made it very dif- empire proper or was considered a province with some ficult to control the movements of specie and maintain degree of autonomy. Thus the sultani was issued regularly monetary stability. in the controlled areas of Egypt, Algiers, Tunis, as well as the Balkans and Anatolia, but it was never minted in In addition, the Ottoman Empire happened to be the autonomous Danubian principalities of Wallachia located on major trade routes between Asia and Europe. and Moldavia. Ever since the discoveries of major silver deposits in Bohemia and Hungary in the 12th century, Europe In terms of silver coinage, used in daily transactions tended to import more commodities from Asia such as and to some extent in long-distance trade, the central spices, silk, textiles, and other goods, while Asia requested government chose to continue with the existing monetary specie in return. Adding to this volume was the large units in the newly conquered territories with or without amounts of gold and silver arriving from the newly \u201cdis- modifications. The most important reason for this pref- covered\u201d American continents. As the Ottomans began to erence was the wish to avoid economic disruption and establish control over the major trade routes in the east- possible popular unrest. It was also not clear whether ern Mediterranean in the second half of the 15th century, the central government had the fiscal, administrative, they welcomed the arrival of specie from the West. At the and economic resources to unify the silver coinage of the same time, they could not prevent the outflow of specie empire. As a result, while the silver coinage minted in the to the East, and consequently felt pressure from the flux new territories began to bear the name of the sultan, their in the commodity and specie exchanges. designs and standards as well as the names of the curren- cies adhered to pre-Ottoman forms and usages in many When the Ottoman Empire went into a state of instances. Earlier styles and types of copper coinage were decline in the 16th century, their monetary difficulties also continued. In addition to the ak\u00e7e in the Balkans reflected their underlying economic and fiscal realities. and Anatolia, the para or medin became the Ottoman sil-","With the growing economic strength and commercial money and monetary systems 393 presence of Europe contrasting the Ottoman\u2019s loss of power, it was becoming increasingly difficult to control expressed in terms of the monetary unit of account, a the large fluctuations in commodity and specie flows to reduction in the silver content of the currency enabled maintain a stable monetary system. Ottoman difficulties the state to increase the amount it could mint from or the were compounded by the recurrence of fiscal crises. In payments it could make with a given amount of silver. As the face of these difficulties, the Ottoman governments a result, debasements were utilized as an alternative to had mixed success in their attempts to maintain mon- additional taxation. etary stability. Prices almost always rose in the aftermath of debase- LATER CHANGES IN THE MONETARY REGIME ments because a debasement typically increased the nominal value of coinage in circulation. Even if prices During the 17th century the local mints were closed did not rise quickly because of the shortages of specie or down and the silver ak\u00e7e ceased to exist as a means of some other reason, long-distance trade acted as the ulti- exchange due to both global monetary disorder and mate equalizer in the long term. If prices expressed in Ottoman fiscal difficulties. In contrast, the 18th cen- grams of silver in a given region became less expensive tury until the 1780s was a period of commercial and compared to neighboring areas, increased demand for economic expansion coupled with fiscal stability. These the lower priced commodities attracted large quantities favorable conditions as well as the rising supplies of sil- of silver, thus raising prices. ver helped the Ottomans establish a new currency, the large gurush or piaster, as the leading unit of account Debasements had an impact on virtually all groups and means of exchange. The emergence of the new unit in Ottoman society and in turn each group took a posi- was accompanied by centralization of mint activity in the tion on the matter. Most men and women at the time core regions of the empire, from the Balkans to Anatolia, were clear about the consequences of different ways of as well as Syria and Iraq. In contrast to the 17th century, dealing with the coinage, who gained and who lost. In when the ties between Istanbul and the currencies in general, those who had future obligations expressed in different parts of the empire, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunis, and terms of the unit of account, most importantly borrowers Algiers had weakened substantially if not dissolved alto- and tenants paying fixed rents in cash, stood to gain from gether, these ties recovered and even strengthened during debasements. However, debasements generated powerful the 18th century. opposition among urban groups, especially in the capital city. One group that disliked debasements included guild For the Ottoman Empire the 19th century was a members, shopkeepers, and small merchants as well as period of integration into world markets and rapid wage-earning artisans. Another group that stood to lose expansion in foreign trade, particularly with Europe. It from debasements was made of those who were paid was also characterized by major efforts at Western-style fixed salaries by the state, the bureaucracy, the ulema, reform (see Tanzimat) in administration, education, and specially the Janissaries stationed permanently in law, and justice as well as economic, fiscal, and monetary the capital. There was a large overlap between the guild affairs. As part of these efforts, the Ottoman govern- members and the Janissaries since the latter had begun ment adopted in 1844 the bimetallic standard as its new to moonlight as artisans and shopkeepers. This broad monetary regime. Under this system, the silver gurush or opposition acted as a major deterrent against the more piaster and the new gold lira were both accepted as legal frequent use of debasements by the government not only tender, freely convertible at the fixed rate of 100 gurush in the capital but also in the provincial centers. The effec- for one gold lira. In 1881, along with the re-settlement of tiveness of this urban opposition against debasements its existing external debt, the Ottoman government aban- should not be measured in terms of the frequency of their doned the bimetallic standard and moved toward the rebellions, however. Ultimately, the threat of rebellions gold standard but silver continued to play a significant was just as effective. It ensured that the governments role in the new system until World War I. would refrain from debasements at least during periods of peace. The timing of Ottoman debasements confirms DEBASEMENTS this picture. Most Ottoman debasements occurred dur- ing three distinct periods: the reign of the empire builder, Debasements, or the reduction of the specie content of Mehmed II, during the second half of the 15th century the currency by the monetary authority, were the most when debasements were undertaken methodically once contentious and controversial practices of the Ottoman every 10 years to finance military campaigns; during government related to money. By far the most important 1580 to 1650, a period of fiscal and monetary instabil- motivation for the Ottoman debasements was the fiscal ity; and from 1788 to 1840, when the Ottomans had to relief they provided to the state. Since the obligations of deal with frequent wars and costs of military and other the state, to the soldiers, bureaucrats, and suppliers are reform. The largest Ottoman debasements and high- est rates of inflation occurred during this last period,","394 mosaic dence during the 1631 campaign against the Persians. At the time, the city had no more than 20,000 civilian especially after the abolition of the Janissaries in 1826. inhabitants. The silver content of Ottoman currency was quite stable in other periods. In the 18th century, the Jalili family came to domi- nate the politics of the city and province of Mosul. The \u015eevket Pamuk resilience of the family rested in part in its ability to See also banks and banking; economy and eco- secure Mosul from Iranian threats. Husayn Jalili, who had nomic policy; finances and fiscal structure. come from a humble merchant background, mounted Further reading: Sevket Pamuk, A Monetary History a spirited defense of his native city against Nadir Khan, of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University later Nadir Shah, the military ruler of Iran, in 1733 and Press, 2000); Halil Sahillio\u011flu, \u201cThe Role of International again in 1743. Jalili\u2019s son and grandson continued to hold Monetary and Metal Movements in Ottoman Monetary the governorship of the city for most of the years between History,\u201d in Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early 1743 and 1807. The success of the family, ironically, led Modern Worlds, edited by J. F. Richards (Durham, North to its downfall. With few other competitors for political Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1983), 269\u2013304. supremacy in Mosul, the family split into two contend- ing factions by the middle of the 18th century. Whereas mosaic See ceramics. the city\u2019s population had once almost universally viewed the Jalilis as the champions of Mosul, with the emergence mosque See architecture. of this infighting, the family was increasingly seen as oppressive and corrupt. In 1826, riots in the city over- Mosul (Ar.: al-Mawsil; Turk.: Musul) Mosul, a city in threw Yahya al-Jalili, who was then governor, and politi- present-day Iraq, served in the Ottoman period as the cal unrest plagued the region until Ottoman control in capital of a province, also called Mosul. The province had the province was restored in 1834. Although no longer a diverse population made up of Sunni Arabs, Turkom- in political control, the Jalilis continued to remain one of ans, Kurds, various Christian denominations, and Jews. the city\u2019s prominent land-owning families into the 20th The city\u2019s economic importance lay in the agricultural century. produce of its hinterlands, a region known to the Arabs as the jazira (literally, \u201cisland\u201d) that consists of the fertile Mosul rarely impressed foreign visitors to the Otto- lands between the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers. man Empire; Europeans invariably described it as a Mosul also served as a major trade center on the route dirty and drab place, with few of the architectural won- that connected the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. ders they noted in some of the empire\u2019s major cities. But The city was strategically important to the Ottomans they also remarked on the diverse population of the city, both as a military outpost to control the Kurdish tribes which included a significant minority of Christians. The to the north of the city and to defend the empire from its majority of these had originally been Nestorians but archrival, Iran. this group split in the 17th century in a dispute over who was properly thereligious head of the community. Those Mosul, like most of Iraq, came under the rule of in the Mosul area eventually accepted the pope in Rome the Iranian shah, Ismail Safavi, in the first decade of the as their spiritual head and took the name Chaldeans, 16th century. Sultan Selim I moved against Shah Ismail while those who remained loyal to the traditional lead- in 1512 and defeated his army at the Battle of \u00c7aldiran. ership called themselves Assyrians, after British archaeo- That victory diminished the immediate threat that the logical teams in the Mosul region began to uncover the shah posed to the sultan in Anatolia, but it was not until ruins of ancient Nineveh. 1517 that Ottoman armies gained control of Mosul. Cen- tral and southern Iraq continued to be ruled by Iran, By the end of the Ottoman period in the early 20th however, and Mosul remained a frontier garrison city century, the population of the city of Mosul had grown until 1534, when Sultan S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366) con- to about 90,000. After World War I, the city and its quered Baghdad. hinterlands became hotly contested territory, with the French claiming they should belong to their Syrian man- That victory did not secure Iraq for the Ottomans. date, while the British claimed the region for the newly In 1623 Persian armies again captured Baghdad and established Kingdom of Iraq. The newly formed Turkish moved north to occupy Mosul. Although the Ottomans Republic also claimed the region as it said the population recovered Mosul in 1625, Baghdad remained in Persian of the province, consisting as it did of Kurds, Turkom- hands until 1638. Once again Mosul became a garri- ans, and others, did not have an Arab majority. That son town with an estimated 3,000 Janissarues in resi- claim, however, was contested by Arab nationalists who said that the city itself and much of the hinterlands were occupied by Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims and Chris-","tians. In 1924 the League of Nations ruled in favor of the M\u00fchendishane 395 Kingdom of Iraq. ers and bombardiers. In 1784, as a result of an alliance Bruce Masters between the Ottoman Empire and France, two French Further reading: Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Pro- engineers, Andr\u00e9-Joseph Lafitte-Clav\u00e9 and Joseph Bagriel vincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul, 1540\u20131834 Monnier, became instructors at M\u00fchendishane, sent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Sarah by the French government to Istanbul to strengthen the Shields, Mosul Before Iraq: Like Bees Making Five-Sided Cells Ottoman military. In addition to these foreign instruc- (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). tors, madrasa teachers were also employed in M\u00fchendis- hane as instructors. Until the end of 18th century the Mount Lebanon See Lebanon. textbooks of M\u00fchendishane\u2014on mathematics, astron- omy, engineering, weapons, war techniques, and naviga- mufti See \u015feyh\u00fclislam. tion\u2014mostly originated from Europe, and from France in particular. Upon the destruction of the Franco-Otto- Muhammad Ali See Mehmed Ali. man alliance in 1778, all foreign instructors left Istanbul and were replaced by Ottoman madrasa teachers. M\u00fchendishane Founded in the spring of 1775 as Hendesehane (Mathematical School) and renamed After Sultan Selim III (r. 1789\u20131807), who was M\u00fchendishane (Engineering School) in 1781, this insti- known as a reformist sultan, came to the throne in 1789, tution served as the principal imperial military engineer- naval and land engineering training was changed and the ing school of the Ottomans until the mid-19th century, miner and bombardier corps were reformed. Mathemati- when the shifting social and political goals of the empire cal and engineering instruction began at a new engi- resulted in major restructuring of the education system. neering school founded in 1793 named M\u00fchendishane-i Cedide (New Engineering School) or M\u00fchendishane-i Many foreigners, particularly Frenchmen, served Sultani (Imperial Engineering School), located next to in the Ottoman army during this period. One of these, the barracks in Istanbul. Courses began in 1794. The Baron de Tott, (1733\u201393) was influential in founding courses were generally taught by Ottoman graduates of two schools teaching new artillery techniques: Top\u00e7u the French-operated schools. Mektebi (Artillery School), founded in 1772, and S\u00fcrat Top\u00e7ular\u0131 Oca\u011f\u0131 (Corps of Rapid-fire Artillerymen), In 1795 construction began on a new school with founded in 1774. classes, a library, and a printing house in Hask\u00f6y. When construction was completed in 1797, candidates selected The first Ottoman institution that offered instruc- from the Corps of Miners (La\u011f\u0131mc\u0131 Oca\u011f\u0131) and Corps tion in mathematics and military engineering, Hende- of Bombardiers (Humbarac\u0131 Oca\u011f\u0131) resumed their engi- sehane, or the School of Mathematics, was founded on neering education in this new building. The same year, April 29, 1775 upon the request of Hasan Pasha, admiral seven land engineers in the engineering school in the of the navy, under the supervision of Baron de Tott. Here imperial shipyards were transferred to the New Engi- the French military engineer M. Kermovan, and Camp- neering School in Hask\u00f6y, a quarter in the European part bell Mustafa Agha, a Scottish convert to Islam, instructed of Istanbul. The naval engineers in the shipyard institu- students in groups of 10 in mathematics courses until tion continued their instruction in two branches, ship October 1775. Seyyid Hasan, an Algerian who was sec- construction and navigation, under the supervision of ond captain in the Ottoman navy, became the first non- French naval engineer Jacques B. Le Brun. European head teacher at Hendesehane. In 1801\u201302, upon the transfer of students from the Hendesehane was the nucleus of the military and Mimaran-\u0131 Hassa Oca\u011f\u0131 (State Architecture Corps) to civil engineering schools established by the Ottomans the Corps of Miners and Corps of Bombardiers, all land in the 18th century, adopting the new sciences that were engineers matriculated at the same institution. Stud- then becoming prevalent in Europe as the mainstay of its ies took four years to complete and included courses in curriculum. It became the first institution in the empire technical drawing, Arabic, geometry, calculus, integral to provide a professional engineering education. Begin- equations, French, geography, trigonometry, algebra, ning in 1781, Hendesehane was renamed M\u00fchendishane mechanics, the history of war, and astronomy. (Engineering School). Located in the Tersane-i Amire (imperial shipyard), M\u00fchendishane provided courses in In 1806, at the command of Sultan Selim III, the both naval engineering and military engineering for min- engineering schools became independent of the Corps of Miners, Corps of Bombardiers, and the Imperial Arsenal Shipyard, beginning a new period in engineer- ing education. The existing pedagogical and admin- istrative structures were rearranged and a modern technical education order emerged. The engineer- ing schools were renamed the M\u00fchendishane-i Berr-i","396 muhtasib and ihtisab And last but not least, by farming out the collection of revenues from designated mukataas to tax farmers, the Humayun (Imperial Military Engineering School) and state was able to reduce the number of state employees. the M\u00fchendishane-i Bahri-i Humayun (Imperial Naval On the other hand, the tax farmers acquired lucrative Engineering School). state revenue sources for a set period of time. With the establishment of the Bahriye Mektebi The revenue sources that could be turned into (Naval School) in 1828 and of the Mekteb-i Harbiye mukataas were wide-ranging, including economic activi- (School of War) in 1834 in Heybeliada (near Istan- ties such as customs, mints, and state-owned lands. In bul), the increasing need for educated military offi- farming out a mukataa the payment schedule was first cers began to be met, leading to the gradual decrease to be considered, but the nature of the revenues, the in the significance of the old engineering schools. geographical features, and certain other aspects were With the increasing need for engineering services for also taken into account. Mukataas were usually lucra- public works, civil engineering education began in tive economic enterprises, but hans (commercial build- Hendesehane-i M\u00fclkiye (Civilian School of Engineer- ings), shops, and public baths were also called mukataa ing) as a part of M\u00fchendishane-i Bahri-i Humayun in once they were rented out. The process of tax collection 1874. In 1881 M\u00fchendishane-i Bahri-i Humayun was in mukataas was carried out within the boundaries of the incorporated in the Top\u00e7u Mektebi (Artillery School) province where the mukataa was located and the collec- and integrated with the existing School of War. Thus tion was conducted in accordance with the stipulations the military side of the engineering schools became of provincial regulations. The income obtained from the nucleus of military education institutions such mukataas was registered in the budgets. as the Land School of War and Naval School of War, and their civil side became the nucleus of the technical Mukataas were held with unrestricted freedom by universities in present-day republican Turkey, mainly private entrepreneurs and thus were legally secure from Istanbul Technical University, founded in July 1944. any interference by outsiders except for the representa- tives of the state. As a further upshot of this freedom, the Sevtap Kad\u0131o\u011flu mukataa-holders were authorized to collect such unre- Further reading: Kemal Beydilli, T\u00fcrk Bilim ve Mat- lated taxes as fines and traditional fees. baac\u0131l\u0131k Tarihinde M\u00fchendish\u00e2ne: M\u00fchendishane Matbaas\u0131 ve K\u00fct\u00fcphanesi (M\u00fchendishane in Turkish Science and Baki \u00c7ak\u0131r Printing History: M\u00fchendishane Printhouse and Library) See also economy and economic policy; tax (1776\u20131826) (Istanbul: Eren, 1995); Mustafa Ka\u00e7ar, \u201cThe farming. Development in the Attitude of the Ottoman State Towards Further reading: Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, An Economic and Social Science and Education and the Establishment of the Engi- History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- neering Schools (Muhendishanes),\u201d Proceedings of the Inter- versity Press, 1994); Haim Gerber, \u201cMukataa,\u201d in Encyclopae- national Congress of History of Science (Li\u00e8ge, 20\u201326 July dia of Islam, CD-ROM edition (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 508a. 1997) vol. 6, Science, Technology and Industry in the Otto- man World, edited by E. \u0130hsano\u011flu, Ahmed Djebbar, and m\u00fcltezim See tax farming. Feza G\u00fcnergun (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publisher, 2000), 81\u201390. muhtasib and ihtisab See ihtisab and muhtasib. Murad I (b. 1326?\u2013d. 1389) (r. 1362\u20131389) third ruler (emir and sultan) of the Ottoman state, conqueror of the mukataa (muqataah, maktu) The term mukataa Balkans Murad, son of Orhan (r. 1324\u201362), the second was used in the Ottoman financial administration for ruler of the House of Osman, and Nil\u00fcfer, the daughter tax farms or renting contracts and for state revenues of the Byzantine lord of Yarhisar in northwestern Ana- divided into smaller revenue portions whose collection tolia, became the third ruler of the Ottoman principality was farmed out to individuals for a mutually agreed- in 1362. Although most Ottomanist historians would not upon price.. The practice of dividing state revenues into regard him as sultan, or sovereign, the Ottoman chroni- smaller revenue units (mukataas) and farming them out cler Ahmedi, a contemporary of Murad, and a dedica- to tax farmers profited the state in more than one way. tory inscription dated from 1388, mentioned Murad as First, the state acquired large sums of cash paid by the tax sultan. He was the first Ottoman ruler with major con- farmers at the beginning of their terms. Second, the state quests in the Balkans, called Rumelia by the Ottomans. was able to better calculate its revenues because the yearly By the time of his death in 1389 the Ottomans had more sums that tax farmers had to pay into the state treasury than tripled the territories under their direct rule, reach- were fixed in the contract concluded with the tax farmer. ing some 100,000 square miles (as compared to 29,000 square miles under Orhan), evenly distributed in Europe","and Asia Minor. In addition to these direct conquests, Murad I 397 several Christian rulers and lords in the Balkans (the Byzantine emperors; the despot of Mistra; the Bulgarian infantry and later (in the 1370s, or perhaps earlier) that of czar of Turnovo; and, by 1389, Stephan Lazarevi\u0107, the the corps of the Janissaries, the ruler\u2019s bodyguard that son and successor of the defeated and killed despot Lazar soon evolved into a professional elite infantry, the first of Serbia, among others) had become Ottoman vassals standing army in contemporary Europe. The child levy who had to pay tributes and provide troops to the Otto- (dev\u015firme) system, which was the recruiting method of mans when called upon. Murad I\u2019s reign was also impor- the Janissaries and, increasingly, of state bureaucrats, was tant regarding the evolution of conquest methods and also introduced under Murad I, perhaps in the 1380s. military and governmental institutions. \u00c7andarl\u0131 Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha was also the first to occupy the newly created post of kad\u0131asker, or supreme METHODS OF CONQUEST judge. Since he was also a vizier he simultaneously over- saw the administration and the military and is rightly Later Ottoman chroniclers called Murad a ghazi, suggest- considered as the first de facto Ottoman grand vizier, ing that he expanded the Ottoman principality by ghaza, that is, first minister and absolute deputy of the sultan. that is, by religiously inspired holy war against the Otto- In connection with the Ottoman advance in the Balkans, mans\u2019 Christian neighbors, although by the term ghaza Murad I also appointed his tutor (lala) and general Lala contemporaries also meant predatory raids without any \u015eahin Pasha as the first beylerbeyi, or governor general, religious motive. Murad\u2019s successes were due as much of Rumelia, thus establishing the first Ottoman governor- to other techniques of conquest as to his military inva- ship in the Balkans. sions. There were three particularly important methods of conquest. ACCESSION TO THE THRONE The first was dynastic marriages concluded with Murad\u2019s older brother, S\u00fcleyman Pasha, was the heir pre- Christian and Muslim lords of the Balkans and the Ana- sumptive. He had established the first Ottoman base in tolian Turkoman principalities, by which the Ottomans the Balkans by occupying the Byzantine fort of Tzympe, acquired new territories and military assistance, and southwest of Gallipoli on the European shore of the Dar- subjugated their allies into vassalages. The Bulgarian danelles in 1352. Using the opportunity of a devastating czardom of Turnovo, for instance, became a vassal fol- earthquake that demolished the walls of several Byzan- lowing Murad\u2019s marriage to Thamar, the sister of Czar tine towns in the Gallipoli peninsula in 1354, he occu- Shishman. Parts of the Turkoman principality of Ger- pied Gallipoli, thus establishing an Ottoman bridgehead miyan in western Asia Minor (see Anatolian emir- in Europe. However, his death in 1357 opened the way ates) came with the dowry of the princess of Germiyan, to the Ottoman throne for Murad. Following the death married to Murad\u2019s son Bayezid I (in ca. 1375 or 1381), of his father in spring 1362, Murad acceded to the Otto- although in both cases Ottoman military pressure also man throne in Bursa, winning the civil war against his played a role. younger brothers and their supporters, the Anatolian Turkoman emirs, or lords, of Karaman and Eretna. The second method was spontaneous migration, as well as state-organized resettlements (s\u00fcrg\u00fcn) of ADVANCES IN ANATOLIA Turkoman nomads from Asia Minor to the Balkans, by which Murad and his successors increased the number of Murad was fighting in Anatolia until about 1365 in order their Turkic-speaking loyal Muslim subjects in a hostile, to stabilize his rule there. Ottoman chroniclers claim that Slavic-speaking Christian environment. he later (in about 1375 or 1381) acquired the territories of the neighboring Turkoman principalities of Germiyan The third method was granting Ottoman military and Hamid in western and southwestern Anatolia by mar- fiefs (timars) to members of the Christian nobility in the riage and purchase, respectively. However, other sources Balkans, in return for their acceptance of Ottoman suzer- suggest that Ottoman campaigns preceded these events. ainty. By this method the Ottomans gained supporters and collaborators, while the Balkan Christian lords pre- Murad\u2019s acquisitions brought him in contact with served parts of their former lands. the Karamanids, the most powerful Turkoman emir- ate in Anatolia, who also claimed some of the territories INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS recently annexed by Murad. The Karamanids\u2019 stance against Ottoman expansion in Asia Minor suggests that Murad I\u2019s reign also witnessed the establishment of sev- dynastic marriages, used extensively by the Ottomans to eral institutions that were crucial for the strengthening win over possible rival Turkoman emirs and to subjugate of the Ottoman military and administration. Ottoman Balkan Christian rulers, did not always work. Murad I chroniclers credit Murad\u2019s statesman Kara (Black) Halil tried to win over Alaeddin (r. 1361\u201398) of Karaman by Hayreddin Pasha (d. 1387), of the influential \u00c7andarl\u0131 marrying his daughter, Nil\u00fcfer, to the Karaman ruler. family with the establishment of the yaya (pedestrian) The latter, however, challenged his father-in-law repeat-","398 Murad I Murad\u2019s men conquered as far as Samakov (southeast of Sofia, Bulgaria) in the north by about 1375. edly, and Murad had to launch a campaign against him in 1386. The battle, fought in late 1386 near Ankara, the Murad masterfully exploited the civil war in Byzan- capital of present-day Turkey, proved the superiority of tium. This started in 1373 when Emperor John V\u2019s son the highly organized Ottoman military over the more Andronicus and Murad\u2019s son Savc\u0131 both rebelled against traditional nomad army of the Karamanids, and earned their fathers. They were defeated and blinded. However, Murad\u2019s son Prince Bayezid the sobriquet Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m in 1376, with Genoese and Ottoman help, Andronicus (Thunderbolt) for his bravery as a fighter. Thanks to captured the Byzantine capital Constantinople, impris- his Ottoman wife, Alaeddin of Karaman escaped the oning his father and his younger brother and the future confrontation with minimal damage and loss of terri- emperor Manuel. In return for Ottoman assistance, he tory, ceding Bey\u015fehir on the western border of Karaman ceded Gallipoli to Murad. Andronicus\u2019 reign did not last to Murad. This in turn opened the passes of the Taurus long. John V regained his throne and capital in 1379 with Mountains for the Ottomans and enabled Murad to seize Ottoman help, and he too became Murad\u2019s vassal. (in 1386 or 1388) the small Turkoman emirate of Teke, south of Hamid. By annexing these territories, Murad The troubles with Byzantium did not end there. In gained control over the lucrative trade routs connecting 1382 John V\u2019s younger son Manuel, who refused to accept his capital Bursa with Antalya, the Mediterranean sea- Ottoman suzerainty, left Constantinople for Salonika, port in southwestern Anatolia. where he established an independent court and attacked the Ottomans. Led by Murad\u2019s vizier \u00c7andarl\u0131 Kara Halil CONQUESTS IN EUROPE Hayreddin Pasha, the Ottomans laid siege to the city in 1383, which after several years of blockade surrendered While Murad was fighting in Anatolia in his early years in 1387. to stabilize his rule there, his generals Lala \u015eahin and Evrenos Bey captured several towns in the Balkans. By By this time, much of southern Macedonia was in about 1369 the Ottomans had conquered northern and Ottoman hands. The Ottomans also advanced against central Thrace, including such important cities as Adri- Bulgaria and Serbia, where Murad conquered Sofia anople (Edirne, European Turkey) in 1369 and Philip- and Ni\u0161 in 1385. This latter conquest opened the way popolis (Filibe, Plovdiv in southern Bulgaria) either in to Prince Lazar\u2019s Serbia, which the Ottomans attacked late 1369 or in early 1370, although these early dates are repeatedly in the following years. However, in 1387 Lazar often uncertain. Following later Ottoman chronicles, defeated them at Plo\u010dnik, near Ni\u0161. The next year the Turkish historians suggest that Adrianople was con- Ottomans suffered another setback when King Trvtko of quered in 1361 by Prince Murad and Lala \u015eahin Pasha, Bosnia, whose territories between Serbia and the Adri- whereas European and Greek sources and historians sug- atic the Ottomans had also raided, defeated the invaders. gest that it was not until 1369 that Murad captured the This in turn forced Murad to lead his armies in per- city. In any event, Edirne soon became the new capital son against the Serbs in 1389. Although the Battle of and seat of government and the possession of the city at Kosovo Polje near present-day Pri\u0161tina (June 15, 1389) the confluence of the Maritsa and Tundzha Rivers gave ended with Ottoman victory, both Murad and Lazar lost the Ottomans access to Thrace and Bulgaria. their lives. Murad\u2019s son Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402), present in the battle, assumed power, whereas Stephan Lazarevi\u0107, Ottoman advances in the Balkans alarmed Byzan- son of the dead Serbian ruler, became Bayezid\u2019s vassal. tium and the Balkan rulers. In August 1366 the allies of Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos (r. 1341, 1354\u2013 To what extent Ottoman conquests and successes 91)\u2014Amedeao of Savoy, the emperor\u2019s cousin, and Fran- were due to Murad\u2019s personal skills and policy is difficult cesco Gattilusio, the Genoese ruler of the northeastern to tell. While his qualities as a military commander and Aegean island of Lesbos and the emperor\u2019s brother-in- ruler cannot be denied, it seems that the Turkish marcher law\u2014managed to reconquer Gallipoli from the Otto- (frontier) lords, especially Evrenos in Macedonia and mans. This made crossing the Straits of the Dardanelles the Mihalo\u011flus in Bulgaria, played crucial roles in push- more difficult for Ottoman troops, although only tempo- ing the borders of the expanding Ottoman state further rarily, for Murad regained control over the city in 1376 and further. Similarly, Murad\u2019s generals Lala \u015eahin and during a Byzantine civil war. \u00c7andarl\u0131 Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha and, after his death in 1387, his son Ali Pasha, were instrumental in Murad\u2019s The Serbian lords (despots) of Macedonia also chal- military conquests. Their service in shaping the military lenged the Ottomans in 1371, perhaps recognizing the and administrative institutions of the growing Ottoman danger that the Ottoman conquest of Adrianople posed, state, whose administrative structure had become more but were defeated and killed at the battle of \u00c7irmen on complex and centralized by the end of Murad\u2019s reign, was the Maritsa river. Their sons had to accept Ottoman also of great significance. suzerainty. The Ottoman victory in 1371 opened the way to western Thrace and the Macedonian lowlands, which G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston","Further reading: Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cOttoman Methods of Murad II 399 Conquest\u201d Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 104\u201329, reprinted in Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, The Ottoman Empire: Conquest, Organiza- his father\u2019s rule after the civil war (1402\u201313), and fought tion and Economy: Collected Studies (London: Variorum against the rebel B\u00f6rkl\u00fcce Mustafa. With his command- Reprints, 1978) with original pagination; Colin Imber, The ers he also conquered the Black Sea coastal town of Sam- Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131481 (Istanbul: Isis, 1990), 26\u201336; sun from the Isfendiyaro\u011fullar\u0131 Turkish emirate. Murad Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction was only 17 when his father died. Mehmed I\u2019s viziers con- of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California cealed the sultan\u2019s death until Murad arrived in the old Press, 1995); Heath W. Lowry, The Nature of the Early capital, Bursa, and was proclaimed sultan (June 1421). Ottoman State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003). Murad II\u2019s viziers refused to comply with the agree- ment Mehmed I had made with the Byzantine emperor Murad II (b. 1404\u2013d. 1451) (r. 1421\u20131444; 1446\u20131451) Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391\u20131425). According to that Ottoman sultan The son of Mehmed I (r. 1413\u201321) and agreement, upon Mehmed I\u2019s death Murad was to be one of his concubines, Murad was born in June 1404 in acknowledged as Mehmed\u2019s successor and was to rule Amasya. At the beginning of his reign he had to deal with from the capital Edirne in the European part of the two pretenders to the throne (\u201cFalse\u201d Mustafa, that is, his empire while his brother Mustafa was to remain in Ana- uncle, and his own younger brother Prince Mustafa) sup- tolia. Their younger brothers (Yusuf and Mahmud, aged ported by the Byzantine Empire and Venice. He also eight and seven) were to be handed over to Manuel. The had to confront the Anatolian emirates of Germi- emperor was to keep them (along with Mehmed I\u2019s brother yan, Karaman, Mente\u015fe, and Isfendiyaro\u011fullar\u0131, which Mustafa) in custody in Constantinople and receive an all rejected Ottoman suzerainty and occupied Otto- annual sum for their upkeep. Since the viziers refused to man territories. The most dangerous threat, however, hand over princes Yusuf and Mahmud to the Byzantines, came from European crusaders led by the Hungarians Emperor Manuel released from his custody Prince Mus- who in the winter of 1443\u201344, in response to Ottoman tafa (Mehmed\u2019s brother) and C\u00fcneyd (the former emir of encroachments in the previous years, invaded Murad\u2019s Ayd\u0131n who had rebelled against Mehmed I). \u201cFalse\u201d Mus- Balkan lands as far as Sofia, Bulgaria. After he had tafa, as Ottoman chroniclers dubbed Murad II\u2019s uncle, overcome these threats and concluded treaties with Hun- soon defeated Murad II\u2019s troops and captured the Otto- gary and Karaman (1444), in a hitherto unprecedented man capital, Edirne, where he proclaimed himself sultan. move Murad abdicated in favor of his 12-year-old son He also enjoyed the support of the Rumelian frontier lords, Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381). However he was soon including the Evrenoso\u011fullar\u0131 and Turahano\u011fullar\u0131, who recalled by his trusted grand vizier \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil Pasha viewed Ottoman centralization attempts in the Balkans to command the Ottoman troops against the crusaders\u2014 as detrimental to their own freedom of action. In January who, despite the recently concluded truce, launched a 1422, at the head of his troops (some 12,000 cavalry and new campaign in the autumn of 1444\u2014and to quell the 5,000 infantry), Mustafa crossed to Anatolia through the insurrection of the Janissaries, the sultan\u2019s elite infantry. Straits of Gallipoli. However, Murad II\u2019s troops stopped Eventually Murad assumed the throne for a second time him before he could reach Bursa. Mustafa fled to the Bal- (1446). The crises of 1444\u201346 were as dangerous as those kans but was apprehended by Murad\u2019s men near Edirne of the interregnum and civil war of 1402\u201313, and threat- and hanged as an impostor (winter 1422). In view of ened the very existence of the Ottoman state. Using sheer Murad II\u2019s strengthened position, the marcher-lords of the military force and a variety of political tools (diplomacy, European provinces also acknowledged him. appeasement, vassalage, marriage contracts), Murad not only saved the Ottoman state from possible collapse but Murad II\u2019s troubles were far from over. His 13-year- during his second reign (1446\u201351) he also consolidated old younger brother Mustafa, called \u201cLittle\u201d Mustafa by Ottoman rule in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Murad II Ottoman chroniclers, was used by Byzantium and the left a stable and strong state to his son Mehmed II, who Anatolian emirates to challenge Murad\u2019s rule. However, during his second reign (1451\u201381) transformed it into a he too was defeated (due to the desertion of his vizier major regional empire. and troops) and executed (February 1423). ACCESSION AND POLITICAL TURMOIL In the following years Murad II annexed the emir- ates of Ayd\u0131n, Mente\u015fe, Germiyan and Teke, thus recon- When he was 12 years of age, Murad was sent to Ama- stituting Ottoman rule in southwestern Asia Minor. sya as prince-governor to administer the province of While Murad was unable to subjugate Karaman, the Rum (north-central Turkey). He helped to consolidate most powerful Anatolian emirate, he exploited the unex- pected death of the Karaman emir, Mehmed Bey (1423), and the ensuing power struggle. Mehmed Bey\u2019s son, Karamano\u011flu Ibrahim Bey, surrendered the territories his father had occupied in 1421, including the lands of the former emirate of Hamid west of Karaman.","400 Murad II for Belgrade and Golubac, key fortresses for Hunga- ry\u2019s defense on the Danube River, which would pass to VENICE, BYZANTIUM, AND HUNGARY Sigismund. When Despot Stephen died in June 1427, Sigismund took possession of Belgrade, \u201cthe key to After consolidating his rule in Anatolia, Murad\u2019s primary Hungary\u201d in contemporary parlance. Golubac\u2019s captain, goal was to reestablish Ottoman rule in the Balkans by however, sold his fort to the Ottomans, causing a major forcing the Balkan rulers to accept Ottoman vassalage gap in the Hungarian defense line. Sigismund tried in and by capturing strategically important forts and towns. vain to capture the fort in late 1428. By 1433, the Otto- This, however, led to direct confrontation with Venice mans had occupied most of the Serbian lands south of and Hungary, two neighboring states with vital interests the Morava River. Despite the fact that Despot George in the region. Brankovi\u0107 married his daughter, Mara, to Sultan Murad in 1435, and sent his two sons as hostages to the Otto- Venice\u2019s commercial interests in the Balkans were man court, he was considered an unreliable vassal. Tak- guarded by the republic\u2019s colonies and port cities that ing advantage of the death of Sigismund (1437) and the dotted the Balkans\u2019 Adriatic coast from Croatia in ensuing collapse of the central authority in Hungary, by the north to Albania and the Morea (the Peloponnese 1439 Murad had subjugated Serbia, capturing its capital peninsula in southern Greece) in the south. In addition Smederevo on the Danube. With the capture of Salon- to its bases in the Morea, in 1423 Venice also acquired ika, Golubac, and Smederevo, Murad had reestablished Salonika from its ruler, the Byzantine despot (lord) of the Balkan possessions of his grandfather, Bayezid I the Morea. Ottoman recovery of Thessaly\u2014a territory in (r. 1389\u20131402). present-day central Greece once conquered by Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402) but ceded to the Byzantines by Prince Although Murad failed to capture Belgrade in 1440, S\u00fcleyman during the civil war of 1402\u201313\u2014and the con- his five-month siege forced Hungary and her allies to act quest of southern Albania by the early 1430s threatened more forcefully against the Ottoman advance. They also the republic\u2019s commercial bases in the Adriatic. Murad were urged to do so by Byzantium and the papacy, which never acknowledged Venice\u2019s possession of Salonika, had just concluded their historic agreement regarding the which had been under Ottoman siege since 1422. The Union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (Council city succumbed to the Ottomans in 1430. Venice tried to of Ferrara-Florence, 1437\u201339). The Byzantine emperor block further Ottoman advance in the Balkans by sup- John VIII Palaiologos (r. 1425\u201348) signed the accord porting anti-Ottoman forces, whether in Albania or in in 1439 in the hope that his acknowledgement of papal Anatolia (such as the Karamanids). The republic also supremacy would result in Western military and finan- concluded treaties with Hungary and Byzantium against cial assistance against the Ottomans. the Ottomans, both of which were now more eager than ever to confront the Ottomans. Hungary, which suffered repeated Ottoman raids from 1438, led the anti-Ottoman coalition. The country\u2019s After his defeat at the hands of the Ottomans at the new hero, J\u00e1nos (John) Hunyadi, royal governor of the Battle of Nikopol in 1396, the Hungarian king Sigismund Hungarian province of Transylvania (1441\u201356) and of Luxembourg (r. 1387\u20131437, Holy Roman Emperor commander of Belgrade, thwarted several Ottoman raids from 1433) developed a new defensive strategy to con- in the early 1440s, defeating the district governor (san- tain Ottoman expansion. He envisioned a multilayered cakbeyi) of Smederevo (1441) and the commander of defense system consisting of a ring of vassal or buffer the Ottoman forces in Europe, the beylerbeyi of Rumelia states between Hungary and the Ottomans; a border (September 1442). defense line that relied on forts along the lower Danube; and a field army that could easily be mobilized. ABDICATION AND THE CRUSADE OF VARNA Forcing the Balkan countries such as Serbia, Wal- In October 1443 the Hungarian army led by King lachia, and Bosnia to accept Hungarian overlord- Wladislas (r. 1440\u201344) and Hunyadi invaded the Bal- ship inevitably led to confrontation with the Ottomans kan provinces of the Ottoman Empire as far as Sofia. who also wanted to make these countries their vassals. Although they did not conquer any territory, the cam- Desperate, the Balkan states often changed sides or paign forced Murad II to seek peace. Through the medi- accepted double vassalage. Serbia is a good example. Its ation of Murad\u2019s Serbian wife Mara and his father-in-law ruler Stephen Lazarevi\u0107 (r. 1389\u20131427), known as Des- George Brankovi\u0107, the Hungarian-Ottoman Treaty was pot Lazarevi\u0107 by his Byzantine title, tried to be on good concluded in the Ottoman capital Edirne on June 12, terms with Murad II. At the same time, he was Sigis- 1444, and was ratified by the Hungarians on August 15 mund\u2019s vassal after 1403 and one of Hungary\u2019s greatest the same year in Nagyv\u00e1rad (Oredea, Transylvania). landlords after 1411. According to the Hungarian-Ser- bian Treaty concluded in May 1426 in Tata (present-day Having concluded a truce with the Hungarians and northwestern Hungary), Sigismund acknowledged Ste- the Karamanids, who had coordinated their attack on phen\u2019s nephew George (Djuradj) Brankovi\u0107 as his heir, who would also keep his uncle\u2019s possessions, except","the Ottomans in Asia Minor with the Hungarian inva- Murad III 401 sion, Murad abdicated in favor of his 12-year-old son Mehmed II and left for Bursa (August 1444). However, his retirement in Manisa, using as pretext the 1446 Janis- Hunyadi\u2019s victories prompted the papacy to forge a new sary rebellion in Edirne, which erupted partly because of anti-Ottoman Christian coalition with the aim of expel- Mehmed\u2019s debasement of the Ottoman silver coinage in ling the Ottomans from the Balkans. Despite the Hun- which the Janissaries received their salaries. garian-Ottoman truce, preparations for the Crusade went on, for the papal legate declared the peace made with the Upon assuming his throne for the second time, \u201cinfidels\u201d void. Murad returned to the Balkans. In a swift campaign in 1446, Ottoman troops breached the Hexamilion wall These were dangerous times for the Ottomans. In (December 1446). Other Ottoman troops were fight- Albania, Iskender Bey (known in the West as Skander- ing, with limited results, against Skanderbeg in Albania. beg), alias Georg Kastriota\u2014a local Christian who had Murad achieved his last great victory at the second Battle been brought up a Muslim in Murad II\u2019s court and sent of Kosovo Polje in Serbia (October 16\u201318, 1448) against back to Albania to represent Ottoman authority there\u2014 another crusading army, again consisting primarily of rose up against the Ottomans in 1443. By spring 1444 Hungarians led by Hunyadi. When he died in 1451, his the Byzantine despot of the Morea, Constantine, had son Mehmed II, by then 19 years of age, was poised to rebuilt the Hexamilion (six-mile) wall that had defended revenge his humiliation and to assert his authority by the Corinth isthmus and thus the Peloponnese against pursuing an aggressive foreign policy against his Chris- attacks from the north since the early fifth century C.E. tian rivals. In the summer of 1444, the Byzantine emperor G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston released another pretender against Murad and, most Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream: The dangerously, on September 22, 1444 the crusading army Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (New York: Basic crossed the Ottoman border into the Balkans. At this Books, 2005); Oskar Halecki, The Crusade of Varna: A Dis- critical moment, on the insistence of \u00c7andarl\u0131 Halil cussion of Controversial Problems (New York: Polish Insti- Pasha, Murad was recalled from Bursa and, arriving in tute of Arts and Sciences in America, 1943); Joseph Held, Edirne, assumed the command of the Ottoman troops, Hunyadi: Legend and Reality (Boulder, Co.: East European while his son Mehmed II remained sultan. The Otto- Monographs, 1985); Colin Imber, ed., The Crusade of Varna, mans met the crusading army at Varna on November 1443\u201345 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); Camil Mure\u015fanu, 10, 1444. Outnumbered by 40,000 to 18,000, the cru- John Hunyadi: Defender of Christendom (Portland, Or.: Cen- saders were defeated; Hungarian king Wladislas died in ter for Romanian Studies, 2001). battle; and Hunyadi, the hero of the Turkish wars, barely escaped with his life. Despot Brankovi\u0107 remained neu- Murad III (b. 1546\u20131595) (r. 1574\u20131595) Ottoman sul- tral throughout the campaign, as the Ottomans had kept tan and caliph Murad III was born during the reign of their end of the treaty of Edirne by returning Smederevo his grandfather Sultan S\u00fcleyman I (the Magnificent) (r. and all the other forts stipulated in the agreement on 1520\u201366) in Manisa where his father, the future Selim August 22. II (r. 1566\u201374), was the princely governor. His mother was the Venetian-born Nur Banu Sultan. As his first MURAD\u2019S SECOND REIGN princely seat Murad was appointed to Ak\u015fehir, a town in central Anatolia, in 1558. A year later, while he was While the Ottomans were victorious at Varna, the 1444 still a teenager, Murad was actively involved in the suc- campaign revealed the vulnerability of the Ottoman state cession struggle between his father Selim and his uncle that had been brought back from the brink of extinction Bayezid. After the defeat of his uncle, his father Selim just a generation ago. It also revealed the friction between was left sole heir to the Ottoman throne. In 1561 Murad the viziers of Murad II and Mehmed II. Murad\u2019s trusted stayed in Istanbul as the guest of his grandfather and a grand vizier Halil Pasha, the scion of the famous Turk- year later, when his father was appointed to K\u00fctahya, a ish \u00c7andarl\u0131 family that had served the House of Osman major administrative capital in central Anatolia, he was since Murad I (r. 1362\u201389) in the highest positions, sent to Manisa, another prominent administrative seat wanted to avoid open confrontation with the Ottomans\u2019 for princes in central Anatolia, where he stayed until his European enemies. Mehmed II\u2019s Christian-born viziers enthronement in 1574. belonged to a new cast of Ottoman statesmen who were either recent Muslim converts or recruited through the The relatively long reign of Murad III saw two pro- Ottoman child-levy (dev\u015firme) system and pursued a tracted wars. Conflicts with Safavid Persia on the eastern more belligerent foreign policy. In order to avoid a pos- front of the empire culminated in the long Ottoman- sible disaster such aggressive policy might cause, Halil Safavid war from 1578\u201390. The sultan did not personally Pasha decided to recall Murad for the second time from participate in the conflict; Ottoman armies were led by various viziers sent from the capital. The other protracted","402 Murad III tan, to the Topkap\u0131 Palace, the sultan\u2019s mother became a major power in court politics. Murad III\u2019s reign also saw war, the Long Hungarian War of 1593\u20131606, broke out in the rise of favorites as a feature of court politics. The first the closing years of Murad III\u2019s reign. five years of Murad III\u2019s reign coincided with the tenure of the all-powerful grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Beside the long and costly war with Persia, Murad who had virtually ruled the empire from 1565. The death III\u2019s reign also coincided with social disturbances and of Sokollu in 1579 marked a decisive moment in the increasing imperial financial problems. Student revolts, power politics of the Ottoman court. In the remaining 16 caused by the tightening of the career lines in the reli- years of Murad III\u2019s reign, the complex and ever-shifting gious bureaucracy, were also a serious social problem dynamic of power in court politics did not allow any of faced by Murad\u2019s administration during the 1570s and Sokollu\u2019s successors to amass power and authority as he 1580s. The closing years of his reign saw the emergence had during his 14 years in office. of a more serious problem that ravaged the Anatolian countryside: military rebellions of provincial admin- From the very beginning of Murad III\u2019s reign the istrators and armed ex-soldiers known as the Celali authority of his powerful grand vizier was challenged by Revolts, which would be one of the major aggravations an anti-Sokollu faction. One of the members of this fac- for Murad\u2019s successors. tion was \u015eemsi Pasha. \u015eemsi Pasha was a retired palace servant who had also served Murad III\u2019s father, Selim Expenses of the long war with Persia and a general II, and his grandfather, S\u00fcleyman I. His appointment as worsening in the economic conditions of the late 16th a favorite of Murad III was as a result of his unabated century, which affected the Mediterranean basin and antagonism toward Sokollu and with the power he was beyond, put Murad\u2019s administration under severe finan- given he tried hard to divert power back into the hands cial strain. Eventually, financial burdens led to the deval- of the sultan. When \u015eemsi Pasha died in 1581, two years uation of Ottoman coinage in 1585 and the problem of after Sokollu, Murad III needed a new favorite to broker spurious coinage became the subject of various Janissary his management of state affairs. The successor of \u015eemsi uprisings in the capital. Pasha was Mehmed Pasha who was again a palace servant from the reign of Selim II. He had entered Selim II\u2019s ser- Murad III maintained the traditional sultanic posi- vice while he was governor-prince of Amasya and later tion as patron of the arts. During his reign he favored became agha of the Janissaries. Thus the rise of Mehmed many poets, writers, theologians, and scientists. He wrote Pasha as favorite was a direct outcome of Murad III\u2019s mystic poems under the pseudonym Muradi and had a search for an agent to act as his eyes and ears in govern- distinct interest in mysticism, associating himself with ment affairs. In 1584 an imperial decree was issued for the Halveti Order of dervishes, one of the most popular Mehmed Pasha and he was given extraordinary privi- Sufi orders in the empire. leges in order to guarantee his privacy with the sultan, including the right to enter the sultan\u2019s presence alone In his 21-year reign, Murad III rarely left the palace and to accompany the sultan during hunts. Mehmed or Istanbul. Like his father Selim II, he ruled the empire Pasha\u2019s privileges bypassed the established patterns of the from the well-protected inner precincts of the palace. hierarchical order as well as the orbit of different offices He was a sedentary sultan, unlike predecessors such as of the bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, the power vested S\u00fcleyman I or Selim I, whose reigns passed on the bat- in Mehmed Pasha engendered opposition. In 1589, two tlefields. Yet Murad III demonstrated a great ability to years after he was made governor of Rumelia (the Euro- enforce sultanic authority. Along with his father, Selim pean part of the empire), Mehmed Pasha took charge of II, and his son, Mehmed III (r. 1595\u20131603), Murad III the debasement of Ottoman coinage. This was followed was one of the first sultans whose reign was defined by by an uprising of the cavalry troops of the Sublime Porte the rules of court politics. The process of creating a per- who demanded the execution of Mehmed Pasha as the manent imperial seat, which had begun with the con- sole actor responsible for the financial operation. Murad struction of the Topkap\u0131 Palace under Mehmed II (r. III had no choice but to surrender his most valuable asset 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381), came to completion when S\u00fcleyman to the enraged crowd, who murdered him. I moved his household to the palace. This combining of the sultan\u2019s household with the business of governing The reign of Murad III marked the establishment of made the court the center of Ottoman politics. Ironically, the court and favorites as defining features of Otto- the new setting introduced a political paradox, for clas- man power politics. When his son, Mehmed III, put an sical norms of statecraft dictated an omnipresent sultan end to the practice of princely governorships\u2014placing while the norms of court life idealized a secluded sultan. the sultan\u2019s sons in positions of provincial authority to Murad III. Murad III\u2019s long reign is distinguished by the build their skills at governing\u2014and his grandson Ahmed advent of the formally immobile sultan. I came to throne from the inner compounds of the pal- Concurrent with the development of the court as the Ottoman political center was the increasing influence of the valide sultan, or queen mother, in the business of rule. After Murad III moved his mother, Nur Banu Sul-","ace, the position of the court in the Ottoman political Murad IV 403 system was irreversibly sealed. of the military rebellion, Murad remained alert to pos- \u015eefik Peksevgen sible treason and was suspicious of alternative foci of Further reading: A. H. de Groot, \u201cMurad III,\u201d in Ency- power. He thus did not hesitate to order the execution of clopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), several ministers in the government and some members 595b; Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sov- of the religious hierarchy, including the \u015eeyh\u00fclislam ereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford Univer- Ahizade H\u00fcseyin Efendi in 1634. Overall, Murad IV sity Press, 1993); Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream: The Story pursued an iron-handed policy and resorted to harsh of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (London: John Murray, measures while his new grand vizier, Taban\u0131yass\u0131 2005), 152\u2013195. Mehmed Pasha (1632\u201337, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of El-Hac Mustafa Agha) brought the political situation under control and Murad IV (b. 1612\u2013d. 1640) (r. 1623\u20131640) Ottoman achieved stability.. sultan and caliph Son of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603\u201317) and his favorite concubine, K\u00f6sem Mahpeyker Sultan, During the four-and-a-half year incumbency (1632\u2013 Murad IV was born in Istanbul and grew up in the 37) of his new grand vizier, Murad kept himself informed Topkap\u0131 Palace. Together with his brothers, S\u00fcleyman, regarding the breakdown of state and society and fol- Kas\u0131m, Bayezid, and Ibrahim, Murad was confined in lowed the presciptions of his advisors who emphasized the harem apartments from early childhood. Although the need for comprehensive administrative, military, information from this period of his life is scant, Murad\u2019s and social reforms, including the reassessment of tax reading knowledge of Arabic and Persian indicate that revenues, the reassignment of land-grants, the resettling he received a fairly good education. Murad IV was an of peasants who deserted their lands, and the subduing accomplished horseman and was especially fond of local power-holders. Murad also listened to a conser- archery and javelin-throwing. His court was frequented vative-minded religious group that called for a moral by the leading men of letters and, being a talented callig- regeneration of people and found its voice in the person rapher, poet, and composer himself, Murad also enjoyed of Kad\u0131zade Mehmed Efendi, a preacher of the Hagia intellectual and artistic debates. He fathered at least 16 Sophia Mosque, who became one of Murad\u2019s advi- children, but all of his five sons died before him, whereas sors. In 1633, following Kad\u0131zade Mehmed\u2019s suggestion, three of his surviving daughters, Kaya Ismihan, Rukiyye, Murad ordered the closing down and razing of all cof- and Hafize, were married to high-ranking ministers dur- feehouses as well as renewing the prohibition on tobacco, ing his reign. which had first been issued in 1609 during the reign of his father. The young Murad was enthroned in 1623 when his mentally disturbed uncle Mustafa I (r. 1617\u201318; 1622\u2013 Murad also emulated his forebears by playing the 23) was deposed. Because he was too young (at age 12) to role of a warrior-sultan. He personally led two success- rule, Murad\u2019s mother assumed the role of de facto regent, ful campaigns against the Safavids of Iran, resulting in controlling the business of rule by her clique in the gov- the recapture of Yerevan and Baghdad. But he helped to ernment. During the early years of his reign Murad IV ensure the security of his reign while he was in the field was thus mainly a passive observer of events and was by ordering the execution of his brothers Bayezid and rarely involved in imperial politics personally. During S\u00fcleyman while on his first campaign in 1635 and of his this period, the empire-wide problems, mainly inher- brother Kas\u0131m prior to the campaign of 1638. ited from the turbulent years of Osman II (r. 1618\u201322) and Mustafa I, persisted: the war with the Safavids over Although Murad was a man of tall stature and pos- Baghdad, the rebellion of governor-general Abaza sessed extraordinary bodily strength, his health became Mehmed Pasha in Anatolia, and factional strife in Istan- unstable and often worsened during the long marches bul. Becoming increasingly uneasy with this state of from the frontier. After the second campaign, Murad fell instability, Murad IV, together with the chief eunuch of seriously ill, but managed to make a triumphal entry into the harem, El-Hac Mustafa Agha, started to make tours the capital in June 1639 nevertheless. He recovered for a of the capital in disguise to become acquainted with the brief time, but his premature death, which was probably true state of affairs. brought about by excessive drinking and other indul- gences, came in February 1640. He was buried in his In May 1632, after a bloody military rebellion that father\u2019s mausoleum in the complex of the Sultan Ahmed lasted for months, Murad managed to establish his per- Mosque. sonal rule and began to play a more active role in restor- ing the political, economic, and social health of his G\u00fcnhan B\u00f6rek\u00e7i empire. Although he quickly eliminated the ringleaders Further reading: Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 91\u2013112. Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream (London: John Murray, 2005), 204\u2013222; A.H. de Groot, \u201cMurad IV,\u201d in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd","404 Murad V OTTOMAN CLASSICAL MUSIC ed., vol. 7, edited by C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Important musical and social developments contribut- Heinrichs, and Ch. Pellat (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 597\u2013599. ing to the formation of Ottoman classical music include the religious music of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis, known Murad V (b. 1840\u2013d. 1904) (r. 1876) Ottoman sultan popularly as \u201cwhirling dervishes.\u201d Originating in Konya and caliph Born on September 21, 1840, in Istan- in the 13th century, the Mevlevi Order began in the 15th bul, the son of Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid I (r. 1839\u201361) and century to develop a distinctive musical form, the ay\u0131n, to Sevketefza Valide Sultan, Murad V acceded to the throne accompany the religious choreography of the dervishes. on May 30, 1876, after the dethronement of his uncle, After their first lodge or tekke was founded in Istan- Sultan Abd\u00fclaziz (r. 1861\u201376). Murad had learned bul in 1494, followed later by lodges in other neighbor- both French and Arabic. He ordered and read books and hoods and urban centers, the Mevlevi gradually became magazines from France and was influenced by French the most prominent Sufi order connected to the sultan culture. He played the piano, composed Western-style and the Ottoman ruling class. The order played a central music, and accompanied his uncle Sultan Abd\u00fclaziz on role in classical musical culture through the presence of visits to Europe and Egypt. However, when Sultan Abd\u00fcl- Mevlevi composers and musicians at the palace, the sig- aziz tried to change the succession system in favor of his nificant role of the Mevlevi lodge in classical music edu- own son Yusuf Izzeddin, Crown Prince Murad cooper- cation, and the further development of ay\u0131n compositions ated with the constitutionalist circles and took part in as some of the most complex in Ottoman classical music. the deposition of Abd\u00fclaziz on May 30, 1876. Though Murad V successfully acceded to the throne, he was Before and after the conquest of Constantinople not capable of maintaining his place; his weak nerves, in 1453, Ottoman courts interacted with the music of a combined with alcoholism, led to a mental breakdown. Midhat Pasha, the leading statesman of the Ottoman Tanzimat or reform era, and the Ottoman governing elite deposed him on August 31, 1876, and arranged the accession of his younger brother Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. 1876\u20131909). Murad V was the shortest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman dynasty, ruling for just 93 days. He spent his remaining years in the Cira\u011fan Palace in Istanbul, which Abd\u00fclhamid II did not allow him to leave. He died on August 29, 1904. Selcuk Ak\u015fin Somel music Music of the Ottoman empire flourished over This picture shows the renowned Mevlevi ney player, Neyzen the course of five centuries within a broader regional con- Emin Dede. (Courtesy of Anders Hammarlund) text of the Near East, Central Asia, and Persia. With its expanding and contracting borders, migrations of popu- lations, and multitude of ethno-linguistic communities, the empire encompassed richly diverse musical cultures. The term \u201cOttoman music,\u201d however, frequently refers to a distinctive music of the imperial state and urban soci- ety: the classical (or art) music patronized by the palace and cultivated in a variety of urban settings, including the court, lodges of the Mevlevi Order of Sufis, private homes, mosques, churches, and synagogues. Ottoman classical music can inform us about Ottoman court and religious culture, urban social entertainment, multieth- nic artistic relations, and aesthetic change over time, par- ticularly in the urban centers of the empire (Istanbul, Bursa, Edirne, Izmir, and Salonika). Ottoman classi- cal forms also came into contact with western European musical styles, thus reflecting cross-cultural interactions beyond the boundaries of the empire.","broader, regional Arab-Persian art music. In the 16th music\u2002 \u2002 405 century, after the Ottoman conquests of Tabriz, Bagh- Persian predecessors. The classical Ottoman suite con- dad, and Arab territories, Persian musicians arrived at tained a specific sequence of pieces in a single mode, the court in Istanbul, contributing to a later Ottoman beginning and ending with an instrumental composition style through Persian compositional forms and musi- (the pe\u015frev and saz semaisi, respectively) and present- cal modes. By the 17th century, a distinctive Ottoman ing such distinctive genres as the beste and kar. In addi- classical style was taking shape. The \u201cOttomanness\u201d of tion, the improvisational form (taksim) represents an this music is reflected in its composers (musicians from important development within the Ottoman suite at this Istanbul), poetic language (Ottoman Turkish rather than time. In contradistinction to the Mevlevi ay\u0131n (\u201cserious Arabic and Persian), and new musical forms and modes sacred\u201d), some scholars categorize the Ottoman court constituting an Ottoman suite (fas\u0131l) distinct from Arab- suite as \u201cserious secular\u201d classical music with related but distinctive arrangements, forms, and instrumentation. Musical instruments\u2002 (Courtesy of Anders Hammarlund)","406 music (gazinos) took root as urban entertainment venues in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Hac\u0131 Arif Bey (1831\u201385), a As a chamber music style, the classical Ottoman palace singer and teacher at the harem, Selanikli Ahmet suite was performed in intimate settings by an ensemble Bey (1870\u20131928), an ud player from Salonika, and Bimen of instrumentalists and singers. There is also some evi- \u015een (1872\u20131943), a singer of Armenian heritage from dence of larger, outdoor ensembles. By the 1700s, clas- Bursa, are among the prolific composers of this form, sical groups began to showcase the tanbur (long-necked whose pieces are still performed today. fretted lute) and Mevlevi ney (end-blown reed flute), instruments not included in antecedent suite traditions MULTIRELIGIOUS GENRES and thus reflective of a developing Ottoman distinctive- ness, as well as Mevlevi influence. Composers and musicians among the officially recog- nized non-Muslim religious communities in the empire The gradual attrition of such instruments as the \u00e7enk (Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish) not only (small harp) and miskal (panpipes), used approximately taught and performed at the palace but also made music until the end of the 18th century, exemplifies changing in other venues, including their own religious institu- musical practices and tastes in Ottoman musical history. tions. Tanburi Isak (Isak Fresco Romano, 1745?\u20131814), Among stringed and bowed instruments, the kemen\u00e7e has a Jewish composer and tanbur player, taught at the pal- a spherical body with two or three strings, played verti- ace and counted Selim III, one of several sultan compos- cally with a bow. Rhythm instruments include the ben- ers, as his student. Zaharya (d. 1740?), of Greek origin, dir, a frame drum held vertically, and the kud\u00fcm, double and Niko\u011fos Agha (1836\u201385), of Armenian ancestry, drums important in Mevlevi music and beaten with were both examples of Ottoman composers who also drumsticks by a seated musician. Not unlike the format performed as cantors in their respective churches. Such of a Baroque suite or European concerto with distinct cross-communal interactions fostered a classical canto- movements, the classical Ottoman suite included a col- rial style and repertoire within Ottoman churches and lection of pieces composed in the same mode (makam), synagogues, as well as the use of non-Muslim religious with each piece differing in compositional structure and melodies in classical composition. For example, Zaha- rhythmic pattern. rya used melodies and theoretical principles from Greek church music in his court compositions. Under patronage of the court, musicians and com- posers would perform and teach at the palace, includ- Within churches and synagogues such musical con- ing the harem, where music was part of the educational fluences were reflected specifically in the improvised training and artistic activity of women. With increasing singing of prayers according to makam theory as well aristocratic patronage beyond the court in the 18th cen- as the composition or adaptation of classical forms to tury, classical music-making included non-salaried musi- liturgical texts. A prominent example of the latter is the cians from diverse professions as well as composers from Maftirim repertoire of the Ottoman Jews, a \u201csacred fas\u0131l\u201d the Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish communi- of several pieces in a single makam, representing origi- ties. The Mevlevi continued to serve as important musi- nal compositions or adaptations from Ottoman Turkish cians, composers, and teachers at the palace and Mevlevi pieces, with Hebrew scriptural texts as \u201clyrics.\u201d A male lodges, with the ay\u0131n form developing distinctively and choral ensemble historically sang the fas\u0131l a capella before in interaction with the Ottoman fas\u0131l. Among the many Saturday prayer services in the synagogue. Beginning in Ottoman Mevlevi composers, Ismail Dede Efendi (1778\u2013 Edirne in the 17th century and spreading to major urban 1846) stands out as a prolific composer of both ay\u0131ns and centers with Jewish communities, Maftirim sessions reflect nonreligious pieces, as well as an important teacher of considerable contact and collaboration between Jewish composers who would be influential in the 19th century. and Mevlevi musicians. For example, in Edirne, Mevlevi musicians participated actively in Maftirim sessions at the Ottoman musical history reflects ongoing changes Big Synagogue (B\u00fcy\u00fck Sinagog), and Jewish musicians vis- and developments over the centuries, for example the ited the Mevlevi lodge in the Muradiye mosque complex. creation of new makams, makam combinations, and rhythm cycles (usuls), in addition to the elaboration of OTHER MUSICAL GENRES the instrumental and vocal taksim. By the mid-19th cen- tury, instruments such as the ud, a short-necked fretless In contrast to the intimate nature of Ottoman classical lute historically important in Arabic and Persian music, music performance, military music (mehter) made use of as well as the kanun and santur, plucked and hammered large numbers of musicians performing on \u201cloud\u201d instru- dulcimers respectively, re-entered Ottoman musical ments (e.g., the zurna, or double-reed shawm, trumpets, practice, and new forms became popular, such as the or boru; large drums, or davul; and cymbals, or zil). As song type \u015fark\u0131 (light classical song). The Ottoman suite a highly symbolic music intended to represent the Otto- gradually began to showcase the \u015fark\u0131, with the term fas\u0131l man state to outsiders, mehter military music was per- becoming associated with this song genre rather than with the classical court suite, especially when nightclubs","formed for ceremonies of state and in battle. The music music 407 represents a mix of classical and popular styles, forms, and instruments. For example, the zurna and davul are ity, and development. Within such venues as the palace associated with folk music, while specific forms, such as music school, Mevlevi lodges, and private homes, mas- the instrumental introduction (pe\u015frev), reflect classical ter-pupil relationships took a central place in a teaching compositional genres. A related group, mehter-i birun and learning method called me\u015fk. In addition to instruc- (unofficial mehter), was performed for public festivals tional repetition of musical sections and technical chal- and was associated with Gypsy musicians and boy danc- lenges, the beating of the rhythm pattern on the knees ers (k\u00f6\u00e7ek\u00e7e). served as a framework for linking up the melodic and poetic lines correctly, representing one of the memory In the 18th century, through gifts of mehter ensem- arts involved in such learning. The song-text collection bles to European courts and mehter performances at (g\u00fcfte mecmuas\u0131), in manuscript and later printed form, Ottoman embassies in Europe, the music became associ- typically provided the musician with song lyrics and ated there with Ottoman music as a whole, influencing composer\/lyricist names, as well as minimal theoretical European military music and introducing mehter-style cues for the piece, such as the makam and usul. Such col- percussion instruments into European orchestras. Partic- lections also served as mnemonic devices for triggering ularly in the 18th century, the music generated an inter- the memory of entire pieces learned through me\u015fk. est in \u201calla Turca\u201d motifs among European composers, as reflected in rhythmic patterns and melodic intervals In the course of Ottoman music history several sys- reminiscent of mehter in Mozart\u2019s Rondo alla Turca and tems of notation were developed, including those of Ali Beethoven\u2019s Turkish March from Ruins of Athens. At the Ufki (Wojciech Bobowski, 1610?\u201375), Kantemiro\u011flu end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, Euro- (Prince Demetrius Cantemir, 1673\u20131723), and Baba pean musical forms began to have an impact on Otto- Hamparsum (Hamparsum Limonciyan, 1768\u20131839). man music as well, in part through the appointment of However, despite their significance today as historic Giuseppe Donizetti, brother of the opera composer, at records, none of these systems were widely utilized by the court in 1828. However, Ottoman music historians Ottoman composers, musicians, and teachers, with the disagree about the musical and social significance of exception of Hamparsum notation, which was used these developments: whether they were the beginning for the documentation of Armenian church music and of Europeanization and the decline of Ottoman classical numerous Ottoman compositions in the 19th century. music, or the integration of musical influences into the Golden Age of a well-established tradition. In a musical culture of oral transmission, a single Ottoman composition could have more than one ver- The urban environment of Ottoman cities included sion, whether instantiated at a single performance or other musical venues, such as the coffeehouse (kahve- legitimated by transmission from a recognized master. hane), associated with the performance of folk genres. While composers\u2019 names and compositional skill were and the hymns (nefes) of the Bekta\u015fi Order of the associated with individual pieces, such versioning none- Janissaries. After the dissolution of the Janissaries in theless contrasts with the idea of the composer as sole 1826, the coffee house, (semai kahvehanesi) became authority and of performance as a precise reproduction popular for such events as poetic competitions and per- of a notated score. Contemporary scholarship on Otto- formances connected with the Muslim holiday of Rama- man oral transmission and its performative implications dan. In addition, the drinking house (meyhane) was reflects contrasting historiographical narratives repre- commonly connected with Greek folk music; Sufi lodges sentative of wider debates in Ottoman historical schol- were connected with a variety of Sufi hymns and reli- arship. For example, in recognition of the drawbacks gious gatherings; and, beginning in the 19th century, the of me\u015fk (that is, musical losses), an evolutionary, Euro- gazino, or nightclub, with increasingly \u201clight\u201d fas\u0131l music. centric perspective narrates Ottoman oral transmission Depending on historical era and location, these spaces as a gradual achievement of musical literacy through represent sites of varying multiethnic musical and social the development of a variety of notational systems, cul- interaction, together with the more or less separate folk minating in the establishment of European notation in and popular music-making of diverse ethno-linguis- the 20th century (Eugenia Popescu-Judetz). By contrast, tic communities of the empire, whether indigenous or recent research on me\u015fk (Cem Behar) investigates, on its immigrant (for example, Sephardic Jewish, Armenian, own terms, the musical culture surrounding such trans- Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian, Arab). mission practices, including the cultivation of social val- ues, such as a master\u2019s generosity of time and knowledge MUSICAL EDUCATION AND TRANSMISSION and a pupil\u2019s loyalty, as well as the historical devaluing of notation as a deficient representation of the music. Until the 20th century, Ottoman classical music primar- Given inevitable musical losses and changing musical ily relied upon oral transmission for its survival, continu- tastes, such ethical values and textual judgments sup- ported the more or less successful transmission of a","408 music Ottoman style by the 17th century. Edwin Seroussi has examined a number of Ottoman Hebrew-language g\u00fcfte large repertoire and musical technique through historical mecmuas\u0131 for evidence of classical adaptations (contra- chains of masters and pupils. facta), as well as original compositions, by Ottoman Jewish composers, thereby charting the gradual devel- OTTOMAN MUSICAL THEORY opment of Hebrew-language art music and Maftirim fas\u0131l in Ottoman synagogues. The modal, or makam, system of Ottoman music devel- oped within a wider regional and historical context of In addition to the g\u00fcfte mecmuas\u0131, numerous other Near Eastern makam music. Simply put, a makam can sources provide rich detail or indirect clues about music- be represented as a musical scale with a particular set making in specific historical periods. For example, Ali of compositional rules and practices. For example, the Ufki\u2019s Saray-\u0131 Enderun describes music-making and edu- character of a makam may be reflected in part through cation in the palace in the 17th century; \u015eeyh\u00fclislam melodic conventions particular to that makam\u2014a char- Esad Efendi\u2019s (d. 1753) biography of composers and acteristic distinguishing makams from European musi- musicians provides information on various classes of cal scales, unattached to such compositional features. In musicians in Istanbul including silk-weavers, street ven- the course of Ottoman musical history literally hundreds dors, and stone masons, thus evidencing widespread of makams were created and used, some going out of nonprofessional urban music-making beyond the pal- fashion and others continuing over time. Unlike Euro- ace by the 18th century; and finally the multivolume pean musical scales, a makam\u2019s intervallic relationships travelogue by Evliya \u00c7elebi (b. 1611\u2013d. after 1683), and compositional qualities can best be demonstrated a well-regarded musician himself, provides detailed through the performance of a composition or taksim. information and statistics on instruments, instrument- Makams became associated with \u201cextra-musical\u201d qualities of medical therapeutic value, contributing to the devel- This picture reportedly shows Tanburi Isak (Isak Fresco Romano, opment of a theory of Ottoman music therapy, practiced 1745?\u20131814), a Jewish composer who was a famous player most notably at the sanatorium for the mentally ill at the of tanbur, a long-necked fretted lute, and who taught at the complex of Sultan Bayezid II (est. 1488) in Edirne. palace. (Courtesy of Yap\u0131 Kredi Koleksiyonu) Like makams, the rhythmic cycles (usuls) of Otto- man music underwent development, change, attrition, and continuity. Unlike common rhythms of European classical music, Ottoman usuls include extremely long patterns across many measures (e.g., cycles of 32, 64, or 88), as well as odd-numbered beats (e.g., five, seven, nine). Out of hundreds of Ottoman usuls, earlier musi- cal genres such as the beste vocal form employed some of the longest rhythmic cycles in tandem with long melodic lines, while other forms such as the later \u015fark\u0131 are charac- terized by shorter usuls. SOURCES FOR OTTOMAN MUSIC HISTORY Although notation never became established in the Ottoman musical world, the notated scores of Ali Ufk\u00ee and Kantemiro\u011flu survive as important sources for compositions, as well as evidence about style and reper- toire preferences of a particular musical era. Treatises on music theory, both pre-Ottoman Arabic works as well as later works of al-Meragi (d. 1435) and Kantermiro\u011flu, provide valuable information on makams and usuls, even if theoretical texts do not necessarily inform us about actual performance practices of different periods. Recently, a number of scholars have made fruitful use of the under-researched song-text collections, or g\u00fcfte mecmuas\u0131, for a number of research projects on me\u015fk, musical change, and multi-religious genres. For exam- ple, Owen Wright\u2019s contrastive study of three Arab-Per- sian song-text collections and the collection of Haf\u0131z Post (1631\u201394) carves out the development of a unique","makers, and musicians in the Istanbul of his day. Travel Mustafa I 409 accounts, correspondence, miniatures, and other textual or visual sources can enrich both research on Ottoman Ahmed\u2019s firstborn son from another concubine, succeed music and scholarship on European views of the music to the throne, which would have led to the killing of her and empire. In the 20th century, recordings of late Otto- own sons. Until the death of his brother in 1617, Mustafa man composers and musicians, such as Tanburi Cemil was thus confined to the palace, a situation that likely Bey (1873\u20131916) and hazan (cantor) Isak al-Gazi (1889\u2013 worsened his mental aberration and turned him into a 1950), represent aural sources not only for classical com- paranoid man fearful of execution. positions and stylistic techniques influential in the 20th century, but also for information on the early recording The death of Ahmed I thus led to an unprecedented industry and the impact of commercial recording on situation in Ottoman history: several princes were eli- Ottoman and early Turkish Republican musical culture gible for the throne, all of whom resided within the and historiography. Topkap\u0131 Palace. Eventually a court faction decided to enthrone Mustafa rather than Osman, thereby establish- Maureen Jackson ing the new principle of seniority in Ottoman succession Further reading: Cem Behar, A\u015fk Olmay\u0131nca Me\u015fk practice as the deceased sultan was for the first time in Olmaz, 2nd. ed. (Istanbul: Yap\u0131 Kredi, 2003); Walter Feld- centuries succeeded not by his son, but by his brother. man, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (Berlin: Intercul- Mustafa I was soon deposed by the faction that tural Music Studies, 1996); Edwin Seroussi, \u201cFrom Court opposed his succession and was replaced by Osman II and Tarikat to Synagogue: Ottoman Art Music and Hebrew (r. 1618\u201322). Mustafa was put in a Harem chamber, with Sacred Songs,\u201d in Sufism, Music and Society in Turkey and the the door solidly sealed. Although Osman II ordered the Middle East, edited by Anders Hammarlund et al. (Istanbul: execution of his younger brother Mehmed before depart- Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2001); Karl Signell, ing for a military campaign in 1621, Mustafa\u2019s life was Makam: Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music (Seattle: Uni- spared, probably due to his mental condition. Unexpect- versity of Washington Asian Music Publications, 1977). edly, after Osman II was murdered following a Janissary Further Listening: Lalezar, Music of the Sultans, Sufis & rebellion in 1622, Mustafa was taken by force from his Seraglio: \u201cSultan Composers\u201d (vol 1); \u201cMusic of the Danc- chamber and then restored to the throne. ing Boys\u201d (vol 2); \u201cMinority Composers\u201d (vol 3); \u201cOttoman Suite\u201d (vol 4) (Traditional Crossroads, 2000\u20132001). Detailed Mustafa I\u2019s second reign passed under the shadow liner notes by Walter Feldman. of the turbulence Osman\u2019s regicide precipitated. Mus- tafa had neither the power nor the capacity to rule as a Mustafa I (b. ca. 1591\u2013d. ca. 1639) (r. 1617\u20131618; sultan; he was only a puppet in the hands of his mother 1622\u20131623) Ottoman sultan and caliph Son of Sultan and brother-in-law, the grand vizier Kara Davud Pasha. Mehmed III and an Abkhazian royal concubine, whose At the same time, the real masters in the capital were the name has not been determined, Mustafa I was born in Janissaries and the sipahis (cavalry), at whose pleasure Manisa when his father, as a prince, was governing the several ministers were nominated, deposed, or executed. province of Saruhan. Following his father\u2019s enthronement These elite regiments soon began a struggle for suprem- in 1595, Mustafa and his siblings were taken to Istanbul. acy while people in the capital and the country held them In 1603, Mehmed III ordered the execution of his oldest accountable for the murder of Osman and pressured for son, Mahmud, a decision that left Mustafa and his older those responsible to be punished. The political instability brother Ahmed as the sole surviving males of the dynasty reached a climax when the governor-general of Erzurum, confined in the Topkap\u0131 Palace. When Mehmed III Abaza Mehmed Pasha, decided to advance on Istanbul to died later that year, an inner court faction secured the settle the score with the murderers of Osman II. Grand succession for the 13-year-old Ahmed, who decided to Vizier Kara Davud Pasha was chosen as the scapegoat keep his brother alive contrary to the established prac- and was executed in an attempt to mollify the discon- tice of royal fratricide, perhaps because that Mustafa tent and preempt the rebellions that were building up in was weak-minded and Ahmed had as yet no sons who the empire, but to no avail: Mehmed Pasha, despite the could guarantee the male line of dynastic succession. offers made by the emissaries from the capital, continued However, even after Ahmed I had fathered several sons his advance. Faced with an ever-deepening crises, clerics he kept Mustafa alive. Although not finally established, petitioned Mustafa\u2019s mother to agree to the deposition of the main factor behind Ahmed\u2019s decision may have been her son in favor of 11-year-old Prince Murad, the oldest efforts by his favorite consort, K\u00f6sem Sultan, who seem- surviving son of Ahmed I. The Queen Mother concurred, ingly worked to preempt the possibility of having Osman, only pleading that her son\u2019s life be spared. Accordingly, Mustafa I was dethroned and incarcerated again. Mustafa died in seclusion in 1639 and was buried in the courtyard of Ayasofya. He did not father any children nor establish any imperial foundation. G\u00fcnhan B\u00f6rek\u00e7i","410 Mustafa II Habsburg troops in Transylvania, who himself died in the fight. Mustafa then proceeded to capture Kar\u00e1nsebes Further reading: Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: (Caransebe\u015f, Romania) before leaving the front for the Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: winter. He entered Istanbul with the spoils of his suc- Oxford University Press, 1993), 97\u2013112. Caroline Finkel, cessful campaign, including some 300 Christian captives, Osman\u2019s Dream (London: John Murray, 2005),196\u2013205; a rare occurrence in recent Ottoman history. J.H. Kramers, \u201cMustafa I,\u201d in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 7, eds. C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Hein- The 1696 campaign was less successful, and on richs and Ch. Pellat (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 707. Baki August 7, 1696 Muscovy captured Azak at the mouth Tezcan, \u201cSearching for Osman: A Reassessment of the of the River Don. Mustafa II suffered his most disas- Deposition of The Ottoman Sultan Osman II (1618\u2013 trous defeat on September 11, 1697 at the Battle of 1622),\u201d (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2001), 84\u2013134. Zenta, near prsent-day Senta in northern Serbia on the Tisza River. Despite the advice of the warden of Bel- Mustafa II (b. 1664\u2013d. 1703) (r. 1695\u20131703) Otto- grade, Amcazade H\u00fcseyin Pasha, who proposed to attack man sultan and caliph Son of Sultan Mehmed IV (r. Habsburg-held Petrovaradin northwest of Belgrade on the 1648\u201387) and Rabia Emetullah G\u00fclnu\u015f Sultan, Mus- Danube River, Mustafa moved toward Transylvania tafa was born in Edirne on June 5, 1664. Following the and consolidated Ottoman positions around Temesv\u00e1r death of Sultan S\u00fcleyman II (r. 1687\u201391), certain court (Timi\u015foara, Romania). The sultan and part of his army circles wanted to put him on the throne, but their plan successfully crossed the Tisza River. The rest of the army, was foiled by Grand Vizier Faz\u0131l Mustafa Pasha (grand led by the grand vizier, was still in the process of crossing vizier in 1689\u201391) of the famous K\u00f6r\u00fcl\u00fc family, who the river when Eugene of Savoy, commander in chief of supported Mustafa\u2019s uncle Ahmed II (r. 1691\u201395). When the Habsburg forces in Hungary, who had followed the Ahmed died, Mustafa ascended to the throne on Febru- Ottomans from Petrovaradin, attacked them with his ary 6, 1695, even though the new grand vizier, S\u00fcrmeli 50,000 men. After intense bombardment, Eugene charged Ali Pasha, supported Ahmed II\u2019s son, Prince Ibrahim. his infantry and slaughtered half of the Ottoman army. Some 25,000 Ottomans, including the grand vizier, were Mustafa II\u2019s eight-and-a-half-year reign witnessed reported to have lost their lives. A crowning victory for major military debacle (1697) and territorial losses (Hun- the Habsburgs, Zenta was a major disaster for the Otto- gary and the Morea), but it also heralded a new era of mans, who, through English and Dutch mediation, sped Ottoman foreign policy. The Holy League War (1684\u201399) up the peace negotiations that had started in 1688. The that was triggered by the Ottomans\u2019 unsuccessful sec- peace was concluded on January 26, 1699 at Karlowitz. ond siege of Vienna in 1683, had exhausted the empire\u2019s resources, led to revolts in the Arab provinces, and At the peace Treaty of Karlowitz, the Otto- revealed the questionable loyalty to the dynasty of the mans surrendered much of Hungary, Transylvania Ottoman elite and provincial notables. To tackle these (an Ottoman vassal principality ruled by pro-Istanbul problems Mustafa\u2019s government experimented with new Hungarian princes), Croatia, and Slavonia to the Aus- approaches to military recruitment and finances. The trian Habsburgs, but kept the Banat Temesv\u00e1r, the his- sultan\u2019s withdrawal to the old capital Edirne in the sec- toric region in southern Hungary south of the Maros ond half of his reign after 1699 and the nepotism of his (Mure\u015f) River. Podolia, with the dismantled fortress of tutor and chief political adviser, \u015feyh\u00fclislam Feyzullah Kamani\u00e7e, was restored to the Polish-Lithuanian Com- Efendi, led to the revolt of the army in Istanbul and to monwealth, but the Ottomans kept Moldavia (in pres- the deposition of the sultan in 1703. ent-day Romania). Parts of Dalmatia and the Morea (the Peloponnese) remained Venetian, though the Otto- At the accession of Sultan Mustafa II, the Ottoman mans recaptured the Morea in the war of 1715\u201318, and Empire was in the midst of the long Holy League War, the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718) left it in Ottoman hands. fought against Habsburg Austria and her allies, Venice, With Muscovy, negotiations continued, and peace was Poland-Lithuania, the papacy and, from 1686, Muscovy, not reached until July 12, 1700 at Istanbul, when the sul- as Russia was then known. The new sultan proclaimed a tan ceded Azak to the Russians. holy war against the empire\u2019s enemies, and despite oppo- sition from the Imperial Council, decided to lead his Apart from these territorial losses, the Treaty of Kar- army in battle in the hope that he would recover Hun- lowitz was a turning point in Ottoman history in that it gary and other lost territories. His first campaign in 1695 heralded a new era in the way the Ottomans dealt with brought some much-needed success. Ottoman troops their rivals. Defeated and weakened, the Ottomans were led by the sultan recaptured Lippa (Lipova, Romania) on forced to adhere, for the first time in their history, to September 7, and at the battle fought near Lugos (Lugoj, European rules of international law and diplomacy. The Romania) on September 21 inflicted a disastrous defeat peace treaties with the members of the Holy League were on Federico Ambrosio Veterani, the commander of the no mere temporary suspension of hostilities as previous"]