Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire

["introduced from Europe was largely confined to the Selim I 511 elites and did not prosper within the madrasa, the tra- ditional educational institution, in which scholasticism (hajj) to Mecca, which gave the Ottomans unparalleled prevailed. The modern schools of the 19th century also prestige and legitimacy in the Muslim world. did not aim at scientific research. The emphasis was on catching up with European science through education, The conquest expanded the Ottoman Empire\u2019s ter- by translating European textbooks and hiring Euro- ritories from 341,100 square miles in 1512 to 576,900 pean technical personnel. The Russo-Ottoman wars, square miles in 1520, an increase by almost 70 per- Crimean War, and nationalist and separatist move- cent. More importantly, revenues from Syria and Egypt ments, along with the gradual weakening of the central accounted for one third of the total revenue of the authority and the interventions of European Great Pow- empire. The protection of the maritime lanes of commu- ers, proved further obstacles to scientific advances and nications between Istanbul and Cairo thus became vital developing the basic sciences fundamental to techno- and necessitated the further strengthening of the Otto- logical development. man navy. It also led to confrontation with the domi- nant Christian maritime powers of the Mediterranean: Feza G\u00fcnergun Venice, Spain, and the Knights of St. John, based Further reading: Feza G\u00fcnergun, \u201cOttoman Encoun- on the Island of Rhodes. Protecting the Hejaz against ters with European Science: Sixteenth and Seventeenth-cen- Portuguese encroachment into the Red Sea brought the tury Translations into Turkish,\u201d in Cultural Translation in Ottomans into conflict with the Portuguese. However, all Early Modern Europe, edited by Peter Burke and R. Po-chia these conflicts were left to Selim\u2019s successor, Sultan S\u00fcl- Hsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Feza eyman I (r. 1520\u201366). G\u00fcnergun, \u201cScience in the Ottoman World,\u201d in George N. Vlahakis et al., Imperialism and Science: Social Impact and STRUGGLE FOR THE THRONE AND SURVIVAL Interaction (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2006); Feza G\u00fcnergun and Kuriyama Shigehisa, eds., The Introduction of Selim, the youngest of Bayezid II\u2019s sons, had little chance Modern Science and Technology to Turkey and Japan (Kyoto: to succeed his father, whose favorite was Ahmed, prince- International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 1997). governor in Amasya (northern Turkey). Selim was prince-governor of the faraway Black Sea coastal prov- Selcuks See Seljuks. ince of Trabzon (northeastern Turkey). Even their third brother, Korkud, prince-governor of Antalya (on the Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim, Selim \u201cthe Grim\u201d) (b. Mediterranean coast of southwestern Turkey), was closer 1470\/1471\u2013d. 1520) (r. 1512\u20131520) Ottoman sultan who to the capital than Selim. Proximity to Istanbul and the conquered eastern Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt Sultan throne was crucial in the Ottoman Empire, where no Selim devoted most of his energies to fighting against the particular rule governed the succession of sultans. The Shia Safavids of Iran, who challenged Ottoman sover- prince who first reached the capital, took hold of the trea- eignty in eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. He defeated sury, and got the support of the army had the best chance the Safavids at the Battle of \u00c7ald\u0131ran in 1514 and secured to become the new sultan, while the fate of his bothers Ottoman rule over most of eastern and southeastern and their sons was execution. Asia Minor. In 1516\u201317, Selim waged a victorious war against the Sunni Mamluks, who had ruled Egypt and Selim\u2019s rise to prominence was closely related to Syria since 1258, conquering and incorporating Syria his father\u2019s failure to handle the Safavids, who regularly and Egypt into his empire. The Sharif of Mecca and encroached on Ottoman territories and whose prosely- Yemen also acknowledged Selim\u2019s sovereignty. tizing policy among the Turkoman and Kurdish nomads challenged Ottoman sovereignty in eastern Anatolia. In The introduction of Ottoman rule in these Arab 1507 the Safavids attacked the Dulkad\u0131rs, a Turkoman lands had major political and economic consequences. principality in southeastern Anatolia on the frontiers With his conquests, Selim became the master of the between the three major powers of the region: the Otto- Hejaz, that is, Mecca and Medina, \u201cthe cradle of Islam,\u201d mans, Mamluks, and Safavids. Since the Dulkad\u0131r lord as well as of Damascus and Cairo, former seats of the (emir) was Selim\u2019s father-in-law, Selim retaliated with caliphs (successors to the Prophet Muhammad). Selim his own raids into Safavid territory. In 1510 he defeated a and his successors assumed the title of \u201cServant of the Safavid army, led by Shah Ismail\u2019s brother, which threat- Two Noble Sanctuaries\u201d (Khadim al-Haramayn al-Shari- ened Trabzon, Selim\u2019s seat. Selim was disappointed when fayn), referring to Mecca and Medina, and with this the his firm stance against the Safavids was interpreted by his task of protecting and organizing the annual pilgrimage father, Bayezid II, as insubordination. Bayezid was about 60 years old at the time and Selim was concerned about a possible succession fight with his two elder brothers; he decided to act preemptively. Since both Ahmed and Korkud were closer to Istanbul, Selim demanded a new governorship closer to the capital.","512 Selim I Selim defeated and killed him in 1515, installing Ala\u00fcd- devle\u2019s nephew and rival as Istanbul\u2019s client and sending When a rumor spread that Bayezid was about to abdicate the dead ruler\u2019s head to the Mamluk Sultan Qansuh al- in favor of Ahmed, Selim traveled to Caffa, which was Ghawri (r. 1500\u201316) in Cairo. Ottoman chroniclers claim governed by his own son, the future S\u00fcleyman I the Mag- that when Selim was marching against the Safavids in nificent. Thence Selim crossed onto the Balkans and in 1514, his supply lines were attacked by Ala\u00fcddevle, and March 1511 his army of 3,000 men reached the former thus Selim was forced to make war against the Dulkad\u0131rs. Ottoman capital Edirne, where Bayezid had been resid- Whatever the truth, Selim\u2019s victory over the Dulkad\u0131rs ing since the 1509 Istanbul earthquake. In the meantime, led to direct Ottoman-Mamluk confrontation. a major Turkoman K\u0131z\u0131lba\u015f revolt broke out in Teke in southwestern Anatolia, led by a holy man known in To justify the war against the Shia Safavids, branded Ottoman sources as \u015eahkulu (Slave of the shah). When as heretics by Istanbul, was not a problem. However, the the rebels defeated the imperial forces sent against them Mamluks followed Sunni Islam, as did the Ottomans, under the command of Prince Korkud and were march- and al-Mustansir, a descendant of the last Abbasid caliph, ing against Bursa, Bayezid yielded to Selim\u2019s demands resided in Cairo. The Mamluk sultans were also the pro- and appointed him prince-governor of the Danubian tectors of Mecca and Medina and guarantors of the hajj. province of Semendire (present-day Smederevo on the To justify his attack against the Mamluks, Selim advanced Danube in Serbia). However, Selim did not trust his several pretexts and secured a fatwa, or religious opin- father. When he learned that the grand vizier planned ion, from the Ottoman religious establishment. This to bring Prince Ahmed to the throne after the defeat of accused the Mamluks of oppressing Muslims and justi- \u015eahkulu, Selim decided to seize the throne. However, on fied the war against them with an alleged Mamluk-Safa- August 3, 1511 he was defeated by Bayezid\u2019s army near vid alliance, declaring that \u201che who aids a heretic (that is, \u00c7orlu, between Edirne and Istanbul, and fled to Caffa. the Safavids) is a heretic himself.\u201d When Prince Ahmed heard about the battle between The two armies met north of Aleppo at Marj Dabik on Selim and their father, he went to Istanbul in the hope August 24, 1516. Ottoman firearms and desertion in the that Bayezid would abdicate in his favor. However, the Mamluk camp, a result of intensive Ottoman propaganda sultan\u2019s elite infantry, the Janissaries, supported Selim in the previous months, sealed the fate of the Mamluks. and blocked Ahmed from entering the capital. Frus- When Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri died, apparently trated, Ahmed left for Anatolia, intending to return with of a heart attack, the remnants of his troops fled. Aleppo his Anatolian supporters. In the meantime, yet another and Damascus both surrendered without a fight. Selim\u2019s K\u0131z\u0131lba\u015f rebellion broke out around Tokat in north-cen- name was incorporated into the hutbe (sermon) during the tral Anatolia, and yielding to pressure from the Janissar- next Friday prayer performed in the great mosque of the ies, Bayezid invited Selim to Istanbul, appointing him Ummayyad caliphs in Damascus. The Ottomans followed commander-in-chief of the army. Selim arrived in Istan- the fleeing Mamluk army to Egypt and delivered a second bul in April 1512; with the support of the Janissaries he crushing defeat to them on January 23, 1517 at Raydani- deposed his father and was proclaimed sultan on April yya, outside Cairo. Although remnants of the Mamluk 24. It was the first time that the Janissaries orchestrated army offered stiff resistance in Cairo, the resistance col- the abdication of the reigning sultan. The deposed sultan lapsed when Sultan Tumanbay (r. 1516\u201317) was captured died on June 10 on his way to Dimetoka, his birthplace in and killed. With him died the Mamluk sultanate that had Thrace. ruled for more than 250 years in Egypt and Syria. Its ter- ritories were incorporated into Selim\u2019s empire as the new VICTORY OVER THE SAFAVIDS AND THE provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, and Egypt. CONQUEST OF MAMLUK SYRIA AND EGYPT Selim was by now the most prominent Muslim ruler, Selim\u2019s accession to the Ottoman throne signaled a radi- having defeated the \u201cheretic\u201d Safavids and their K\u0131z\u0131lba\u015f cal change in Ottoman-Safavid relations. He launched a followers. He ruled over the holiest places of Islam, was full-scale campaign against Shah Ismail I (r. 1501\u201324) protector of Mecca and Medina and guarantor of the hajj. in 1514 and defeated his enemy at the battle of \u00c7ald\u0131ran His conquests were important to legitimize the House of (August 23, 1514). As a result of his victory eastern Ana- Osman and brought substantial added revenue into the tolia was attached to the Ottoman Empire, and Shah treasury. With the conquests of the Arab lands, however, Ismail lost his recruiting ground for his Turkoman army. the nature of the Ottoman Empire started to change con- siderably. The roles assumed by the sultan and the influ- Historians disagree as to whether Selim had planned ence of the Arab religious establishment required fuller the conquest of Mamluk Syria and Egypt. It seems that adoption of Islamic practices in governance and policy. the Ottomans\u2019 renewed claims on Dulkad\u0131r territories led to the confrontation with the Mamluks, the Dulkad\u0131rs\u2019 On the other hand, Selim\u2019s wars against Muslims nominal sovereign. When the Dulkad\u0131r ruler Ala\u00fcd- and the lack of any major campaign against the Christian devle took no notice of Ottoman demands of submission,","\u201cinfidels\u201d seem to have presented a \u201clegitimacy deficit\u201d Selim II 513 for the sultan. Later Ottoman chroniclers were at pains to emphasize Selim\u2019s raids, while still prince-governor in Perhaps the most significant aspect of Selim\u2019s reign Trabzon, against the Georgians. Indeed, he might have was his near total reliance on Grand Vizier Sokollu contemplated a major campaign against Christendom. Mehmed Pasha, one of the most powerful grand viziers Venetian reports explained the large-scale shipbuilding in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed Pasha activity in the Istanbul naval arsenal in 1518\u201319 with held the office of grand vizier uninterruptedly for 14 a planned overall Ottoman assault against Christian years, from 1565 to 1579, under three successive sultans: Europe, purportedly against Rhodes. It seemed probable, S\u00fcleyman I, Selim II, and Murad III (r. 1574\u201395). The in light of the fact that Selim\u2019s navy acquired substan- grand vizier was known for appointing family members tial added strength when in 1519 \u201cthe pirate of Algiers,\u201d and kinsmen to key posts in the empire, thus creating Hayreddin Barbarossa (see Barbarossa brothers), a reliable network made up of his prot\u00e9g\u00e9s. According offered his services to the sultan. By appointing Hayred- to contemporaries, during Selim\u2019s reign, the ruling the din Barbarossa governor (beylerbeyi) of Algiers, Sultan empire was altogether entrusted to Sokollu, who was a Selim considerably strengthened the Ottoman navy and virtual sovereign. If Sokollu\u2019s overwhelming presence extended Ottoman influence as far as Algiers and Tunis. was one of the major reasons for Selim\u2019s abstaining from Selim\u2019s premature death in September 1520, however, the business of rule, another significant reason was a nullified all plans, whatever these might have been. dramatic shift in the political setting of the empire. The surfacing of the court and favorites system and the G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston sedentarization of the sultanate coincided with the reign Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream: The of Selim. In fact, these would become the defining fea- Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (London: John tures of the power struggles of Selim\u2019s successors. Murray, 2005); Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cSel\u012bm I,\u201d in Encyclopaedia of Islam, online edition (by subscription), edited by P. Bear- In conventional terms, weighing the reigns of the man, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. sultans by the extent of their foreign conquests, Selim\u2019s Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. GEORGETOWN UNI- reign was relatively uneventful, since no land campaigns VERSITY. 31 May 2007 http:\/\/www.brillonline.nl\/subscriber\/ took place during his reign. Selim II was the first sultan entry?entry=islam_COM-1015; Donald Edgar Pitcher, An of the post-S\u00fcleymanic era whose reign passed in the Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire from the Earliest court rather than on the battlefields. His absence from Times to the End of the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1972). the battlefields and his reluctance to lead his armies can- not be attributed to a deficiency in his training. Like the Selim II (b. 1524\u2013d. 1574) (r. 1566\u20131574) Otto- other princes of the dynasty, he was given the training man sultan and caliph Selim was the third son of the befitting a warrior sultan. Nor was he unfamiliar with famous Ottoman sultan S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366); his armed conflicts. Even before he became sultan, Selim\u2019s mother was S\u00fcleyman\u2019s beloved concubine H\u00fcrrem competency in battle had been put to the test during Sultan (Roxalane). The history of sultanic succession the succession struggle with his brother Bayezid (1559). in the empire was marked by fierce competition for Instead, his absence from battlefields is due to the politi- the throne among the Ottoman princes. Although such cal circumstances in which he reigned that required a competition was not missing from Selim\u2019s youth, by sultan actively involved in the careful planning of court 1559 all of his brothers\u2014and thus all possible rivals for politics, rather than on the battlefields. the throne\u2014were dead. (Prince Mehmed died in 1544, Princes Mustafa and Mehmed Bayezid were executed in Although Selim\u2019s reign was not characterized by 1553 and 1559, respectively.) (See S\u00fcleyman I.) How- significant land wars, there were naval campaigns in ever, in 1566, when S\u00fcleyman died in Hungary, Selim the Mediterranean during his time. In 1571 the Otto- II\u2019s succession was not without complication. To pro- mans captured the island of Cyprus from the Venetians; tect the enthronement and accession process, the with the neighboring areas in mainland Anatolia, it was brilliant grand vizier, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, kept formed into a new province. At first the torrid climate S\u00fcleyman\u2019s death secret until Selim reached the army in of the island did not attract much migration, but with Belgrade. Even then, Selim\u2019s accession was not imme- pressure from the state, a large number of Turkish peo- diately sanctioned by the Janissaries. When the army ple eventually settled there. Later in the same year the returned to Istanbul, the Janissaries did not allow so-called Holy League\u2014a joint force of the papal, Vene- Selim to enter the palace until he paid the c\u00fclus gratu- tian, and Spanish fleets\u2014avenged the taking of Cyprus, ity, a gift of money customarily paid by sultans to the which was viewed as an important Christian stronghold military upon accession to the throne. in the eastern Mediterranean, in the devastating naval Battle of Lepanto, utterly destroying the Ottoman navy. Although the Ottoman fleet was completely rebuilt within one year, the state did not fully recover from the tremendous loss of skilled and seasoned naval personnel","514 Selim III began forming his own circle of reformers and corre- sponded with Louis XVI of France concerning statecraft, until after Selim\u2019s reign. The recovery of the fortress of social institutions, and military arts in Europe. His free- Tunis from Spain in 1574, only months before Selim II\u2019s dom of movement was restricted when his name was death, can be added to the naval successes of his reign. involved in the alleged plot of Grand Vizier Halil Hamid Pasha against Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid I in 1785. Acceding to While uncompleted, perhaps the most ambitious the throne at the age of 28 after four sultans of advanced venture undertaken during Selim\u2019s reign was the build- age, his reign meant for his subjects the beginning of a ing of a canal between the Don and Volga rivers. This new era. With the imagination of a great reformer, Selim large-scale project, which meant digging some 40 miles undertook the major reforms known as the Nizam-\u0131 of uneven terrain, was especially supported by Grand Cedid (New Order) with the aim of restructuring Otto- Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. If completed, the chan- man politics and military institutions, reforms that ulti- nel would have served the Ottomans along the empire\u2019s mately had long-term repercussions in the political, northern frontiers by controlling Muscovy\u2019s advance and social, and economic configuration of his empire. providing a base from which the Ottomans could attack Safavid Persia. However, the canal could not be finished The Ottoman Empire was caught up in wars with because of bad weather and disorder among the soldiers both Russia and the Habsburg Empire as well as local who were sent to the region. uprisings, such as those of the Wahhabis, throughout the Balkans and the Arabian Peninsula. The dramatic Selim II was represented by his contemporaries as changes brought about in European continental politics a man of pleasure and was famed for his indulgences, by the French Revolution in 1789 made it possible for the most notably alcohol and hunting. He was also a genu- Ottomans to conclude the Treaty of Svishtov (August ine patron of the arts. Prominent Ottoman intellectual 4, 1791) with the Habsburg Empire with minimum loss figures, such as the historian Mustafa Ali, the poet Baki, of territory despite the military defeats. However, Rus- and the \u015fehnameci (court chronicler) Lokman were sia fell on the exhausted Ottoman armies to gain the among many who were supported by Selim II. One upper hand in negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of the major social and cultural contributions of his of Jassy (January 9, 1792) in which the Ottoman Empire reign was building the monumental Selimiye mosque reaffirmed the Russian annexation of the Crimea. complex, which was named after him. Selim II\u2019s pref- erence of Edirne over Istanbul for the building site of Peace provided the opportunity for Selim to intro- this impressive mosque complex demonstrates his love duce his Nizam-\u0131 Cedid reform program, which was for the former Ottoman capital which he enjoyed visit- shaped by reform proposals submitted by several states- ing, particularly during hunting sessions. The Selimiye men and intellectuals. The tangible results of the pro- mosque, with its masterful dome structure designed by gram were seen in the spheres of the military and the architect Sinan, represents a high point in Ottoman diplomacy. The overwhelming costs of the new army architecture. (reaching 23,000 men in 1807) required setting up a sep- arate treasury, the Irad-\u0131 Cedid (New Revenues), which Selim II died on December 12, 1574 leaving his son meant an increased tax burden on the already impover- Murad III (r. 1574\u20131595) to reign as sultan. ished people. \u015eefik Peksevgen The Ottoman alliances with Sweden (1789) and Further reading: Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Prussia (1790) against Russia and the Habsburg Empire Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: were followed by an Ottoman alliance with England Oxford University Press, 1993); Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s and Russia against France when France invaded Egypt Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (Lon- in 1799. Despite the strong pro-British leanings of the don: John Murray, 2005), 152\u2013195. Ottoman reformers and the intense diplomatic pressure brought to bear on the empire during the First Coalition Selim III (b. 1761\u2013d. 1808) (r. 1789\u20131807) Ottoman Wars (1793\u201395) declared on the revolutionary regime of sultan and caliph, reformer, and composer Selim III was France, the Sublime Porte declared neutrality for the first the son of Sultan Mustafa III (r. 1757\u201374) and Mihri\u015fah time in its history, determined to remain outside Euro- Valide Sultan, a concubine of Georgian origin. Selim\u2019s pean political entanglements in order to carry forward its birth was regarded as a fortuitous event since no prince program of domestic reform. Given the weakened con- had been born since 1725. Therefore he was given a care- dition of the Ottoman state, Selim made use of political ful, thorough education and was raised as the potential tools new to the Ottoman experience, most notably mod- savior of the empire. His uncle Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid I ern diplomacy. This resulted in the appointment of the (r. 1774\u201389) granted him a degree of freedom in social first permanent ambassadors to London (1793), Berlin interaction, whereas seclusion in the Topkap\u0131 Palace (1795), Vienna (1795), and Paris (1795); St. Petersburg had been the norm for Ottoman princes beginning in the 16th century. Given this freedom, the young prince","was excluded because of rumors concerning Russian mil- Seljuks 515 itary preparation against the Ottoman Empire in 1795. tar) Mustafa Pasha, the local power broker of Rus\u00e7uk The first military action against France in the Sec- (Ruse), and Grand Vizier \u00c7elebi Mustafa. ond Coalition Wars (1799\u20131801) involved sending a joint Russo-Ottoman fleet against the French in the Ionian Ebbs and flows of diplomacy notwithstanding, eco- islands in the Adriatic. This made the Ottomans a party nomic depredations, the extravagance of his court, and to a coalition for the first time in history. The second most importantly the lack of a broad base of support for declaration of Ottoman neutrality during the Franco- his reform agenda sealed the fate of the first great reform- British War in 1803 came under the pressure of its allies, ist sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Britain and Russia. However, successive French victories in Europe, especially the humiliation of the Habsburgs Kahraman \u015eakul in the Battle of Austerlitz (1805), persuaded the Otto- Further reading: Virginia Aksan, \u201cSelim III,\u201d in Ency- mans to pursue a pro-French diplomacy. The renewal of clopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., edited by P. J. Bearman et. al., the Ottoman alliance with Russia in 1805 did not pre- vol. 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 132\u2013134; Virginia Aksan, Otto- vent Selim from recognizing Napoleon Bonaparte as man Wars 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged (Harlow, Eng- emperor of France in 1806. The Ottoman refusal to com- land: Longman\/Pearson, 2007), 180\u2013258; Caroline Finkel, ply with Russian demands with regard to the Romanian Osman\u2019s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u2013 principalities and to expel the French ambassador after 1923 (London: John Murray, 2005), 383\u2013412; Ekmeleddin 1805 resulted in a war with Britain and the Russo-Otto- \u0130hsano\u011flu, ed., History of the Ottoman State, Society, and man War of 1806\u20131812 (see Russo-Ottoman Wars). Civilisation, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Ircica, 2001), 63\u201377; Stanford The British responded to the Ottoman recognition of J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire Under Napoleon by sending a fleet to Istanbul in February Selim III, 1789\u20131807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University 1807, a heavy political blow for pro-British Ottoman Press, 1971); Stanford J. Shaw, \u201cThe Transition from Tradi- reformers, although the move was of little consequence tionalistic to Modern Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The in military terms. Reigns of Sultan Selim III (1789\u20131807) and Sultan Mahmud II (1808\u20131839),\u201d in The Turks, vol. 4, edited by Hasan Celal Sultan Selim\u2019s internal opponents made use of the Guzel, C. Cem Oguz, and Osman Karatay (Ankara: Yeni unsettled political conditions of the empire\u2014the shift- T\u00fcrkiye Yay\u0131nlar\u0131, 2002), 130\u2013149. ing international alliances and the ensuing revolts of the Wahhabis and the Serbians\u2014to form a coalition Seljuks (Selcuks, Sel\u00e7uks) The Seljuk dynasty was composed of local Balkan power brokers, Istanbul- one of the most important dynasties in Turko-Islamic based ulema, and the Janissaries. When Sultan Selim history that ruled during the early medieval period over attempted to introduce his reformed Nizam-\u0131 Cedid a vast area stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia. The troops in the Balkans in 1806, these opposing forces Seljuks emerged in the beginning of the 11th century in refused to admit the troops into Edirne in an episode Transoxania (present-day Uzbekistan). Until the early that became known in Turkish historiography as the sec- 14th century, they ruled over Khorasan, Khwarezm, ond Edirne Incident. The sultan\u2019s opponents in the palace Iran, Iraq, Hejaz, Syria, and Anatolia. Although there transformed this political conspiracy into an open revolt were five states bearing the name Seljuk, the one called that cost Sultan Selim III his throne and life. Great Seljuks by historians is the central one. The Great Seljuks, who conquered Anatolia from the Byzantine The decisive incident took place in the fortresses Empire, became the protectors of the Sunni Abbasid along the Bosporus when troops there, encouraged by caliphs in Baghdad against the Shia Fatimids in Egypt the sultan\u2019s opponents in the palace, refused to wear and Syria, and the Fatimids\u2019 Iranian allies in Iraq, the the European-style uniform of the Nizam-\u0131 Cedid Buyids. Their state organization, based on central Asian, army. Unaware of the political conspiracy, Sultan Selim Iranian, and Islamic traditions, served as a model for refrained from sending the Nizam-\u0131 Cedid troops to many states, both contemporaneous and established later suppress the uprising. The march of rebellious Ottoman in history, including the Ottoman Empire, which suc- troops to Istanbul on the secret invitation of the sul- ceeded the Seljuks in Anatolia. tan\u2019s enemies created a snowball effect and the uprising turned into a revolt. The demoralized sultan complied THE GREAT SELJUKS (1038\u20131157) with all the demands of the rebels, including disbanding his Nizam-\u0131 Cedid army and executing his reform entou- Seljuk, after whom the dynasty was named, was the rage, but he could not save his throne. Sultan Selim was grandfather of Tughril (c. 990\u20131063), the first Seljuk assassinated the following year in an attempted counter- sultan. Although there are differing views about the pro- coup orchestrated by his supporters Alemdar (Bayrak- nunciation and meaning of his name, Seljuk (Turkish Selcuk) can be translated as \u201cLittle flood\u201d or \u201cContes- tant.\u201d Seljuk was the military commander of the Oghuz","516 Seljuks Other Seljuk states also soon disintegrated, includ- ing Syria and Palestine in 1117, Kirman, Iran, in 1186, state in the upper regions of the Aral Sea during the and Iraq in 1194. Only the Seljuk state in Anatolia, called second half of the 10th century. At some point, Seljuk the Seljuks of Rum, survived and continued to fight the and his people settled on the shores of the Syr Darya passage of the crusaders across their territory. However, River, which bordered the Muslim Samanid state, and after suffering a decisive defeat at K\u00f6sedagh in 1243, the embraced Islam. Seljuk state was subjected to Mongol domination and lost its independence. The Rum Seljuk state is considered to When Seljuk died his eldest son, Arslan Yabghu (d. have come to an end in 1308 with the death of Mesud III. 1032), became the head of the family. However, Arslan was taken captive by the ruler of another Turkic state, the While the Seljuks disappeared as a ruling dynasty, Ghaznavids, and died in captivity. Although Musa Yab- various Turkoman dynasties established principalities in ghu, the only surviving son of Seljuk, officially became various parts of Anatolia. Known as Anatolian emir- the head of the family, in reality his nephews Chagr\u0131 (d. ates or beyliks, the Karamano\u011fullar\u0131, Germiyano\u011fullar\u0131, 1059) and Tughril held the power. Under their leader- Ment\u015feo\u011fullar\u0131, Hamido\u011fullar\u0131, Candaro\u011fullar\u0131, and ship the Seljuks routed the Ghaznavids and gained con- the Ottomans founded their sovereignties on this Seljuk trol of Khorasan, followed shortly by Khwarezm. Tughril heritage. Beg was enthroned as sultan and Nishabur was declared the capital, thus establishing the first Seljuk state. In 1048 POLITICAL SYSTEM Qawurd, son of Chaghr\u0131, occupied Kirman and set up the state of the Kirman Seljuks, dependent on the Great Dynastic succession in the Seljuk states followed Turkish Seljuks. During Tughril\u2019s rule, the local dynasties in Iran tradition. Among the members of the ruling dynasty, the pledged allegiance to the Seljuks. Soon after some states person who succeeded in imposing his supremacy over in Azerbaijan and in eastern and southeastern Anatolia the rest of the family members became the sultan or ruler. became vassals of the Seljuks. At the time of Tughril\u2019s The state was governed by the sultan and the princes death in 1063 the Great Seljuk Empire stretched from the who submitted to him. Every prince had the potential of River Oxus (Amu Darya) to the Euphrates. becoming a sultan. The struggle for supremacy among the members of the dynasty continued throughout Seljuk Alp Arslan (r. 1063\u201372), son of Chagr\u0131, who became history and caused considerable turmoil. sultan after crushing several insurrections, pressed the Seljuk expansion into Anatolia in 1071. Although Byz- Because the Seljuks\u2019 transition from nomadism antine emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (r. 1068\u201371) occurred shortly before their rise to power, they had no gathered a huge army to repulse the Seljuk onslaught he bureaucratic tradition of their own. Under these circum- suffered defeat at the Battle of Manzikert, near Lake Van, stances they benefited from the experience of the eastern in 1071, which opened Anatolia to the advancing Seljuks. Islamic states. The Seljuk civil service system was bor- rowed from the Ghaznavids, a Turkish state in Afghani- Malikshah (r. 1072\u20131092), who succeeded his father stan and Iran. When the Seljuks entered the region, Chagr\u0131, further expanded the empire. Under his leader- many bureaucrats and commanders in the service of the ship Jerusalem, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Antioch in Ghaznavids came under Seljuk rule. The Seljuks contin- Syria, Palestine, Diyarbakir in southeastern Anatolia, ued the Ghaznavid tradition of selecting the palace staff, al-Ahsa, Bahrain, Hejaz, Yemen came under Seljuk con- royal guard, khassa army (the private professional army trol. Turkish beys, or rulers, were appointed to admin- under the command of the sultan), and senior bureau- ister each region. The Rum Seljuk state was established crats of the government and provinces from among the in Anatolia in c. 1075 by Sulayman Shah. Malikshah\u2019s educated ghulams, former slaves who had been bought brother Tutush established the Syrian Seljuk State in from slave traders or taken prisoner in wars. Personnel 1079. However, Malikshah died after the struggle for received their salary quarterly. The finances of the state supremacy among the princes and rebellions by vassal were based on a land grant system called iqta (ikta). Most emirates, and the empire began to disintegrate. Berkyaruk land belonged to the state, and the tax revenue from the (d. 1104), the eldest son of Malikshah, was enthroned, land was used to pay salaries to government staff and mil- but he was unable to stop the empire\u2019s collapse, and the itary personnel as well as to the vassal rulers. The system commanders soon became autonomous rulers of their was administered by iqta holders, who in times of peace respective regions. The Iraq Seljuk state was established were responsible for administering the lands delivered to in 1119. Campaigns against the crusader armies were their custody and in times of war for recruiting soldiers unsuccessful; the Ismailis gradually increased their within their region. Although feudalism was not part of power; and in 1141 Sanjar (d. 1157), the last sultan of the the original system, in time the iqta holders, whose polit- Great Seljuks, was defeated by the Qarakhitay, a central ical and economic powers had increased, assumed quasi- Asian people, and the Seljuks lost control of Transoxania. feudal powers or became semi-independent. Sanjar could not revive the empire, and the Great Seljuks disintegrated after his death.","The Seljuks were followers of Sunni Islam and, Serbia 517 out of the four schools of religious law, opted for that of the Hanafi. However, they tolerated followers of other Social History, 11th\u201314th Century (London: Tauris, 1988); A. religious schools and non-Muslim subjects. Under the Sevim and C. E. Bosworth, \u201cThe Seljuqs and the Khwarazm Seljuks, Persian became the official and literary language Shahs,\u201d in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. 4, The while Arabic was preferred as the language of law, thus Age of Achievement: A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Cen- overshadowing the Turkish language. tury\u2014Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, edited by M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (Paris: Unesco, The Seljuk government and bureaucracy reached its 1998). highest level under Nizam al-Mulk, vizier or chief minis- ter for Alp Arslan and his son Malikshah for almost three Serbia (Servia; Serb.: Srbija; Turk.: Sirbistan) The decades. His treatise on government and politics, Siyaset- medieval Balkan state of Serbia, built by the Nemanji\u0107 name (Book of government), served as a model for later dynasty in the 12th century, reached its golden age dur- Islamic treatises, including those written in the Ottoman ing the rule of Czar Stefan Dushan (r. 1331\u201355). His state Empire. Nizam al-Mulk also founded several madrasas extended from the Danube River to Macedonia and Thes- or colleges, known as the Nizamiya madrasas, which saly, incorporating present-day Albania, Montenegro, served as models for later madrasas in successor Mus- parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the west, and lim states. Prominent scholars under the Seljuk dynasty parts of Bulgaria on the east. During the second half of included al-Ghazali (1058\u20131111), an outstanding theolo- the 14th century Serbia was weakened and divided among gian and philosopher and author of the Intentions of Phi- local notables. After a long period of struggle and vassal- losophers and The Incoherence of the Philosophers, critical age, the Serbian state was finally conquered by the Otto- works of Neoplatonist philosophers; Omar Khayyam (ca. mans in 1459. Following an uprising at the beginning of 1048\u20131122), the famed Persian poet, philosopher, math- the 19th century Serbs achieved autonomy for their future ematician, and astronomer, known in the West for his state in 1830, although they were not fully recognized as quatrains (rubaiyat); and the philosopher Fakhr al-Din an independent state until 1878. al-Razi (1149\u20131209), who used new logical methods. Omar Khayyam and his fellow astronomers made a cal- CONTACTS WITH THE TURKS endar called Taqvim-i Malikshahi. The influence of Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207\u20131273), the celebrated Sufi master The first clashes between Serbs and Turks took place and founder of the Mevlevi Order of dervishes; Hajji in 1344 in a battle with the troops of Omur, the leader, Bekta\u015f, another famous Sufi sheikh of the late 13th cen- or bey, of the Anatolian Turkish principality of Ayd\u0131n. tury and founder of the Bekta\u015fi order of dervishes, Apparently the first contact with the Ottomans was dip- the order associated later with the Ottoman elite Janis- lomatic. In 1351 the ruler of Serbia, czar Stefan Dushan, saries, was especially important in the later Ottoman offered the Ottoman ruler Orhan (r. 1324\u201362) his Empire. The Seljuks also set up innumerable madrasas, daughter\u2019s hand in marriage, seeking to attract him to his mosques, zaviyes (convents or lodges), hospitals (dar side in the war against the Byzantine coregent, John VI al-shifa), caravansaries, and bridges, and created waqfs (r. 1341\u201355). The alliance was not formed. or religious endowments that supported them. Many of these institutions were used by and served as models The first great battle between Serbia and the Otto- for the Ottomans. Elements of the Seljuk governmental- man Empire took place outside Serbian territory at the bureaucratic system were later adopted by the Ottomans, river Maritsa on September 26, 1371. Two Serbian des- as was the iqta, that is, the Seljuk land or revenues grant, pots (rulers) of Macedonia launched a preemptive strike which survived in the form of the Ottoman timar system to halt the Ottoman advance in the Balkans but suffered a (see agriculture). crushing defeat and both lost their lives in the battle. The Serbian defeat opened the way for the Ottomans to the Sadi S. Kucur north and to the west. Although the Battle of Kosovo, Further reading: C. E. Bosworth et al., \u201cSaldjukids,\u201d in which is thought to have taken place on June 15, 1389, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), seems to have been inconclusive, both the Ottoman sul- 936\u2013978; Cl. Cahen, The Formation of Turkey: The Seljukid tan Murad I (r. 1362\u201389) and the Serbian ruler Prince Sultanate of Rum\u2014Eleventh to Fourteenth Century (Harlow, Lazar lost their lives in the battle, together with most U.K.: Longman, 2001); O. Turan, \u201cAnatolia in the Period of of the Serbian aristocracy. After the battle, Lazar\u2019s sons the Seljuks and the Beyliks,\u201d in The Cambridge History of became vassals of Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402), which was Islam, edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Ber- confirmed by his marriage to Lazar\u2019s daughter Olivera. nard Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), In the Battle of Ankara (1402) between the Ottomans 231\u201350; Ann K. S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in and the troops of Timur, the Serbian troops and their Medieval Persia: Aspects of Administrative, Economic and rulers fought on the side of the Ottomans as their vassals. Soon after, the two most powerful Serbian families\u2014the","518 Serbia ning of 1456, in that same year Mehmed II again laid an unsuccessful siege to Smederevo and later to Belgrade, Lazarevi\u0107s and the Brankovi\u0107s (see Brankovi\u0107 fam- then in Hungarian hands as the key fortress of the Hun- ily)\u2014began to fight for power, entering various short- garian defense system. lived alliances with the Ottomans, and also took part in the Ottoman civil war that followed the Ottoman defeat During the reign of Lazar Brankovi\u0107 (r. 1456\u201358), at Ankara and Sultan Bayezid\u2019s death in 1403 in Timur\u2019s the youngest son of Djuradj who became despot upon his captivity. father\u2019s death, Serbia enjoyed a short respite. Brankovi\u0107\u2019s older sons, Stefan and Grgur, had been blinded as hos- Despot Stefan Lazarevi\u0107 (r. 1389\u20131427) tried to avoid tages in Murad\u2019s court in 1441 at the time of the Otto- major conflicts with the Ottomans until about 1425. How- man-Hungarian War. The political situation grew tense ever, Serbian military buildup and open negotiations with when Stefan (r. 1458\u201359) was designated despot against Serbia\u2019s northern neighbor, Hungary, the strongest cen- the wishes of Mehmed, who supported Grgur. A strong tral European state and an Ottoman enemy, provided suf- pro-Ottoman faction in the despotate was headed by ficient reason for Murad II (1421\u201344, 1446\u201351) to launch Mihailo Angelovi\u0107, Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha\u2019s a military campaign against Serbia. The Ottoman forces brother. In 1458 Mahmud Pasha conquered several cit- devastated parts of Serbia (including Ni\u0161, Leskovac, and ies, the most important of which was the fortress Golu- Kru\u0161evac) and, at the beginning of 1427, laid an unsuc- bac on the Danube. The despotate fell into decline, cessful siege to the rich silver mines of Novo Brdo. reduced practically to Smederevo alone. The king of Hungary sought to resolve the situation by overthrow- At that time the Ottoman-Hungarian conflict reached ing Stefan and by declaring the son of the Bosnian king, a crisis, often spreading into Serbian territory, while the Stefan Toma\u0161evi\u0107, despot in 1459. Lazar\u2019s daughter Jelena new despot, Djuradj Brankovi\u0107 (1427\u201356), failed to win was married to Stefan Toma\u0161evi\u0107 on April 1, and Stefan the trust of the Ottomans. By 1433 all the territory south Brankovi\u0107 was dethroned on April 8. However, Stefan of the western Morava River and east of the Great Morava Toma\u0161evi\u0107 turned Smederevo over to Mehmed II on June River had come into Ottoman possession. Despite the 20 without a fight. This signaled the end of the Serbian fact that he had married of his daughter to the sultan and medieval state. had surrendered his sons Stefan and Grgur as hostages, Djuradj was considered unreliable as a vassal because he OTTOMAN RULE IN SERBIA did not prevent Hungarian raids. For this reason, Murad II occupied the Serbian despotate in 1439, meeting little Soon after this the subprovince (sancak) of Smederevo\/ resistance apart from a somewhat protracted siege of Semendire was established. It kept its name even after Smederevo. the seat of its governor (sancakbeyi) was transferred to Belgrade following its capture in 1521. The first san- OTTOMAN CONQUEST OF SERBIA cakbeyi of Smederevo was Mehmed Bey Minneto\u011flu (r. 1459\u201363). Before that, the sancaks of Prizren, Vu\u010ditrn, The first Ottoman occupation of Serbia lasted until 1443 and Kru\u010devac (Alaca Hisar) had been set up. After the when they had to fall back before strong anti-Ottoman Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463, around the year resistance led by J\u00e1nos (John) Hunyadi (b. 1408?\u2013d. 1456), 1480, the sancak of Zvornik was founded, incorporating governor of Transylvania and commander in chief of areas on both sides of the Drina River, a part of former the Hungarian army; the exiled Serbian despot Djuradj western Serbia. A part of eastern Serbia had already been Brankovi\u0107 also took part. Facing serious threats from both included in the sancak of Vidin. east and west, Murad II concluded a peace agreement with the Hungarians and the Serbian despot in Edirne in The Serbian people had long inhabited many areas of 1444. Serbia was restored to the Djuradj, but without the southern Hungary, including Srem and Ba\u010dka. Scattered key strategic locations of Ni\u0161, Stala\u0107, and Kru\u0161evac. all over the central and western Balkans\u2014including in Venetian Dalmatia and the Montenegrin coast and in the Despot Djuradj Brankovi\u0107 did not participate in the Habsburg monarchy\u2014Serbs were brought together by a Crusade, launched by the Hungarians, that ended in a single institution, the Serbian Orthodox Church. Its crushing defeat at Varna in 1444. In spite of the obvious hierarchy was made up of the Serbian elite. proofs of loyalty by Djuradj\u2014exemplified by his capture of Hunyadi after the Ottomans defeated the Hungarians In all the wars fought in the Balkans (the Long War at Kosovo in 1448 and a complete break with Hungary, as of 1593\u20131606, the war against the Holy League War well as his participation in the siege of Constantinople in of 1683\u201399, the Habsburg-Ottoman wars of 1716\u201318, 1453\u2014the new sultan, Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346, 1451\u201381), 1736\u201339, 1788\u201391), the Serbs took an active part as launched a military campaign against Serbia in 1454. He opponents of the Ottomans, including organizing upris- met strong resistance and it was not until the following ings. They suffered severe consequences, while the areas year, 1455, that he finally managed to conquer the mining in which they lived were devastated. During the war center Novo Brdo and extend Ottoman rule to the western Morava River. Despite the peace concluded at the begin-","against the Holy League (see Austria) the patriarch, the Serbian Orthodox Church 519 head of about 60,000 members of the Serbian Orthodox Church mostly from Kosovo, was driven into exile in the bia was not internationally recognized until the Congress Habsburg domain in Hungary. The mass emigration con- of Berlin (1878). Bowing to public pressure, Serbia went tinued during subsequent wars. to war with the Ottoman Empire, first in 1876 and then in 1877\u201378 following the uprising of the Serbs in Bosnia The term Serbia appeared for the first time as the and Herzegovina. Serbia conquered and annexed Ni\u0161, name of an administrative region in the newly conquered Pirot, Vranje, and Leskovac, later ratified by the Congress Habsburg area between the Sava, Danube, and western of Berlin. The final war between Serbia and the Ottoman Morava (1718\u201336). Empire, the First Balkan War, took place in 1912. THE ROAD TO AUTONOMY Aleksandar Foti\u0107 Further reading: Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, After 1793, Serbs in the sancak of Smederevo gained a 1300\u20131481 (Istanbul: Isis, 1990); B. Jelavich, History of the certain level of autonomy, which mostly meant that local Balkans, vol. 1, Eighteenth and Nineteenthth Centuries (Cam- knezes (princes, headmen) had the right to collect taxes bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); M. B. Petrovich, themselves. The situation in the sancak was tense due to A History of Modern Serbia, 1804\u20131918 (New York and Lon- an uprising against the Ottomans by the Janissaries. In don: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1976). 1804 the Janissaries took control of the area by killing the Ottoman governor in Belgrade and executing more Serbian Orthodox Church The Serbian Orthodox than a hundred Serbian notables. This \u201cfelling of the Church was established in 1219 as an autocephalous knezes\u201d led to a general uprising mounted on February member of the Orthodox communion, meaning that 14, 1804 and led by Djordje Petrovi\u0107, known as Karad- the Serbian people followed the traditions of Orthodox jordje. Having succeeded in killing some Janissary offi- Christianity but that their church was not subordinate cers, and carried away by their initial success, the Serbs to an external patriarch. Religious books were written in refused to lay down their weapons to the regular Otto- old Serbian-Slavonic, which was also the language of the man authorities. Encouraged by the Russian-Ottoman service. In 1346 when Stefan Dushan (r. 1331\u201355) was war, which began in 1807 and later led to the arrival of crowned czar, the Serbian Orthodox Church was raised Russian troops (see Russo-Ottoman Wars), the Serbs to the rank of patriarchate with its seat in Pe\u0107, Kosovo refused all peace proposals and demanded full indepen- (for this reason also called the Pe\u0107 Patriarchate), but the dence. The Russian-Ottoman Treaty at Bucharest patriarch of Constantinople did not recognize the author- (1812) put an end to all hope of success and the rebellion ity of the Serbian patriarch until 1375. was crushed the following year. Article 8 of the Bucharest agreement stipulated modest autonomy for the Serbs, but Following the Ottoman annexation of the Brankovi\u0107 the Ottomans did not accept this provision. lands in Kosovo (1455), the seat of the church was trans- ferred to Smederevo, the capital of the Ottoman vassal The road to autonomy was not opened until April state Serbia. When the Serbian state came under direct 23, 1815 when the Second Uprising was mounted under Ottoman rule in 1459, the Serbian church organization the leadership of Knez Milo\u0161 Obrenovi\u0107. Milo\u0161 opened did not disappear. However, little is known about its his- negotiations in the same year seeking to achieve auton- tory until the mid-16th century. The Serbian autocepha- omy gradually, without revolutionary demands. In the lous church, which comprised northern Serbia, Srem, Russian-Ottoman Convention of Akkerman (1826), parts of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro, probably the Ottomans pledged to fulfill the rights guaranteed by did not disintegrate until the 1520s. After the fall of the the Bucharest treaty. Ottoman imperial rescripts (hatt-i Serbian state, the church was weakened, and the well- \u015ferifs) from 1829 and 1830, issued upon the conclusion organized neighboring autonomous Ohrid archbishopric of peace in Edirne (1829), granted Serbia autonomy wanted to take control of as many dioceses as possible. and defined its borders, while Milo\u0161 was acknowledged However, most of the Serbian clergy, led by Pavle, the as the hereditary prince. Serbia annexed six additional bishop of Smederevo, did not accept the jurisdiction of districts or nahiyes and became a de facto principality the Ohrid archdiocese, which never managed to assume under Ottoman suzerainty while Russia was granted the control of these territories. status of protector. A fixed lump sum of taxes was paid once a year to Istanbul, the sipahi system was dismantled, The fact that the church hierarchy was ineffective in and the military presence was limited to small garrisons a larger part of the Serb-inhabited Balkans also meant in several fortresses. Only a few cities continued to have that there was no proper state control. The Ottoman a Muslim population. idea of controlling the empire\u2019s non-Muslim communi- ties was based on firm and stable church organization, The Ottomans were forced to withdraw all military with leaders appointed by the sultan\u2019s decree. To resolve personnel from Serbia in 1867. The independence of Ser- this problem the Pe\u0107 Patriarchate was restored in 1557.","520 S\u00e8vres, Treaty of archs failed, the Pe\u0107 Patriarchate was brought under the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1766. The key positions Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (see Sokollu family), who then of the Orthodox religious hierarchy in lands inhabited by occupied the position of third vizier, played an important Serbs, including metropolitan and bishopric seats, were part in the restoration of the patriarchate, and his cousin in the hands of Greeks from that time until the autono- Makarije Sokolovi\u0107 was appointed as the first patriarch. mous Serbian principality was proclaimed in 1830. Auto- The hierarchical organization of the Pe\u0107 Patriarchate cephaly was achieved in 1879, a year after Serbia was mirrored that of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constan- internationally recognized as an independent state in tinople; it operated in the same way and had the same 1878. rights and duties. The only difference between the two churches was that services in the Pe\u0107 Patriarchate were Aleksandar Foti\u0107 held in the Serbian language. The high clergy was made Further reading: L. Hadrovics, Le peuple serbe et son up of Serbs, although several patriarchs in the 18th cen- \u00c9glise sous la domination turque (Paris: Presses universitai- tury were of Greek descent. res de France, 1947). The restored Pe\u0107 Patriarchate covered a large terri- S\u00e8vres, Treaty of (1920) Conceived in the wake of tory, far beyond its original size: It stretched to the far- the Ottoman loss in World War I and signed at S\u00e8vres, thest Ottoman borders in Dalmatia, Croatia, and France on August 10, 1920, this treaty was designed to Hungary, and included Sofia (Bulgaria) in the east and abolish the Ottoman Empire and to partition its terri- territories south of Skopje (Macedonia). It also assumed tories. While much thought and discussion went into control of dioceses outside the Ottoman Empire, includ- negotiating and framing its terms, however, the Treaty of ing in Habsburg Croatia and along the Venetian Adri- S\u00e8vres was never accepted by the Turkish national assem- atic coast, which was certainly of great importance to bly and was thus unenforceable. Concluded between the the Porte. The extent of the territory was reflected in Allied powers (France, Russia, England, Italy, and the patriarch\u2019s full title, \u201cpatriarch of Serbians, Bulgar- the United States) and the government of the Ottoman ians, maritime and northern parts.\u201d The Serbs controlled Empire, the treaty abolished the Ottoman Empire, obliged the patriarchate, but in concept it was a supranational Turkey to renounce rights over its Arab lands in the Mid- organization created to encompass all newly conquered dle East and North Africa, and provided for an inde- Ottoman territories and the entire population, regardless pendent Armenia and Greek control over the Aegean of national origins and whether or not they were follow- islands commanding the Dardanelles. These provisions ers of the Orthodox religion. Since the sultans did not were rejected by the Turkish national assembly, and the want to officially allow the establishment of the Catholic Treaty of S\u00e8vres was replaced in 1923 by the Treaty of Church, they issued berats (patents of office) granting the Lausanne. Pe\u0107 patriarch the right to collect duties from the Cath- olic population but did not give it the right to interfere World War I ended on the Ottoman front on Octo- with the organization of the Catholic religious commu- ber 30, 1918 with the signing of the Armistice of Mon- nity and its spiritual work. This caused serious prob- dros. This agreement might have been an important step lems, especially in Ottoman Bosnia, which was densely toward permanent peace for the Ottoman Empire. How- populated by Catholics. The final solution to the problem ever, the Allies wanted the empires of all the defeated par- was postponed for centuries. When Catholic complaints ties\u2014Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman reached the Porte, Istanbul responded by issuing fer- Empire\u2014to be dissolved. To that end the Allies organized mans (imperial decrees) demanding that the authorities a peace conference in Paris on January 18, 1919. The first honor an \u201cancient privilege,\u201d meaning that the Orthodox item on the agenda at the conference was to force dev- bishops had no right to interfere even with the collection astating terms on the defeated Germany, resulting in the of church taxes from Catholics. signing of the notorious Versailles Treaty on June 28, 1919. Meanwhile, the Allies invited the leaders of the The restoration of the patriarchate brought prog- defeated Ottoman Empire to the Paris Peace Conference. ress\u2014new churches were built, diocese networks were The Ottoman delegation put forward a memorandum established and strengthened, and religious art, especially based on the four Wilsonian principles (an international painting, flourished. Books, primarily religious, were security organization, reductions of national armaments, copied, and for a while some monastery printing shops democracy, and the free flow of goods across national were in operation. borders). This memorandum was rejected by the Allies. At the same time, a struggle against Allied forces in Ana- Toward the end of the 17th century the position of tolia took place under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal the Pe\u0107 Patriarchate weakened due to the patriarch\u2019s open Pasha (see Kemal Atat\u00fcrk). collaboration with Austria during the Ottomans\u2019 war against the Holy League (1683\u201399) and the subsequent Austrian-Ottoman wars. When Ottoman attempts to regain control through the appointment of Greek patri-","S\u00e8vres, Treaty of 521 The Allies discussed issues such as the future of the increased. In Asia, Turkey would renounce sovereignty Ottoman Empire, the right to pass through the straits over Iraq (Mesopotamia) and Palestine (including of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and control of Trans-Jordan), which would become British mandates; Istanbul. From April 18\u201326, 1920, the prime minis- Greater Syria (including Lebanon) and Cilicia (includ- ters of France, Great Britain, and Italy, and representa- ing Adana, Mersin) would become French mandates; and tives of Japan, Greece, and Belgium held a meeting in the kingdom Hejaz would come into existence. Also, an San Remo, Italy, and prepared a draft of the peace treaty independent Armenian state would be founded in the for the Ottoman Empire. The outline of this treaty was territory that was left on the eastern side of the Euphra- delivered to Grand Vizier Tevfik Pasha on May 11 in tes River; and the southern part of this region, where Paris. According to the draft, which later became known Kurds constituted the majority, would be granted auton- as the Treaty of S\u00e8vres, Istanbul would be left to Turkey; omy under the name Kurdistan. Turkey\u2019s western borders would be marked by the prov- ince of \u00c7atalca (today in Istanbul); Izmir, the surround- This treaty was unacceptable to Tevfik Pasha, who ing areas, eastern Thrace, including Edirne, and all the saw it as a means to destroy the Ottoman Empire. Aegean Islands, would be given to Greece; the straits of Together with two other members of the Ottoman del- Istanbul and \u00c7anakkale (Dardanelles) would be governed egation, Re\u015fid Bey, the minister of Internal Affairs, and by an international commission; the Ottoman Empire\u2019s Cemil Pasha, the minister of Public Works, Tevfik Pasha military power would be limited and the capitulations prepared another peace treaty. He sent the new out- line to the government headed by Damat Ferid Pasha","522 sex and sexuality tury. Although concepts of sex and gender in the Byzan- tine Empire, the Christian predecessor of the Ottoman in Istanbul. The government accepted the outline with Empire, were not dissimilar from those prevalent in the minor changes, and Damat Ferid Pasha presented it to Ottoman world, by the late 15th and the early 16th cen- the Allies on June 25. However, the Allies initially did turies Europe had begun to evolve a new sexual morality. not respond to the outline, and after waiting in vain for Thus when the Ottomans established their empire in the a response, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to Istanbul on late 15th and early 16th centuries, European travelers, the July 14. In the meantime the Spa Conference had been main sources of information about the empire, were often organized (July 7\u201316), at the end of which the Allies pre- preoccupied with issues of sexual morality and what they sented the Ottomans with an ultimatum. saw as debauchery. From this matrix\u2014the rift between traditional and emergent Renaissance approaches to sex Meanwhile, the Greeks had begun a military opera- and sexuality, the perspective of the foreign traveler, and tion in Anatolia on June 12 to pressure the Ottoman the demand for exotic tales in the European market\u2014was Empire into accepting the Treaty of S\u00e8vres. At the same born a European literature of desire in which the Otto- time, a new Turkish national assembly founded in mans became the imagined practioners of a sexuality Ankara on April 23, 1920, promulgated a law on June 7, seen as different and corrupt. 1920 that declared any law introduced by the Ottoman government after March 16, 1920 not binding on the This had several dire consequences for the image of Turkish government. The Ottoman government called Ottoman and Middle Eastern sexuality in early modern together the Imperial Council on July 22 to address the Europe. To the extent that such a unified image existed, situation. Sultan Mehmed VI (r. 1918\u201322) and the high- it was biased in several ways. For one thing, it focused est Ottoman authorities came together and all but R\u0131za on the Ottoman elite, and mainly on the imperial court. Pasha declared their approval of the peace treaty pro- Society at large was assumed to be either modeled on posed by the Allies. As a consequence, the Ottoman the court or subservient to its norms. From the 17th delegation signed the Treaty of S\u00e8vres with the Allies century on, such travel accounts also tended to exag- on August 10, 1920. On the same day, the Allies signed gerate the depravity of Ottoman society in general and a tripartite accord that formalized the spheres of special to link sexual \u201cimmorality\u201d with political impotence. As interest in Anatolia for France and Italy. This accord was European travel literature began to be translated into independent of the secret agreements of 1916 and the Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, and as Ottoman travelers mandate system. By the terms of this agreement Italy visited Europe in ever greater numbers, such views found was given parts of southwest Anatolia (including Anta- their way back to the Well-Protected Domains, as the lya) and western Anatolia outside Izmir, while France Ottomans referred to their empire, and influenced the obtained a zone that included Mersin, Adana, Mara\u015f, way they would hence fashion their sexual imagination. Diyarbakir, Sivas, Malatya, and Harput. Ottoman misgivings about their traditional conceptions of sexuality, as well as the derision common in travel lit- For Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, the Treaty of S\u00e8vres was erature, were later taken at face value as descriptions of a major setback. However, according to the Ottoman Ottoman sexual morality and influenced the way mod- constitution of 1876, international agreements did not ern research reconstructed Ottoman sexuality. take effect until approved by parliament. As a result of the Turkish national independence movement the Treaty At the height of the Ottoman Empire, its upper of S\u00e8vres never took effect, because the Turkish parlia- classes had a complex and balanced concept of sex and ment failed to ratify it. how it should be perceived. These ideas were voiced and elaborated in a set of separate but often overlap- Mustafa Budak ping spheres of discourse or scripts. Medicine, perhaps Further reading: Paul C. Helmreich, From Paris to the leading discourse\u2014certainly the most authoritative S\u00e8vres: The Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace one\u2014elaborated a concept of man and woman that was Conference of 1919\u20131920 (Columbus: Ohio State University congruent with medical knowledge at the time. The law Press, 1974); Harry N. Howard, The Partition of Turkey: A set down its rules based to some extent on these medi- Diplomatic History, 1913\u20131923 (New York: H. Fertig, 1966); cal discourses; literature, poetry, and the performing arts A. L. Macfie, The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908\u20131923 offered a sophisticated and complex set of scripts; and (London: Longman, 1998); Salahi Ramsdan Sonyel, Turk- local clerics, Sufis, and preachers contributed their points ish Diplomacy, 1918\u20131923: Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish of view, usually more strict, but not necessarily in conflict National Movement (London: Sage Publications, 1975); Har- with other approaches. old William Vazeille Temperley, ed., A History of the Peace Conference of Paris (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). The medical profession\u2019s approach to sexuality was based on its conception of the body as a link in the chain sex and sexuality Stories of harems, odalisques, of being, composed of four basic elements\u2014air, fire, eunuchs, and sodomy seemed bizarre and intriguing to European travelers in the East starting in the 18th cen-","earth and water\u2014as represented in four bodily fluids. In sex and sexuality 523 this conception of universal order, which was also shared by the European world, man and woman were virtually even lustful gazes. Claiming that this is an important part the same being, differing in the balance between the ele- of religion is blasphemy. As Sufi brotherhoods became ments and in the degree of development. Rather than a more popular and as such practices became prevalent in separate sex, therefore, women were seen as an imperfect society during the 17th century, radical orthodox groups version of men, a form that did not reach its full develop- violently opposed this development and succeeded in ment. The vagina, clitoris, and uterus were assumed to be curbing the trend. After the late 17th century, Sufis were an undeveloped version of the male penis and scrotum, wary of discussing nazar practices in public, although and women were believed to be able to produce semen they continued clandestinely. in their ovaries and thus contribute to the creation of the fetus. Because this science of the body implied that More libertine discursive spheres such as the very men and women were not inherently different sexually, popular shadow theater (Karag\u00f6z) (see folk litera- present-day concepts of same-sex intercourse as radically ture) continued to present sex as a ubiquitous and different from heterosexual intercourse were not a part open practice until the mid-19th century. Shadow plays of Ottoman culture. Thus, while homosexual acts were were for the most part very explicit about sex and sexual forbidden by law, as were other forms of sexual activ- practices. Protagonists had sex on stage, story lines were ity such as incest and fornication, same-sex intercourse habitually about the pursuit of sex in its myriad forms, was not perceived as fundamentally unnatural or abnor- and the language was unfettered. Paying scant lip service mal. Another consequence of these medical assumptions to common morality, such plays often made fun of reli- was that a person\u2019s sex was not perceived as immutable. gious hypocrisy. Spectators, from courtiers to the work- Under certain circumstances women might become more ing class, found themselves identifying with the main masculine and men more feminine, and transgressions of characters, Karag\u00f6z and Hacivat, in their lewd sexual sexual boundaries were believed to occur once in a while. exploits. Nineteenth-century travelers to the Ottoman Because the practice of religion and culture demanded a Empire were often dumbfounded by what they described clear separation of sexes, in mosques, public baths, ritu- as the pornographic and immoral nature of the shadow als, and the public sphere, unequivocal gender bound- theater. aries were required in order to safeguard indeterminate sexual ones. Sex was so fickle and liable to change that It is difficult to know what effect such discourses, men and women were to be kept within their gender by from medicine to religion to theater, had on people\u2019s clear markers such as dress codes, veils, beards and spa- morality and on their sexual outlook in earlier centuries, tial segregation. but it seems that in the mid-19th century, probably as a result of Western derision, the Ottoman elite was irri- It could be claimed, in fact, that in most circles, tated by the way their sex and sexuality were represented same-sex love and intercourse (mainly, but not exclu- to the outside world. Shadow theater plays were excised sively, between older and younger men) were perceived and purified. Graphic sex on stage was forbidden, and as more proper. Female same-sex intercourse was known explicit discussions of sex were censored. Sufis and their and sometimes mentioned, but largely ignored by the quasi-erotic practices were labeled a remnant of a primi- men responsible for almost all writing in the empire until tive past and pushed deeper into the collective closet. well into the 19th century. Records of private female Even medical treatises, previously unambiguous about sexual activity are, therefore, virtually nonexistent. This sexual practice and tendencies, were now expurgated. general preference for homoerotic ties was present most Explicit references to intercourse in legal codes were prominently in some mystical Sufi circles. In Sufi lore, replaced by various euphemisms, and homoerotic poetry love between an initiate and a young disciple, often and art were toned down to near extinction. This clearly referred to as \u201cgazing upon an unbearded youth\u201d (al- had an effect on sexual practice. In a passage in his mem- nazar ila al-amrad), was presented as one of the required oirs laced with irony, Cevdet Pasha, a famous 19th cen- steps in the Sufi path to God. By gazing upon the beauty tury cleric, legal expert, and reformer, describes this of an amrad\u2014the pinnacle of creation\u2014the Sufi would confusion about sexual practices in the Ottoman elite. fill his heart with the attributes of God\u2019s splendor and Until recently, he claims, pederasty was rife among the learn the virtues of unconditional love. Strict orthodox Ottoman elite, but now, as a result of foreign ridicule, all groups opposed this practice, not necessarily on grounds these boy-chasers, including the grand vizier and the sul- of sexual depravity but rather for fear of a distortion of tan, have suddenly shunned the practice and now chase the original divine message and law. In classical Islam, women instead. they claimed, nothing was said about love and admira- tion for young men, and the holy scriptures condemn Having by and large discarded their previous sexual culture, the Ottomans could not easily replace it with the one offered by Europe, which they viewed as artifi- cial. They could no longer discuss same-sex intercourse and, perhaps as a reaction to European derision, rejected","524 s\u00b8eyh\u00fclislam influence of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam and his office reached its peak, with the office of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam not only having what they viewed as a monolithic heteroeroticism. Tradi- authority over the ulema and their institutions but also tion was reinvented to present Ottoman-Islamic sexual- widening its area of responsibility and employing a con- ity as orthodox and conservative. In the final years of the siderably increased staff. empire, sex and sexuality were engulfed in an awkward silence, which would continue to afflict many of its suc- Ottoman modernization efforts, which had started cessor states in the Middle East for years to come. in the middle of the 18th century and accelerated dur- ing the reigns of Sultan Selim III (r. 1789\u20131807) and Dror Ze\u2019evi Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808\u201339), required significant See also harem; law and gender. reform in the office of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam, as in many Further reading: Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakl\u0131, other state institutions. After the abolition of the Janis- The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early Modern saries in the Auspicious Incident of 1826, the Janis- Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham: Duke sary headquarters, called Agha Kap\u0131s\u0131, were allotted as University Press, 2004); John Gagnon, Human Sexualities a permanent residence for the \u015feyh\u00fclislam and it was (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1977); Leslie Peirce, Moral- renamed Fetwahane (building from where fatwas were ity Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab issued). In 1836 the supreme judgeships of Anatolia and (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Irvin Cemil Rumelia and the Court of Istanbul (Istanbul Kad\u0131l\u0131\u011f\u0131) Schick, The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alter- were also gathered in the same building. In 1838, the itist Discourse (London: Vero, 1999); Khaled El-Rouayheb, appeals court was moved there. Prior to these reorgani- Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World (Chicago: zations, the court of appeal had taken place in the office University of Chicago, 2005); Dror Ze\u2019evi, Producing Desire: of the grand vizier (Bab-\u0131 \u00c2li or Sublime Porte) in the Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, presence of the grand vizier and the supreme judges 1500\u20131900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); of Anatolia and Rumelia, the judges of Istanbul, Ey\u00fcp, Dror Ze\u2019evi, \u201cHiding Sexuality: The Disappearance of Sexual \u00dcsk\u00fcdar, and Galata (the last three being districts of Discourse in the Late Ottoman Middle East.\u201d Social Analysis Istanbul). After this reorganization, the office of the 49, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 34\u201353. \u015feyh\u00fclislam was the final step in the appeals procedure of the Ottoman justice system. \u015feyh\u00fclislam (shaykhulislam) The term \u015feyh\u00fclislam, which emerged in the Abbasid Caliphate in the sec- As the modern Ottoman bureaucracy was emerging ond half of the 10th century c.e., was a title of honor during the Ottoman reform era, all departments related given to members of the religious establishment (ulema) to Islamic law and all administrative offices dealing with who solved controversial legal problems arising among the affairs of the Ottoman religious establishment came Islamic jurists. After the foundation of the Ottoman state together in the office of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam. During the reor- around 1300, the title \u015feyh\u00fclislam continued to be used as ganization of the new Ottoman bureaucracy, the office an honorific similar to that of mufti, a jurisconsult autho- also underwent a significant bureaucratization. In this rized to issue a written legal opinion or fatwa, based on process, there were some similarities between the offices Islamic sacred law or sharia. While the Ottoman ulema of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam and that of the grand vizier. Although performed the duty of issuing fatwa (Turkish, fetva) both institutions were structured like ministries, they without an official affiliation to the state apparatus, the were not named as such. The \u015feyh\u00fclislam, as minister titles of mufti and \u015feyh\u00fclislam began to be used as offi- responsible for religious affairs, became a member of cial titles after the reign of Sultan Murad II (r. 1421\u201344, the Council of Deputies (Meclis-i Vukela) and was equal 1446\u201351). Moreover, the mufti of the capital held the title in status to the grand vizier. The ilmiye, the Ottoman of \u015feyh\u00fclislam, with authority over all other muftis in the institution of learned men, became a fully developed empire. bureaucratic department headed by the \u015feyh\u00fclislam and managing all religious affairs other than the waqfs, or In the first half of the 16th century, some other religious endowments, which were administered by sev- duties were also given to the \u015feyh\u00fclislam. He held a pro- eral different state departments. fessorship in the madrasa of Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481\u2013 1512) and supervised the sultan\u2019s religious endowments, All these arrangements in the structure of the office or waqfs. In the late 16th century the \u015feyh\u00fclislam was of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam suggest that the Ottoman reforms in also assigned to appoint and dismiss supreme judges the 19th century included reform of religious institutions. (kad\u0131askers), high ranking college professors (m\u00fcder- This is important to emphasize, because the prevailing ris), judges (kad\u0131s), and heads of Sufi orders. In the times assumption among scholars is that Ottoman reform- of prestigious \u015feyh\u00fclislams such as Zenbilli Ali Cemali ers struggled with the religious institutions in order to Efendi (c. 1445\u20131526), Ibn-i Kemal (Kemalpa\u015fazade) avoid potential resistance against their reforms. The (1468\u20131533), and Ebussuud Efendi (c. 1491\u20131574), the \u015feyh\u00fclislam as the head of a vast institution and wield-","ing enormous authority in Islamic law held an impor- Shadhliyya Order 525 tant position in the Ottoman decision-making process and in the Ottoman political sphere. Therefore he was a and imprisoned. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm over his crucial figure in the Ottoman central bureaucracy. For impending elevation did not cease, and Jewish pilgrims 500 years, from the appointment of the first \u015feyh\u00fclislam flocked to the prison to see him. Finally, Sultan mehmed Molla \u015eemseddin Fenari (c. 1350\u2013c. 1430) in 1424, until iv (r. 1648\u201387) gave him a simple choice, either to accept its abolition in 1924, the office of the \u015feyh\u00fclislam was the Islam or to be executed as a rebel. He chose the former, core of the Ottoman learned or religious bureaucracy and until his death in 1676, he lived openly as a Muslim (ilmiye), constituting one of the three pillars of Ottoman with the name Aziz Mehmed Efendi. rule, along with the civil bureaucracy (kalemiye) and the military bureaucracy (seyfiye). Some of Tzevi\u2019s followers also converted to Islam, calling themselves Maminim, or \u201cthe faithful\u201d in Hebrew, \u0130lhami Yurdakul and marrying only among their own. Many Turkish Mus- Further reading: Colin Imber, Ebu\u2019s-Su\u2019ud: The Islamic lims believed that the Maminim secretly practiced Jewish Legal Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, rites and only outwardly professed Islam; they thus called 1997); Madeline C. Zilfi, \u201cElite Circulation in the Ottoman those who followed the would-be Messiah into Islam Empire: Great Mollas of the Eighteenth Century.\u201d Journal of d\u00f6nme or turncoats. While there is no evidence that Economic and Social History of the Orient 26 (1983): 318\u2013364; the Maminim were not actually Muslim in their beliefs Madeline C. Zilfi, \u201cShaykh al-Islam,\u201d EI2, XIII, s. 229\u2013230; and practices, the charge that they were \u201csecret Jews\u201d Madeline C. Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in was widely reported by Westerner travelers who were the Post Classical Age, 1600\u20131800 (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca convinced that the Maminim were the Muslim equiva- Islamica, 1988); Norman Itzkowitz and Joel Shinder, \u201cThe lent of the Spanish Marranos, who had been converted Office of Sheyhulislam and the Tanzimat: A Prosopographic to Catholicism under threat of death or exile but who Enquiry.\u201d Middle Eastern Studies 8 (1972): 93\u2013101; Richard remained practicing Jews in secret. British diplomats, in C. Repp, The M\u00fcfti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development particular, seemed to be convinced that the Maminim of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: secretly practiced Judaism and saw the D\u00f6nmes behind Ithaca Press, 1986). all kinds of conspiracies, including the Young Turk revolution of 1908, which British diplomats reported Shabbatai Zvi (Sabatai Sevi, Sabbatai Zebi, Sabbetai as being organized by Freemasons and D\u00f6nmes. Under Tzvi, Sabbetai Zvi, Sabetay Tzvi, Sabetay Zvi, Shab- Ottoman rule, Salonika had the largest community of batai Tzvi, Shabbethai Tzvi, Shabbethai Zvi, Shabbsai Maminim, but most of those left for Turkey when the city Tzvi, Shabbsai Zvi, Shabtai Tzvi, Shatz) (b. 1626\u2013d. became a part of Greece in 1912. After their migration 1676) Jewish mystic, alleged Messiah In the 17th cen- to Turkey, the community ceased to maintain a separate tury, Shabbatai Zvi became widely known in the Ottoman identity as they became fully integrated into the larger Empire as the self-declared Messiah of the Jewish people. Sunni Muslim population. Born into a Sephardic family in Izmir in 1626, Tzevi out- raged Izmir\u2019s rabbis when he declared in 1648 that he Bruce Masters was the long-awaited Messiah who would redeem Israel. Further reading: Gershon Sholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The When the rabbis banished him from his native city, Tzevi Mystical Messiah, 1626\u20131676 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton began to wander throughout Jewish communities in the University Press, 1973). Ottoman Empire, preaching his message of impending cataclysmic change, but he gathered only a small band of Shadhliyya Order The Shadhliyya Order of Sufis was followers. His fortunes improved in 1665 when a rabbi often termed the Protestant Order by Western visitors to named Nathan in the town of Gaza in Palestine pro- the Ottoman Empire because of the absence of any for- claimed him to be the true Messiah. This set off a wave mal ritual associated with Shadhliyya practice. The order of messianic fervor that spread throughout the Sephardic also avoided the elevation of individuals to sainthood and communities in the Ottoman Empire and beyond to Jew- decried the visiting of Sufi shrines as an ostentatious dis- ish communities in Europe. play that detracted from true spiritual life. The Shadhliyya was an elite order that produced poets and commentators Tzevi declared that 1666 would be the year that on religious texts, whose work had wide circulation in the would see him depose the sultan and establish his rule Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire, yet it was also in Istanbul. Many Jews sold whatever they owned so one of the most popular Sufi orders in Egypt throughout that they would be unencumbered by material posses- the Ottoman period. The founder of the order was Abu sions at the time of the Messiah\u2019s enthronement. Before al-Hasan al-Shadhili, a 13th century Moroccan mystic. Al- he could get to Istanbul, however, Tzevi was arrested Shadhili left his native Morocco and settled in Alexan- dria, where he died in 1258 c.e. The Shadhliyya, although not traditionally popular in Anatolia, came to wider atten-","526 Shahrizor the governor of Baghdad in 1862 and later transferred to the province of Mosul, although it still continued to tion toward the end of the Ottoman Empire when Sultan carry its old name as a subprovince. In 1892 the former Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. 1876\u20131909) joined the order. province of Shahrizor was divided into two subprovinces or sancak, Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyya, which were placed Unlike some other Sufi orders, the Shadhliyya held under the direct control of the governor of Mosul. that asceticism and poverty were not a requirement, as God intended his creatures to live in this world and to Bruce Masters take pleasure from his creation. The order tolerated the music and dancing considered illicit by many orthodox Shammar Bedouin The Shammar were a confed- Muslims, but otherwise kept its practice of the Sufi way eration of Bedouin tribes that were pushed out of their within the boundaries set by conventional Islam. Never- original home in the Najd in the mid-17th century. As theless, by the 18th century, the Sunni religious establish- the Shammar moved north they encountered the Anaza ment in Cairo accused offshoots of the order of veering Confederation. The two groups began to fight for pri- toward interpretations of the Sufi state of hal, or com- macy in the Syrian Desert in a series of wars that lasted munion with God, which bordered on pantheism, and more than a century. The Anaza were able to fend off the order became suspect. In North Africa and West the invaders and the tide of migration of the confeder- Africa, the order was prominent in organizing Muslim ate tribes moved into the Iraqi provinces of the Ottoman opposition to Western colonialism. Empire, where the Shammar defeated the local Bedouin tribes and established their supremacy. As was the case Bruce Masters with the Anaza, the Shammar were less tractable in their relations with the Ottoman authorities than had been Shahrizor Shahrizor was a province of the Ottoman the Mawali Bedouin Confederation that had previ- Empire that corresponded in location to present-day ously controlled the desert caravan routes. At times the Iraqi Kurdistan. When the Ottomans conquered the Shammar could be bought off by gifts, but at other times region in 1554, they decided that it was better to leave they refused, in preference for what treasure they might the region governed by the Kurd leaders than to incor- gain by raiding. porate it directly into the empire\u2019s provincial adminis- tration, with governors and kadis, or judges, sent from Conflict with the the followers of of Muhammad Istanbul. In part, this was a response to the presence of ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the Najd in the second half of the powerful Kurdish beys of the Ardalan clan who were the 18th century pushed more of the Shammar into Iraq. located on the Iranian side of the border in the town of The governors of Baghdad sought to enlist the Sham- Samandaj. The mirs, as the Kurds called their political mar against the Wahhabis and it is reported that 20,000 leaders, of Ardalan claimed the territory of Shahrizor Shammar tribesmen pledged their support to the gover- province and continued to exercise authority among nor of Baghdad in 1805. This gave them legal status in the some of the clans there. The Ottomans sought to set Iraqi territories and they soon controlled most of what is Kurd against Kurd as the best way of denying their Ira- now Iraq west of the Euphrates River. Unlike some of nian enemies access to the cities on the Iraqi plain, and the other Bedouin tribes who settled in Iraq to become named as governors in Shahrizor members of Kurdish peasant farmers in the 19th century and gradually came clans who were rivals of the Ardalan clan. The province under the influence of preachers of Shia Islam, the remained contested for the next two centuries between Shammar remained nomadic, content to control most of the Ottomans and Iranians through their Kurdish prox- the overland caravan trade of the region in the 19th cen- ies, but only rarely were there actual Ottoman garrisons tury. The majority of the tribesmen also remained at least in the province. nominally loyal to their Sunni Islam tradition, although some of the sub-clans eventually became Shia. In the 18th century, the Baban family dominated the province, first from the town of Kirkuk and later from Bruce Masters Sulaymaniyya, which they built sometime after 1784 as Further reading: William Polk, Understanding Iraq their new capital. Although they sometimes got into trou- (New York: HarperCollins, 2005). ble with both the governors in Baghdad and the sultans in Istanbul, members of the family headed the provincial sharia Islamic law, or sharia (\u015feriat in Ottoman Turk- government with some brief interruptions until 1850. ish), does not consist of a code of rules that are immu- table or even fully written down. Rather, it is an organic With the reorganization at the time of the Tanzimat system that is grounded in two sources, the Quran and period of reform, the Ottoman state sought to impose the sunna. The Quran is the primary scripture of Islam, direct rule on all of its provinces, eliminating the pockets of local autonomy that had sprung up in the absence of a strong centralized state. Chief among these was Kurd- istan. The region was placed under the direct control of","which for Muslims is God\u2019s word unmediated by human Sharif of Mecca 527 intervention. As such, any rule that is explicitly articu- lated in the Quran is accepted by all schools of Muslim known as muftis who had the authority to issue fatwas, legal thought as binding on believers. The sunna, liter- or judicial rulings on theoretical questions. In the Otto- ally translated as \u201cthe path,\u201d refers to the reported tradi- man Empire, there were official muftis who had received tion of the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s words and actions and their training at the state-financed and state-monitored serves as a model for other Muslims. In terms of sharia, religious schools, the madrasas. These men were usu- however, the sunna is a more problematic source than ally appointed to major provincial centers and were ulti- the Quran, as some legal scholars held that it was the mately responsible to the chief mufti of the Ottoman precedents of behavior, both religious and secular, set by Empire, the \u015feyh\u00fclislam. In addition, religious scholars the original Muslim community, while others held that in provincial centers away from the capital local might the normative examples must be linked to the Prophet recognize local scholars as muftis and accept their rulings Muhammad himself. Either way, in the centuries follow- as valid. This was especially true in the Arabic-speaking ing the Prophet\u2019s death in 632 c.e., Muslims collected provinces where local traditions sometimes clashed with sayings attributed to Muhammad and his close associates interpretations of the sharia as articulated in Istanbul. about various issues not covered by Quranic injunctions. The collected stories and sayings, or hadith, became the According to the sharia, non-Muslims did not have written embodiment of the sunna. Even so, there is no to use Muslim courts unless they were involved in cases consensus as to which sayings are binding and which with Muslims, or if all parties in a dispute agreed to are not, or even as to which collection of such sayings is approach a Muslim judge for his intervention. Neverthe- authentic. Rather, there is consensus within each Islamic less, the records of the sharia courts show that Christians school about the validity of certain sayings, leaving the and Jews frequently appealed to the Muslim courts for interpretation of the finer points of the sharia to trained justice. Western Europeans living in the Ottoman Empire jurists, the faqihs. were initially required to use the Muslim courts. But as they perceived them to be unjust and biased against Within Sunni Islam, there are four principal schools them as non-Muslims, they lobbied their governments to of legal interpretation, each named after a leading jurist extend the capitulations, or agreements governing the whose formulation of the law provides the basis of his conditions under which Europeans could live and work school\u2019s approach to legal interpretation. These are the in the Ottoman Empire, so that they were free from the Shafii, Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali schools. All four were jurisdiction of Muslim courts in most cases. founded between the eighth and ninth centuries c.e. The differences between the schools are relatively slight, how- Bruce Masters ever, and adherents of all four recognize the others as Further reading: Michael Cook, Commanding the Right valid ways to interpret the law. The founder of the school and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cam- of law for Shia Islam was Jaafar al-Sadiq and his school bridge University Press, 2000); Judith Tucker, In the House is called the Jaafari school. Generally, Sunni scholars do of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and not accept it as a legitimate approach to the sharia, as it is Palestine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). heavily influenced by sayings attributed to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and the father of Sharif of Mecca When the Ottomans established the Prophets\u2019 only grandsons. their hegemony over the Holy Cities of the Hejaz, they decided to post their military governor in the port of Jed- The official school of the Ottoman state was that of dah, leaving the administration of Mecca in the hands the Hanafi Sunni and all the judges appointed by the sul- of a prominent local Bedouin leader who was known as tan to the courts in his provincial centers belonged to that the Emir of Mecca. The person holding that office was school. Local judges representing the other schools were always from the Banu Hashim tribe, commonly called the also present at court, however, in places where an alter- Hashimites in English. These were the descendants of the nate school of law was preferred. This was especially true Prophet Muhammad\u2019s own clan and they were, according in Egypt and Kurdistan where local loyalties continued to the legal tradition of Sunni Islam, the only persons to lie with the Shafii school. At first, jurists in Syria also eligible to head the Islamic caliphate. A person of that followed that school, but by the end of the 17th century lineage was entitled to use the honorific Sharif before his most legal scholars there had switched their allegiance to name, the plural of which in Arabic is ashraf. the Hanafi interpretation of the law favored by the sultan. The British poet, diplomat, and traveler Wilfrid Blunt As sharia is not a clearly established code written drew attention to the potential importance of the office in into a set of texts, the role of legal scholars was crucial for his Future of Islam, published in 1882. He argued that the its articulation. Besides the judges who dealt with every- Ottoman dynasty, and the Turks in general, had become day cases, the system also included more senior scholars degenerate and that Islam could only be revived by a properly Arab caliphate led by one of the Prophet\u2019s lineage,","528 Shaykh al-Balad it can only be held by a man descended from the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s lineage through his daughter Fatima and her as only such a person would receive universal respect from husband Ali. For the Shia, the position of imam is more Muslims throughout the world. This was clearly meant than a political office as they hold that he has the infallible to undermine the claim of Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. ability to interpret religious doctrine as well. 1876\u20131909) to the caliphate. According to Blunt, the obvi- ous choice for caliph was the Emir of Mecca, whom he Although Sunni Islam, as interpreted by the Hanafi dubbed the \u201cSharif of Mecca,\u201d a rendering of the title that School of law, was the state religion of the Ottoman then entered into British political terminology and plans Empire, there were sizeable Shii minorities in several of for a post-Ottoman Middle East. While the title \u201cSharif the Ottoman Arab provinces, most notably in what are of Mecca\u201d is commonplace, however, neither Arabic nor today the countries of Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. In Ottoman Turkish-language documents used that title, set- the first two, the Shia followed the Imami tradition. The tling on \u201cEmir of Mecca\u201d in both languages. dominant form of Islam in Iran today, the Imami tradi- tion is known to some Western scholars as \u201cTwelver Bruce Masters Shiism\u201d as its believers hold that the 12th imam, who See also al-Hashimi, Husayn. vanished in the ninth century c.e., will return at some future time to institute a reign of absolute justice on Shaykh al-Balad Shaykh al-Balad is Arabic for \u201cchief earth. In Lebanon, the adherents of this community were of the town.\u201d In the Mamluk Empire, it was an unof- known as the Mitwallis in the Ottoman period, although ficial title for whichever Mamluk was the strongest in it is not a name they use today to refer to themselves. the ongoing battle for political control of Cairo. The Both the Imami tradition and the Zaydi tradition fol- term passed out of usage after the Ottoman conquest of lowed by the Shia of Yemen trace the descent of their Egypt in 1517, but in the early 18th century, Mamluk imams from the line of the sixth imam, Jaafar al-Sadiq households again began to use the term unofficially, (702\u201365), but the Imami trace their tradition through while nominally accepting the authority of the Otto- Sadiq\u2019s son Musa al-Kazim while the Zaydi trace their man governor in Cairo. This changed, however, in 1760 tradition through his son Muhammad. In addition, the when Bulutkapan Ali Bey came to the fore in the inter- Alawis of Syria and the Alevis of eastern Anatolia also nal politics of the Mamluk households in Cairo after claim to be Shia although the Shii clergy in Iran did not capturing the leadership of the Qazdaghli house- accept the Alawi claim until the 20th century. hold. He openly took the title of Shaykh al-Balad for himself as confirmation of his political supremacy, Before the 16th century, the Ottomans were rela- rather than seeking the approval of the sultan and the tively uninterested in the differences between Shii and Ottoman title of governor. The revival of the title signi- Sunni Islam. The Sufi orders (see Sufism), which put fied a shift in power away from Istanbul and back to Ali and the prophet\u2019s descendants at the center of their the local strongmen who no longer acknowledged need devotions, were much more popular in the early Otto- of the Ottoman sultan\u2019s approval. man Empire. But in 1501 Shah Ismail I (r. 1501\u201324) made Imami Shiism the religion of his court in Iran Bruce Masters and began to persecute Sunni Muslims in his realm. In addition, the Turkoman tribes of eastern Anatolia rose Shia Islam The differences between Sunni Islam and in rebellion against the Ottomans, proclaiming Shah Shia Islam are largely products of historical developments. Ismail to be the long-awaited imam who would restore In terms of doctrinal belief and practice, there are few dis- justice to the world. These rebels were known as the agreements between these two dominant interpretations of Kizilba\u015f in Ottoman texts and were ruled as heretics Islam. The schism between the two arose over who should by the Ottoman Sunni legal establishment, making it properly lead the community of believers. The Sunnis legally permissible for the Ottoman army to kill them. believe that a caliph should lead the Islamic community The Shii rebellion against the Ottomans was tempo- and that this caliphate should have political authority rarily ended by the Battle of \u00c7aldiran in 1512. But the as \u201cCommander of the Faithful,\u201d but that religious author- continued presence of a hostile Shii Iran played a sig- ity should be left to the consensus of the community of nificant role in bolstering the Ottoman attachment to religious scholars, or ulema. In contrast, the Shia believe Sunni Islam. With the hostile \u201cheretic\u201d Shia on their that the head of the community is also rightly the imam, eastern borders and the ongoing anti-Muslim chal- a leader with both religious and secular authority and to lenges from the Christian world, the Ottoman sultans whom obedience is due. Sunnis accept that title as well, were increasingly motivated to present themselves as but by imam they mean that the caliph is the leader of the upholders and defenders of what they regarded as the community in prayer and on the hajj, or annual pil- the true faith of Sunni Islam. grimage. For the Shia, the imamate is more. They believe","The embrace of Sunni orthodoxy by the Ottoman Shia Islam 529 political and legal elite did not translate, however, into the persecution of those Shiis in the empire who accepted these gradually displaced most of the Persians who had Ottoman rule peacefully, even if they held the view that dominated Shii religious offices in the holy cities in the such rule was illicit in the absence of the imam. This tol- 18th century. erance was especially manifested in the Ottoman treat- ment of the Shia of Iraq. When S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366) The success in winning the once nominally Sunni conquered Baghdad in 1535, for instance, he endowed Bedouins to Shia Islam created a concern locally among Shii shrines as well as Sunni ones and hosted Shii clergy Sunni clergy and Ottoman officials stationed in Iraq. along with their Sunni counterparts. Subsequent Otto- But it was not until 1895 that the Ottoman government man governors extended this strategy of tolerance and opened Sunni religious schools in Baghdad province in even provided patronage to Shii shrines and clergy. In an attempt to train Sunni clergy who could counter the part, this was due to a realization that it was best not to very active mission of the Shia. The fear of Shia Islam alienate the Shii subjects of the sultan in Iraq. But it also that startled the regime of Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. 1876\u2013 seems to have arisen out of a more general cultural prac- 1909) into this action seemingly dissipated after the tice of tolerance that the sultans extended to both non- Young Turk revolution in 1908 as Sunni and Shii clergy Sunnis and non-Muslims. in Iraq increasingly worked together to resist British colonial ambitions in Iraq. Ironically, despite the Ottoman dynasty\u2019s devotion to Sunni Islam, the Iraqi provinces of Baghdad and Basra In Lebanon, the Shii communities dominated became much more dominated by Shia Islam during the the Jabal Amil region in what is today the south of centuries of Ottoman rule than they had been at the time the country and the Bekaa Valley in the east. In both of their conquest. The province of Baghdad contained regions, peasant farmers made up the majority of the many of Shia Islam\u2019s holiest sites: Ali\u2019s tomb is in Najaf; Shii community, although those in Jabal Amil produced his son Husayn was martyred and buried in Karbala; some religious scholars of note. Some of these schol- and the seventh imam, Musa al-Kazim, is buried in ars went to Iran in the 16th century to help guide the Kazimiyya, to the north of Baghdad. Najaf and Karbala implementation of Shia Islam as the religion of state were established centers of Shii learning before the Otto- under the rule of the Safavid dynasty of shahs. The Shii man period, but both centers grew substantially from Harfush clan controlled the political fate of the Bekaa 1732 to 1763, the period during which the Sunni Nadir Valley from the Ottoman conquest of the region in 1516 Shah ruled in Iran. Nadir Shah sought revenge on the until the early 19th century, but elsewhere Shii clans Shii clergy for their persecution of his Sunni brethren were under the control of their more powerful Druze during the rule of the Safavid shahs; as a result of this or Sunni neighbors and they had to seek political alli- persecution many of the leading Shii clergy of tradition- ances with them. ally Shii Iran fled to the relative safety of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, with the rise of the Shia-dominated With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in principality of Oudh in northern India in the 18th cen- 1920, the Shii Muslims of Iraq came under British rule tury, students, pilgrims, and money from there arrived in and those of Lebanon were governed by France. Both the two Iraqi holy cities. European nations used religion as a political category and assigned positions in the bureaucracies of their colo- While the Ottomans practiced religious tolerance, nial governments based on a quota system for represen- however, many groups within the empire decried such tatives of the various religious communities. This was an approach. Among these, the strictly Sunni Wahhabi a part of the \u201cdivide and rule\u201d strategy used by colonial movement in Arabia viewed the veneration of the imams\u2019 administrators who felt that the territories would be eas- tombs as especially un-Islamic and in 1801, Wahhabi ier to govern if their populations were internally divided. tribesmen captured the town of Karbala and destroyed When Lebanon became independent in 1945, sectarian the tomb of Imam Husayn. Regarded as an outrage by the religious identity was enshrined in the country\u2019s constitu- Shii clerics in Najaf and Karbala, these religious leaders tion and most political parties were formed along strictly cultivated the Bedouin tribes of Iraq as a defense against sectarian lines in that they did not attract members from future Wahhabi attacks, a policy that worked, since other religious sects. Iraq became independent in 1932 attacks against Najaf were thwarted in 1803 and again in under a Sunni dynasty, the Hashimites, and Sunnis con- 1806. As the Shii clergy increased their missionary work tinued to dominate that country\u2019s military governments among the tribes, many of the Bedouins inhabiting Bagh- until the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003. The results of dad and Basra provinces declared their allegiance to the these developments in the post-Ottoman Middle East Shii interpretation of Islam. This led to a greater presence have politicized sectarian religious identity among Mus- of Arabic-speakers in the religious schools of Iraq and lims and led to a greater polarization between Sunnis and Shiis than existed in the centuries in which the region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Bruce Masters","530 Shihab family Lebanese Mountains. The Abu-Lamma clan, who were close allies of the Shihabs, also became Christians around Further reading: Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi\u2019is of Iraq the same time. Bashir (usually referred to as Bashir II to (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). distinguish him from Haydar\u2019s father, who had also been called Bashir) held the post of emir until 1841, making Shihab family The Shihab family was one of the lead- him the longest-reigning emir of the Lebanese mountains ing families of Lebanon and in the 18th and 19th cen- and the most powerful figure of the dynasty. turies its members dominated the office of Emir of the Mountain, the title of the dominant warlord in the After the death of Cezzar Ahmed in 1804, Bashir II Lebanese mountains. The Shihab family was somewhat moved to destroy the feudal families his predecessors had unusual in a region politically dominated by Druze relied upon as allies. When Ibrahim Pasha moved his dynasties, as they were nominally practitioners of Sunni army into Syria in 1831, Bashir II offered his allegiance Islam. The descendants of Fakhr al-Din al-Maani, who to the Egyptian forces and was granted extensive author- dominated much of what is today Lebanon in the first ity over much of Lebanon. He used his power to extract part of the 17th century, had held the office for most of extra taxes and to impose military conscription, extremely the 17th century, despite attempts by the Ottomans to unpopular measures that led to wide-scale revolts by dislodge them. But when the last male descendant in the Druze and Christian peasants. After the withdrawal of the family line died in 1697, his vassals chose Haydar al-Shi- Egyptian army in 1840, Bashir II surrendered to the Brit- hab as emir. Although Haydar was a Sunni, his mother ish fleet anchored off Beirut and went into exile. was a Druze from the Maan clan. He spent the next decade trying to win the support of various Druze and With the exile of Bashir II, the fortunes of the Shihab Shii clans in southern and central Lebanon. His rivals dynasty rapidly declined. The Ottoman sultan appointed called in help from the Ottomans in 1711, but before Bashir III, Bashir II\u2019s distant cousin, as emir in 1841, but the Ottoman expeditionary force could arrive, Haydar it was not a popular choice. Not long after his appoint- defeated his local rivals at the Battle of Andara and seized ment the new emir called the principal Druze families the former Maan capital of Dayr al-Qamar. Through to Dayr al-Qamar to discuss his tax policies. The fami- intermarriage Haydar then effected an alliance with two lies showed up armed and besieged him in his palace powerful Druze groups, the Abu-Lamma family and the in October 1841. The stalemate ended when the sultan Janbulad family. That alliance lasted for most of the withdrew his appointment and Bashir III went into exile. 18th century. With that, the reign of the Shihab dynasty collapsed. There were attempts to restore Bashir III as Emir of the When Haydar died in 1732 he was succeeded first by Mountain after the civil unrest in Lebanon in 1860 but his son Mulhim and then by Mulhim\u2019s brothers. Mulhim\u2019s the era of the feudal emirs was over. son Yusuf gained the title of emir in 1770. Throughout this period, the Lebanese mountains were relatively quiet, Bruce Masters although simmering feuds between individual families Further reading: William Polk, The Opening of South frequently flared into violence. The status quo was shat- Lebanon, 1788\u20131840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- tered with the Mamluk invasion of Syria in 1770. Yusuf sity Press, 1963). al-Shihab aided the Mamluks and his troops even briefly occupied Damascus. But in the aftermath of the Mamluk shipbuilding See Tersane-i Amire. withdrawal, Sultan Mustafa III (r. 1757\u20131774) appointed Cezzar Ahmed Pasha to the governorship of Sidon. sipahi See military organization. From his stronghold in Acre, Cezzar Ahmed steadily acquired territories that had been held by vassals of the slavery The age-old practice of slavery was widespread Shihab clan. In 1789, when there was an attempted coup in the Ottoman Empire. It was a complex institution of against Cezzar Ahmed, he became convinced that Yusuf many forms, combining elements of pre-Islamic, Islamic al-Shihab was behind it. In reprisal, he moved his army Near Eastern, and Mediterranean classical heritages with into Lebanon where he defeated the Shihabs in a battle in distinctive Ottoman conventions. Although the most the Bekaa Valley. intensive use of slaves occurred at the height of Ottoman power between the mid-15th and the late 17th centuries, In defeat, Yusuf abdicated, and his vassals then chose slavery remained legal in imperial territories in the Bal- his cousin Bashir. It is not clear whether or not Yusuf had kans, the Middle East, and North Africa until the end converted to Christianity as he participated in both Mus- of the 19th century. When the Ottomans were in a posi- lim and Christian religious services and visited Druze and tion of military dominance, slaves were acquired through Christian shrines, but Bashir openly acknowledged that he was a Christian. That fact marked a transition by which Maronite power began to eclipse that of the Druzes in the","conquest in Europe, around the Black Sea, and on the slavery 531 Mediterranean. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children might be captured and brought to market in a ten manumission. Slaves could be of virtually any origin, single military campaign. A further source of captive race, or ethnicity provided that they were not Ottoman labor, commercial raiding by professional drovers, was subjects. The one programmatic exception to the geo- the principal mode used in the enslavement of sub-Saha- political dictum occurred in the forcible recruitment of ran Africans, but it was also commonplace in the north- native Christians, usually sons of Balkan villagers, as elite ern borderlands. In the later centuries commerce rather imperial servitors, called gulam, kul, or kap\u0131 kulu, liter- than warfare accounted for the bulk of slave imports. ally \u201cslaves of the Porte.\u201d Ordinary war captives were also assigned to the elite ranks, but most kuls in the 15th and The horsemen and merchants of the Crimean 16th centuries were products of the dev\u015firme system, Tatars were the principal suppliers and commercial the periodic \u201clevy of boys\u201d carried out by the authori- agents for the Black Sea slave trade until around the ties in the Balkan provinces. Although they technically mid-18th century. The African trade to the Middle ought not to have been levied, since Christians within East was historically more decentralized. Numerous the empire were officially recognized as dhimmi, or \u201cpeo- towns and cities in Upper Egypt, the Sudan, and coastal ple of the book,\u201d and were thus officially protected from North Africa had regular markets to accommodate both enslavement, Ottoman pragmatism, cloaked in a dubious regional demand and consignments for Mediterranean, religio-political rationale, explained away the violation of Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf buyers. Istanbul and the protective pact regulating state action with regard to Cairo, the two largest cities in the empire, operated religious minorities. the most important end-destination markets dealing in slaves, although smaller centers like Tunis, Algiers, and For most of the history of the empire, \u201cwhite\u201d cap- Mecca, among others, were also heavy consumers. tives of various ethnicities were arguably in greater demand than sub-Saharan Africans. In the early centu- The importance of slavery is reflected in the empire\u2019s ries, when eastern Europe and the Black Sea steppes lay urban demography. In the 16th century, when Istanbul open to Ottoman armies and their allies, Slavic, Ger- was the largest city in Europe and West Asia, slaves and manic, and tribal Caucasian peoples constituted the former slaves made up about a fifth of its population. majority of captives. The sale of sub-Saharan Africans During Bursa\u2019s heyday as a silk-producing center in the dominated the market in the later centuries, although the 15th and 16th centuries, as many as half of its inhabitants, ratio of African to non-African slaves always varied by including many of its skilled weavers, were slaves and ex- locale, with a heavier concentration of white slaves in the slaves. Although such percentages declined in later centu- capital and in the northern provinces generally. ries, slaves continued to be an important source of labor and a visible presence in major cities and ports. Through- The Ottoman practice of slavery, adhering to Islamic out Ottoman history the ownership of slaves was one of precepts, was also distinguished from many other slave- the most consistent markers of high social standing. owning cultures by the imposition of legal restraints on slave owners\u2019 rights. Islamic law\u2019s recognition of the Slave ownership was concentrated in the wealthier dual nature of slaves as human beings as well as prop- classes, especially among members of the ruling elites. erty denied to owners life-and-death authority over their Most slave owners, and the owners of the largest num- slaves and put strict limits on corporal punishment. The bers of slaves, were Muslim and male. Women, over- law, historical tradition, and the prestige value of mag- whelmingly Muslim, also bought, sold, inherited, and nanimity helped to protect Ottoman slaves from the bequeathed slaves, but they were a small percentage of all excesses to which slaves were frequently subject in the owners and their wealth in slaves did not approach that Americas, and these factors encouraged, although they of male owners. Because of slaveholding\u2019s association could not guarantee, an ethic of paternalism in mas- with social status, non-Muslims were discouraged from ter-slave relations. Thus, slave-owners often attended to slave ownership, the more so if slaves in their possession their slaves\u2019 physical and material well-being as solici- converted to Islam. Blanket prohibitions, however, were tous caretakers. A combination of paternalism and eco- never consistently applied. Christian and Jewish slave nomic self-interest, resulting in more humane treatment owners, both native and foreign, could be found in the in settled regions where community values and the legal empire well into the 19th century. system were strong. In areas destabilized by war, ban- ditry, or paramilitary thuggery, protective mechanisms Ottoman slavery was officially configured along reli- disappeared. gious and geographic lines. By law no Muslim, regardless of his or her country of origin, could be reduced to slave In terms of formal legal norms, the law empowered status. Captives who converted to Islam did not automat- slaves to appeal to the courts in the event of egregious ically gain their freedom, although many who converted physical injury by a master or mistress, wrongful prolon- did so hoping to improve their circumstances and has- gation of servitude after a valid promise of emancipation, or other breach of the law. The surviving records of the","532 slavery estate and sometimes his life because of conduct displeas- ing to his autocratic master. Islamic courts reveal a sprinkling of slaves\u2019 complaints regarding forsworn manumission vows and bodily harm. Most male and female slaves, whether gathered in The absence of more such grievances may be attributable commercial raids or in war, were employed in urban to a number of factors. Given the documented cruelties settings and in the myriad occupations of the domes- of galley slavery and other hard-labor occupations, slaves\u2019 tic household. Most of the tasks performed by slaves for lack of access to the legal system rather than extra-judi- their wealthy owners were no different from those that cial conflict resolution or the mildness of slavery most fell to ordinary free householders. The Ottoman practice probably accounts for the relative silence. of slavery was not as severe a system of labor exploitation as the harsh agricultural slavery associated with planta- By far the most common complaint that reached tion capitalism in the Americas and elsewhere. Another the courts dealt with false enslavement of one sort or feature that distinguishes Ottoman slavery from the another. Ottoman subjects in remote or unstable rural harsher conditions faced by most slaves in the Americas areas were sometimes snatched and enslaved illegally. is the relative ease with which Ottoman slaves obtained Women and children, both Christian and Muslim, were their freedom. Most household slaves were freed by their especially vulnerable to this sort of trafficking. The owners either during the owner\u2019s lifetime or in testamen- demand for nubile women and tractable children was tary declarations upon the owner\u2019s death. Although the usually high, and Ottoman Islamic rules of family privacy length of bondage varied, in the 19th century it became helped traffickers secrete their victims. Some who had customary to emancipate slaves after seven or nine years. been kidnapped were held for years before being restored Slave women who bore their master\u2019s child also custom- to freedom. Others, of unknown number, never saw their arily gained their freedom upon the master\u2019s death if not homes again. Relatives and fellow villagers were crucial before. Moreover, a master\u2019s children born of his slave in establishing a victim\u2019s identity. Without them, a deal- woman were not only free but became his legitimate er\u2019s sworn denial was apt to outweigh a victim\u2019s unsup- heirs, entitled to the same share of his estate as offspring ported protestations. born to a legal wife. Male and female slaves served their owners in virtu- The experience of former slaves as free Ottoman sub- ally every capacity\u2014skilled and unskilled, indoors and jects varied as much as that of the freeborn. In general, out, admired and debased, intimate and remote\u2014known freed Africans fared less well in terms of employment and to the early modern economy. They functioned as guards, opportunity than non-Africans. That is, dark-skinned, servants, porters, field hands, miners, masons, concu- broad-featured male and female slaves were more likely bines, weavers, secretaries, entertainers, and galley slaves, than fine-featured, lighter-skinned slaves to remain clus- among other occupations. One of the distinctive features tered on the lower rungs of the social ladder. Nonethe- of Ottoman governance was its grooming of a special less, many former Ottoman slaves of sub-Saharan origin class of slaves to fill important military and administra- attained wealth and position. Whether light- or dark- tive posts. Taken as boys, usually as part of the dev\u015firme skinned, the opportunities for women who had formerly carried out in the Balkan regions, and forcibly converted been slaves were quite constricted. Because there were to Islam, these \u201cslaves of the Porte,\u201d including the famed few legal and respectable occupations for women, eman- Janissaries, were effectively the sultan\u2019s own bond-ser- cipated females typically continued a life of subordination vants. Their imperial roles imparted a legal and social and domestic service, whether as servant or wife, and status superior to that of ordinary slaves (abd, esir, r\u0131kk, there was often little material difference between these k\u00f6le). Despite their slave identity as the property of the roles. Former slaves of every origin established social sultan, as representatives of the sultan\u2019s authority, these networks and cooperative ties with their co-nationals and individuals exercised rights and privileges superior to co-ethnics. By law, freed slaves were entitled to the same most free subjects whether serving as simple soldiers or rights and legal standing as the freeborn, and in general, grand viziers. While these elite contingents were a small no stigma attached to ex-slaves or their offspring. and unrepresentative minority of the total slave popula- tion, the sultan\u2019s kuls and their remarkable social mobility Genuine assimilation depended to a great extent on have been taken to be hallmarks of the Ottoman system; the religious, ethnic, and linguistic affinities between ex- certainly European visitors found their ascent most strik- slaves and the larger community. The prospects for any ing and foreign to the aristocratic governance of their emancipated slave were greatly enhanced if the former own countries. Despite their elevated status, however, slave-owner continued in the role of patron or patroness. slaves of the Sublime Porte retained, in relation to their In any case, owners often eased the transition to freedom sovereign-master, the attributes of enslaved property. by supplying their freed men and women with \u201cemancipa- They were subjected to harsh discipline without recourse tion dowries\u201d of household goods, clothing, and money. or redress during their apprenticeship. And even as pow- For others, suitable marriage partners were found, either erful officeholders, many a slave-turned-grandee lost his","with other former slaves or with freeborn individuals. Sobieski, Jan 533 Marriage between female slaves and their owners or other family members also sometimes occurred, but was not the Further reading: Y. H. Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman norm. In order for marriage to take place between a mas- Empire and Its Demise, 1800\u20131909 (London: St. Martin\u2019s, ter and his own slave, the slave had first to be emancipated. 1996); Suraiya Faroqhi, \u201cQuis Custodiet Custodes? Control- The more usual sexual relationship within slaveholding ling Slave Identities and Slave Traders in Seventeenth- and families was that of concubinage, with female slaves in the Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,\u201d in Suraiya Faroqhi, Stories sexual and procreative employ of their masters. Once a of Ottoman Men and Women: Establishing Status, Establish- female slave was emancipated, she could no longer legally ing Control (Istanbul: Eren, 2002); Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, \u201cServile be anyone\u2019s concubine, since by law a free woman could Labor in the Ottoman Empire,\u201d in The Mutual Effects of the have sexual relations only within marriage. Islamic and Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Pat- tern, edited by A. Ascher et al. (New York: Columbia Uni- Even though most female slaves were owned by men, versity Press, 1979); Ehud Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in not all were concubines or acquired for sexual purposes. the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: University of Washington Most functioned as maids, personal attendants, nannies, Press, 1998); Madeline C. Zilfi, \u201cServants, Slaves, and the washerwomen, cooks, or had similar domestic respon- Domestic Order in the Ottoman Middle East.\u201d Hawwa 2, no. sibilities. Many female slaves were purchased by men to 1 (2004): 1\u201333. serve the women of the household. Despite the fact that most female slaves in the Ottoman Empire were domes- Sobieski, Jan (John III Sobieski) (b. 1629\u2013d. 1696) tic workers, however, slave women were particularly (r. 1674\u20131696) king of Poland, celebrated military com- vulnerable to exploitation. Their sexuality was both a mander in the wars against the Tatars and the Otto- liability and, within the limits of bondage, an asset, a fact mans Born on August 17, 1629 into a powerful noble that colors the picture of all slave women\u2019s experience. Polish family, Jan Sobieski studied politics, languages, Male slave owners were legally entitled to the sexual use and military art in Krakow and Western Europe. In the of their female slaves. Although men were prohibited 17th century the once-powerful Poland was under threat by law from sexual relations with slaves owned by oth- from the Prussians and Swedes on its western borders ers in the household or elsewhere, transgressions within and from the Russians, Turks, Crimean Tatars, and the household appear to have been common, with penal- Ukrainian Cossacks to the south and east. During the ties rare or inconsequential. Lacking the right of refusal period 1648\u20131653, Sobieski fought against the Cossack in any case, it is not surprising that many slave women rebels and the Crimean Tatars, and in 1654, he partici- competed to attract the master\u2019s favor, a tactic that was pated in a Polish embassy to Constantinople. During the a standard but often ruthless feature of life within the Swedish invasion of 1655, he initially sided with Charles sultan\u2019s harem. Countless slave women gained status or X Gustav, the Swedish pretender to the Polish throne, otherwise improved their position within the household reentering the service of King John Casimir in 1656. by bearing their owner\u2019s child, sometimes even becom- From 1656 to 1660, he fought successive wars against ing legal wives and earning the support and inheritance Sweden, the Transylvanian pretender George II R\u00e1k\u00f3czi entitlements that legal marriage conferred. (see Transylvania), and Russia. Young male slaves were known to have been sexually His reconciliation with the royal court in 1656 coin- exploited by slave traders and owners, although homo- cided with his love affair with Marie Casimire d\u2019Arquien, sexuality and in particular the sexual exploitation of the French maid of honor and prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of the powerful young males were illegal and widely condemned. Polish queen, Marie Louise de Gonzaga. Though initially married to another man, Marie Casimire would become The regular passage of male and female former Sobieski\u2019s wife in 1665. The romance allowed the Pol- slaves into the Ottoman family system made for a ish court to win Sobieski\u2019s support for its plans to pre- porous boundary between slave and free. Paradoxically, pare a French candidacy for the future royal election and it also hardened Ottoman attitudes against abolition. In strengthen the monarch\u2019s role in Poland. In the ensuing response to European, principally British, efforts to end Polish civil war (the rokosz of Jerzy Lubomirski, 1665\u201366) slavery in the 19th century, Ottoman apologists defended that thwarted the royal plans, Sobieski fought on the side the Ottoman system as a uniquely benign and culturally of the court. imbedded practice. The tide was against them, however. The African slave trade was abolished in 1857 and slav- After the abdication of John Casimir (1668), Sobieski ery overall was sharply reduced by measures in the 1860s headed the pro-French faction against a Habsburg can- and 1870s, but slavery was still practiced sporadically in didacy to the Polish throne and then opposed the newly the empire until its dissolution. elected king, Micha\u0142 Wi\u015bniowiecki (1669\u20131673). As a commander of the Polish troops (field hetman since Madeline C. Zilfi 1666, grand hetman since 1668), Sobieski fought against See also sex and sexuality. numerous Tatar incursions and yet another Cossack","534 Sokollu family Sokollu family The Sokollus were one of the most prominent families of Christian origin who emerged insurrection beginning in 1666. His military skills, dem- through the Ottoman child levy or dev\u015firme system, onstrated in the Battle of Podhajce (Pidhajci) (1667), attained numerous high-ranking posts in the Ottoman made him increasingly popular. After the Ottomans government and military, and built a powerful network of decided to support the Cossacks and declared war on prot\u00e9g\u00e9s. The name Sokollu has its root in the word sokol, Poland, Sobieski was unable to prevent the loss of Podolia meaning \u201cfalcon,\u201d and comes from the village Sokolovi\u0107i in 1672 (see Kamani\u00e7e). Yet his brilliant victory at Hotin near the town of Rudo in Bosnia. Although members of (Khotin) over the Ottoman corps of Sar\u0131 H\u00fcseyin Pasha the Sokollu family served in various Ottoman admin- (1673) ensured him the Polish throne in the following istrative posts, the name Sokollu generally evokes one election. The inconclusive campaigns of 1674\u201376 against Ottoman statesman, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha (1505\u201379), the Ottomans led Sobieski to conclude an armistice (the who initiated the careers of many other family members. truce of \u017burawno, 1676), followed by a formal peace with Yet the Sokollu family had more than one branch whose the Porte (1678). members advanced high in the Ottoman bureaucracy before Sokollu Mehmed Pasha\u2019s rise to power in the sec- Eager to cooperate with the French against the ond half of the 16th century. Prussians and the Habsburgs, he was soon disappointed by the insufficient support of King Louis XIV. This Among the best known of these is H\u00fcsrev Pasha, resulted in a reversal of his pro-French policy and his who became the second vizier in 1543. H\u00fcsrev Pasha, rapprochement with the Habsburgs. In accordance with after receiving a traditional education in the palace a defensive treaty signed in 1683, Sobieski led a Pol- school, began his career as the commander of the impe- ish rescue expedition to Austria and commanded the rial cavalry units in 1516. Later he served as governor allied Christian troops in the Battle of Vienna (Septem- (beylerbeyi) in different provinces of the empire and in ber 12, 1683), defeating the Ottoman grand vizier, Kara 1535 became the governor of Egypt. After serving in this Mustafa Pasha. His further successes (e.g., the Battle of position for two years he returned to Istanbul and was P\u00e1rk\u00e1ny, 1683) and his popularity in Hungary led to given the rank of vizier. When he died in 1544 as second renewed tensions with Vienna. In 1684 Poland became vizier, he was at the height of his career. a member of the anti-Ottoman Holy League along with the Holy Roman Emperor, Venice, and the pope. The While H\u00fcsrev Pasha was approaching the end of last decade of Sobieski\u2019s reign was marked by his unsuc- his career in the early 1540s, Mehmed Pasha was in the cessful campaigns in Moldavia (1684, 1686, 1691); his process of creating a power network composed of his inability to reconquer the Podolian fortress of Kamie- relatives and fellow countrymen. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha niec; and an unfavorable peace with Russia (1686), in was levied by Ottoman officers from his village at a rela- which Poland resigned from the disputed Ukrainian tively late age, between 16 and 18, during the early years territories, including Kiev, in order to draw the czar to of S\u00fcleyman I (r. 1520\u201366). He was first brought to the Holy League. Disenchanted with the rising opposi- Edirne and received his education in the Edirne Palace. tion and the failure to secure the Polish throne for his Later he was brought to the Topkap\u0131 Palace and served sons, Sobieski died before the conclusion of the long in the privy chamber, which included the posts closest to war against the Ottomans, in whose beginnings he had the person of the sultan, such as the stirrup-holder, valet played such a prominent role. de chambre, and sword bearer. In 1541 he was made the head door-keeper and thus left the inner palace service. Sobieski\u2019s prominence in war and politics overshad- In 1549 he was appointed governor of Rumelia; two years owed his role as a writer (his erotic correspondence with later, as field marshal of the Rumelian troops, he com- Marie Casimire is a gem of the Polish baroque literature), manded the campaign in Transylvania. In 1554, during a linguist (he even spoke pidgin Tatar-Turkish), and a the campaign led by S\u00fcleyman against the Persian Safavid patron of arts (he founded numerous churches and resi- dynasty, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha distinguished himself dences, including the palace in Wilan\u00f3w near Warsaw; with his Rumelian troops and was made the third vizier his Oriental art collections, including the spoils from of the Imperial Council. Vienna, are partially preserved in Krakow, Dresden, and St. Petersburg). In the succession struggle among the sons of S\u00fcley- man in the closing years of the 1550s, Sokollu Mehmed See also Vienna, sieges of. Pasha played an important role. In 1558, he was sent Dariusz Ko\u0142odziejczyk by S\u00fcleyman to prince Selim with a message to per- suade him to maintain the peace with his brother prince Further reading: Otton Laskowski, Sobieski: King of Bayezid. Although Sokollu succeeded in his mission Poland (Glasgow: Polish Library, 1944); John Stoye, The and Selim (who would become his father-in-law in Siege of Vienna (London: Collins, 1964); Zbigniew Wojcik, \u201cKing John III of Poland and the Turkish Aspects of His Foreign Policy.\u201d Belleten XLIV, no. 176 (1980): 659\u2013673.","Sokollu family 535 An influential grand vizier for three sultans, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha endowed architecture and urban amenities all over the Ottoman Empire. This large complex was founded in Payas, a port that linked the Syrian trade routes with Cyprus. (Photo by G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston) 1562) complied with the sultan\u2019s request, prince Bayezid cate political situation are indicative of his strategic skill refused his father\u2019s request. In the ensuing civil war and authority. between Selim and Bayezid, Sokollu commanded the army sent by S\u00fcleyman to support Selim, playing a deci- The power of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha rested on his sive role in Selim\u2019s victory over his brother. In 1565, fol- vast network, mostly composed of family members, at lowing the deaths of two senior viziers, R\u00fcstem Pasha in key posts of the empire. Sokollu\u2019s strategy of appointing 1561 and Ali Pasha in 1565, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was his kinsmen to important offices began before he became promoted to the grand vizierate, a position he would grand vizier. An early example of this was Sokollu\u2019s his occupy uninterruptedly for 14 years and under three cousin, the future Mustafa Pasha. He was first brought to successive sultans. Istanbul and enrolled as a page in the palace. Later in his career he became governor of Buda for 12 years (1566\u2013 One year after Sokollu Mehmed Pasha became 78). Later a younger brother of this cousin, Mehmed, was grand vizier, S\u00fcleyman died during the Szigetv\u00e1r cam- appointed tutor (lala) to a royal prince. Lala Mehmed also paign (1566) in southern Hungary, far away from eventually became grand vizier. During Sokollu Mehmed Istanbul. In order to prevent chaos among the soldiers Pasha\u2019s grand vizierate his eldest son, Hasan Pasha, became and to ensure the orderly enthronement and acces- the governor of Diyarbak\u0131r (1570\u201371). Two other relatives, sion of the next sultan, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha kept his cousin Ferhad Bey and his brother-in-law Sinan Bey, S\u00fcleyman\u2019s death secret for weeks until prince Selim also attained high office in the provincial administration reached the army in Belgrade (northern Serbia). of the empire, the former as commander of Klis (Clissa) in Sokollu\u2019s managerial skills and his control over this deli- 1570 and the latter as commander of Bosnia.","536 Spain Some of the descendants of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha managed to maintain their offices until the end Sokollu Mehmed Pasha\u2019s network was composed of the 16th century, including his son, Hasan Pash,a not only of his relatives and fellow countrymen but also who became the fifth vizier in 1595. However, Sokollu included trusted servants from both the central bureau- Mehmed Pasha\u2019s death in 1579 marked the end of the cracy and the court. One of the most important of great power and lucrative career opportunities of the these confidants was his private secretary, Feridun Bey, Sokollu clan. described by contemporaries as Sokollu\u2019s seeing eyes and supporting hands. After having served Sokollu \u015eefik Peksevgen Mehmed Pasha as his most trusted aide, Feridun Bey Further reading: G. Veinstein, \u201cSokollu Mehmed became the head scribe of the imperial chancery in Pasha,\u201d in Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd ed., edited by H. A. 1574. Although he was dismissed from that office as R. Gibb et. al., vol. 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 706\u201311; Cor- a result of the anti-Sokollu campaign during the first nell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman years of Murad III\u2019s reign (1574\u20131595), after the death Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali, 1541\u20131600 (Princeton, of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Feridun Bey was reinstated N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 41\u201369. in the same office in 1581 and was married to Ay\u015fe Sul- tan, the daughter of R\u00fcstem Pasha and granddaughter Spain Following the conquest of Granada in 1492 by of Sultan S\u00fcleyman. Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon, the Mediterranean Sea became the center of a prolonged Another trusted favorite of Sokollu Mehmed military conflict between the Iberian kingdoms and the Pasha was Cafer Pasha who, having received the tra- Ottoman Empire. Despite Queen Isabella\u2019s mandate ditional palace education, became the commander of for her heirs to continue Castile\u2019s expansion in North the imperial cavalry during the reign of S\u00fcleyman. As Africa, Spanish military action in the Mediterranean the sultan\u2019s private secretary, Cafer Pasha was also in during the 16th and 17th centuries fell short of a full- charge of writing letters and commands for S\u00fcleyman. scale conquest of the North African territories. Instead, In this capacity, Cafer Pasha played a vital role support- Spanish policies aimed to control Ottoman expansion ing Sokollu Mehmed Pasha in keeping S\u00fcleyman\u2019s death in the Mediterranean and combating the area\u2019s cor- secret by continuing to write commands in the name of sairs and pirates who operated with the thinly veiled the deceased sultan. Later, Cafer Pasha was married to approval of the Ottomans and whose activities destabi- the daughter of Sokollu Mehmed Pahsa and became the lized and threatened Spanish imperial authority in fron- commander of the Janissaries. tier areas. Major military battles between Spain and the Ottomans occurred mostly during the 16th century, but The power and authority of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha protracted conflict between the two powers remained during his 14 years as grand vizier was constantly chal- alive in the form of corsair activity until the mid-18th lenged in the delicate political balance of the emerging century. Throughout the 18th century, the Bourbon mili- Ottoman court. However, especially during the reign of tary reforms led to a reinforcement of the strategic role Selim II (r. 1566\u201374), with the help of his own network of Spain\u2019s presidios, mainly as a defense against British of favorites, Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was able to counter intervention in the western Mediterranean. In 1782\u201383, any attack on his control over the business of rule. He negotiations between Charles III (r. 1759\u201388) of Spain skillfully managed to contain the aspirations of the favor- and Abd\u00fclhamid I (r. 1774\u201389) led to the signing of ites of Sultan Selim\u2019s court and was depicted by his con- a peace agreement between Spain and the Ottoman temporaries as virtual sovereign of the empire. Empire, thus putting an end to the hostilities that had characterized the previous centuries. The accession of Murad III (r. 1574\u201395), however, seriously challenged the power of Sokollu Mehmed Both the Spanish and the Ottomans built their impe- Pasha. Although the new sultan felt deep respect for the rial ideologies in religious terms, each representing itself old and experienced grand vizier who had successfully as the defender of its respective faith. However, as exem- served both his father and grand father, the control of the plified by the renegades and captives in the corsair North court gradually shifted from the network of the grand African port towns, these ideological differences were vizier to Murad and his favorites. In this gradual takeover often underplayed and even subverted in frontier areas, of the business of rule, the sultan\u2019s favorites targeted the where interaction led to social, economic, and cultural prot\u00e9g\u00e9 network of the grand vizier. The high-ranking exchanges that frequently ignored rigid imperial doc- bureaucrats of the Sokollu family and the most trusted trine. Within Spain itself, military conflict with the Otto- servants of the grand vizier were dismissed from their man Empire severely affected relations with the Morisco posts and replaced by members of the anti-Sokollu fac- community, composed of former Muslims who had tion of the court. Among those who fell from power were Sokollu Mustafa Pasha, the governor of Buda, who was executed in 1578, and Feridun Bey, who was dismissed from his office and exiled to Belgrade.","been forced to convert to Christianity in the early 16th Spain 537 century. activities in the Mediterranean, particularly during the EARLY IMPERIAL CONQUEST 17th century. Inspired in part by the crusading spirit that had led to CORSAIRS, PRIVATEERS, AND THE the unification of Christian kingdoms in the Iberian Pen- REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES insula, the Spanish conquest of North Africa followed in the footsteps of Portugal, whose expansion along the Privateers were independent vessel owners commissioned North African coastline began in 1415 with the conquest by states to attack enemy shipping. Unlike privateers, cor- of Ceuta. In 1497, Castilian troops conquered the North sairs operated with government licenses, and both the African port town of Melilla, which has remained under Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs regularly issued strict Spanish sovereignty ever since. The Spanish conquest of regulations delimiting the scope of corsair activities. The the Algerian port of Mars al-Kabir (Mazalquivir) in 1505 term corsair had a religious connotation. The most noto- served as the launching point for the conquest of the stra- rious Christian corsairs were the Knights of St. John on tegically important port city of Oran in an expedition led the island of Malta and the most prominent Muslim cor- by Cardinal Cisneros and Pedro Navarro in 1509. (Oran, sairs operated out of three North African corsair states in in present-day Algeria, remained in Castilian hands until Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. The first corsair state was 1708.) Pe\u00f1\u00f3n de Velez de la Gomera was conquered in founded in Algiers in 1519 by Hayreddin Barbarossa, one 1508. The Treaty of Alca\u00e7ovas (1479) and the Treaty of of the famous Barbarossa brothers. The corsair states Tordesillas (1494) delineated the limits of Portuguese and were semi-autonomous entities formally dependent on the Castilian expansion in North Africa in a discussion that Ottoman authorities, whose economies were based on a concluded with the Cintra Capitulation (1509), according combination of corsair and privateering activities and the to which the territories to the west of Ceuta were left for ransoming of captives. The consolidation of corsair politi- Portugal to occupy, and those to the east, to Spain. Spain cal entities along the North African coastline resulted in a subsequently took Algiers and Tripoli in 1511. new geostrategic situation, forcing the imperial centers to regulate their activities while simultaneously devoting sig- The reigns of Charles I of Spain (r. 1516\u201356, Holy nificant efforts to their containment. The peculiar socio- Roman Emperor as Charles V, r. 1519\u201356) and S\u00fcleyman political structure of frontier areas led to the emergence of I (r. 1520\u201366) saw the consolidation of Spanish and Otto- a political structure dominated by armed Janissaries and man rule over the western and eastern Mediterranean corsair captains who acquired a significant level of politi- respectively. Both monarchs, as well as their successors, cal independence but whose actions remained tied to the relied on the power of propaganda to sustain their roles imperial designs of the Mediterranean powers. as defenders of the Catholic and Sunni Muslim faiths. The Ottoman conquests of Rhodes (1522), Algiers (1529), Renegades and captives were also important in the and Tripoli (1551) under S\u00fcleyman, followed by the con- North African frontier. Renegades were free men who quest of Cyprus (1571) and Tunis (1574) under Selim chose to cross borders, mainly for economic reasons, and II (r. 1566\u201374), consolidated Ottoman rule in the eastern embraced their former enemy\u2019s religion. They often spe- Mediterranean. At the same time, Spain\u2019s grip over Ceuta, cialized in maritime activities and had technical knowledge following the union with Portugal in 1580, and control that could be put to use in frontier areas where corsairs over Oran reasserted Spanish influence over the western played a strategic role in the conflict between empires. Mediterranean. Charles V\u2019s expedition to Tunis in 1535 led to the recapture of the city until 1574, when it again Captives, on the other hand, had fallen prey to corsair came under Ottoman control. Under the rule of Philip II and privateer activities, and the issue of their conversion of Spain (r. 1556\u201398), the Holy League attacked the Otto- was a more complex matter. They were often employed man fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Although in manual labor and lived in very harsh conditions, por- older historiographical approaches have interpreted this trayed in the so-called \u201ccaptive literature\u201d genre (literatura battle as the beginning of the so-called Ottoman military de cautivos), whose most famous representative in Spain decline, recent interpretations have taken a different view. was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Conversion often The Battle of Lepanto, while a spectacular military victory posed an important dilemma, since many of these captives for Spain, nevertheless produced no substantial changes were slaves whose legal status might be altered if their reli- in the geostrategic position of the Mediterranean pow- gious affiliation changed. Although the most well-known ers. Lepanto brought an end to the great military clashes cases of converts are those who converted from Christi- that had characterized the 16th century, and inaugurated anity to Islam, there were many requests to convert from a new era dominated by small-scale warfare through the enslaved Muslim men in the service of the kings of Spain, consolidation and perpetuation of corsair and privateer some of them Turks. Their requests to convert to Christi- anity, which are documented well into the 18th century, were not always granted. Spanish authorities often feared that the new Christian slaves might use their status to flee","538 Suez Canal Opening of the Suez Canal as presented in Frank Leslie\u2019s illus- trated newspaper, on January 8, 1870 (Courtesy of the Library to Ottoman lands. The Spanish Inquisition punished indi- of Congress) viduals who had converted to Islam, although the degree of punishment varied considerably depending on a num- France for economic dominance in Egypt. The British ber of factors, including whether or not the convert had initially sought to build a railroad that would link Alex- embraced Islam voluntarily. andria to the Red Sea as a way of shortening the time required to transport goods to their colony in India. The For Christian captives, the most common path to French had a grander vision to construct a canal that returning to Christian lands was that of redemption, would link the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, starting at whether through general redemptive expeditions orga- the Egyptian port of Suez. The idea of a canal linking the nized by religious orders, such as the Trinitarians and two seas was not new, but the French recognized that it Mercedarians, or through individual requests. Captives would cut in half the time needed for its Mediterranean- played an essential economic role for both Spain and the based fleet to reach Southeast Asia, a region of increasing Ottoman regencies: they were a cheap and specialized interest to those who promoted French colonial expan- workforce whose economic value played a determinant sion there as a counterbalance to the British in India. role in the decision to redeem them. In this contest between the two nations, the British RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AND THE won the first round with a contract from Khedive Abbas MORISCO PROBLEM in 1851 to build their railroad. His successor, Khedive Said, however, was a good friend of the Frenchman Fer- Military confrontation with the Ottoman Empire led to a dinand de Lesseps, who convinced the khedive to sup- significant increase in social tensions between old and new port the construction of a canal. The initial agreement Christians in Iberia. Isabella and Ferdinand\u2019s decree of came in 1854, but further negotiations on the canal\u2019s expulsion against Jews in 1492 was followed by a massive construction and its financing ensued. It was not until exodus of Sephardic Jews to lands under Ottoman suzer- 1858 that Said finally accepted the outline of the project. ainty. Important Sephardic communities settled in Otto- Said agreed to provide 20,000 Egyptian laborers to dig mans lands, mainly Salonika, Cyprus, and Istanbul, the canal and handed the development rights to the land playing a key economic role in the development of mari- on both sides of the canal to the French joint-stock com- time commerce. Conflict with the Ottoman Empire also pany, headed by de Lesseps, that was formed to oversee affected the Morisco population in Spain. Spanish court the building of the canal. When only half the shares were propagandists and members of the old Christian elite purchased when the project went public in 1859, Said often expressed mistrust at the role of the Morisco popula- purchased the rest. The Egyptian government thereby tion. Throughout the 16th century, Spanish Moriscos were committed a large amount of its own resources to a proj- often thought of as an Ottoman fifth column inside Spain, ect by which it would benefit only indirectly. and the occasional alliance of some of their leaders with Algerian and Ottoman plans was one of the factors that led De Lesseps\u2019 failure to acquire full financing for the to their final expulsion from Spanish territory, beginning project, British opposition, and Ottoman concerns about in 1609. The expulsion of the Moriscos was a controversial the project all conspired to delay the start of construc- matter and its economic effects varied from one region to tion. Said\u2019s successor, Khedive Ismail, liked the project another, although some regions in the Spanish Levant were but not the arrangements that gave away so much to de severely depopulated. Significant Morisco populations set- Lesseps. After long and complicated negotiations, the tled in North Africa, where they played an important role in the development of the North African regencies. Vanesa Casanova-Fernandez Further reading: Bartolom\u00e9 Bennassar and Lucile Bennassar, Les chr\u00e9tiens d\u2019Allah: l\u2019histoire extraordinaire des ren\u00e9gats, XVIe et XVIIe si\u00e8cles (Paris: Perrin, 1989); Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York: Harper, 1972); Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth- century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978); Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998). Suez Canal The construction of the Suez Canal was a result of the intense competition between England and","various parties concerned reached a compromise and Sufism 539 the sultan gave approval for construction of the canal to begin in 1866. rience. Simply put, religious truth cannot be learned by study alone; it has to be experienced. The construction of the canal was supervised by French engineers who established the route for the There is much debate over the origins of Sufism. canal. As the land through which the canal was dug was Western scholars have suggested that it represents either relatively level, the canal did not require a system of Indian influences or traditions arising from the Gnostic elaborate locks. As a result, the technology required for Christianity that existed in the Middle East at the time the canal\u2019s construction was simple. The actual digging when Islam emerged as a new religion. Muslims cite the of the canal was done by hundreds of thousands of peas- Quran as the source of Sufism, and many Sufi traditions ant laborers equipped with picks and shovels. It is not attribute their traditions to Ali, the son-in-law of the known how many of these perished in the process, as the Prophet Muhammad. Jesus, whom Muslims believe to Suez Canal Company kept no records of fatalities. But in have been a prophet, also figures in many Sufi traditions Egyptian folk memory and popular opinion the num- as an originator of the Sufi way. bers of those who died is reckoned to be in the tens of thousands. When the canal opened in 1869, Ismail orga- In the earliest Sufi writings of the eighth century nized festivities to mark the occasion. These included c.e., the emphasis was on turning away from worldly the first performance of Giuseppe Verdi\u2019s opera, A\u00efda, in pleasures, living simply, and devoting oneself to prayer the Cairo Opera House that was built especially for the and contemplation. The Arabic word for wool is suf, occasion. and many Muslim scholars claim that the name for the movement comes from the simple woolen garments its Although the Canal was not the only reason for early adherents wore. Many of the early Sufis were ascet- Egypt\u2019s growing debt to European creditors, Egypt ics and some remained celibate, even though the Quran gained little financially from the deal struck between explicitly warns Muslims not to imitate the practices of the khedival government and the Suez Canal Com- Christian monks in that regard. By the tenth century c.e., pany, despite the fact that the canal had quickly become a very profitable enterprise. Stuck in a no-win situ- ation, Ismail sold off his shares to the British govern- ment for 4 million pounds (20 million U.S. dollars). Although the British initially opposed the canal, Brit- ish ships accounted for 80 percent of the traffic in the canal and Prime Minister Disraeli jumped at the chance to acquire the shares. Although Britain would not hold the canal outright, it had the majority of the members of the governing board and reaped large profits on its initial investment in the purchase of shares in the Suez Canal Company. The question of ownership of the canal would remain a thorny one between Great Britain and subsequent Egyptian governments until 1956 when Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the canal. Bruce Masters Further reading: Zachary Karabell, Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal (New York: Knopf, 2003). Sufism Western scholars refer to the mystical tradi- This photo taken in the photographer\u2019s workshop in tions in Islam, known in Arabic as tasawwuf, as Sufism. Damascus, around 1880, shows the traditional dress of the Both the Arabic and English terms are derived from Mevlevi Sufis. The man seated is dressed as a pir, or master the Arabic sufi, meaning \u201cmystic.\u201d In Ottoman Turkish, of the order, while the standing younger man is dressed as the more commonly used word for a mystic was dervi\u015f, a novice. (Photograph by Maison Bonfils, courtesy of the or dervish. A wide array of traditions come under the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia) umbrella of Sufism, but they all agree on two basic tenets: to understand Islam requires an experiential relationship with God, and this can only be achieved through the guidance of a master who has already had such an expe-","540 Sufism settling in Anatolia in the 13th century. They made Sufi beliefs accessible to large numbers of people in the form Sufis were beginning to profess that they could actually of songs that were passed from village to village by Sufi achieve a union with God wherein they lost any aware- minstrel bards. Sufis also blended elements of Christianity ness of their own separate consciousness. They called this into their practice, which appealed to Greek and Arme- fana or \u201cannihilation,\u201d and to experience it was to be in nian peasants, thereby hastening their acceptance of Islam an altered state of consciousness, or hal. That experience through the medium of the Turkish language and culture. of losing one\u2019s self-consciousness while in God\u2019s presence led some to make extreme claims that in those moments The early Ottoman sultans felt no apparent contra- they had, in fact, become God. The Sufi saint al-Hal- diction in practicing an Islam that contained both ortho- laj was executed in Baghdad in 922 for having said, \u201cI dox and heterodox elements. Indeed, the foundation am the Truth,\u201d which was one of God\u2019s names. Orthodox myth of the empire had Osman Gazi being ordained as a Muslim theologians condemned such claims and viewed world conqueror by a Sufi sheikh whose daughter he then most Sufis with suspicion. married. Once they had established their empire, the Ottoman sultans had close relations to two Sufi groups, Such attitudes began to change with the circulation the Mevlevi Order and the Bekta\u015fi Order, although of the spiritual autobiography of Muhammad al-Ghazzali, these two could not be more different in their religious who died in 1111. Al-Ghazzali was a teacher at the pres- outlook. The Mevlevi Order, founded by the son of the tigious Nizamiyya school in Baghdad and was acknowl- 13th century poet Rumi, was the order of Ottoman intel- edged as one of the leading Muslim scholars of his time, lectuals and attracted poets, musicians, and calligraphers. but he suffered a crisis of faith and left teaching. Through The order established convents or hostels (tekke) in vari- the practice of Sufism, however, he came to believe that ous Ottoman cities and these served as centers for the Islam was the true faith ordained by God and that the teaching of art and music as well as being places of spiri- Quran was the word of God, and he returned to teaching. tual retreat. The Bekta\u015fi Order, by contrast, was the order His spiritual autobiography represented a great synthe- of the Janissaries and its traditions were oral rather than sis of the legal and the mystical traditions. Al-Ghazzali literary. Although many of its practices were unorthodox, stated that one could not know that the Quran and sharia such as the drinking of wine, it too received official rec- were true without the inner certainty that one gains from ognition from the sultans as a way of keeping the troops the Sufi path. But once having gained that wisdom, one happy. The sultans and their families supported both must follow the path of orthodoxy in Islam. After al- orders financially by establishing some of their convents Ghazzali, most Muslim scholars accepted the principle and bestowing lavish gifts on the orders\u2019 sheikhs. that Sufism was permissible, and even desirable, for Mus- lims, as long as Sufi practices conformed outwardly to Despite sultanic support of some Sufi orders, Sufis the letter of Muslim law. also sometimes challenged the sultans\u2019 authority by claiming they had access to a truth that could never be In the centuries following al-Ghazzali, a number known by those who had not embarked on the path of individuals offered differing approaches to the goal of mysticism. In the aftermath of the defeat of Sultan of mystical union with God, and out of their teachings Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402) at Ankara in 1402, the Sufi different Sufi orders emerged. Almost all of these had a Sheikh Bedrettin preached in favor of a social movement program consisting of a linear path of specific steps that that sought to tear down the differences between classes must be followed by the seeker, guided by a teacher. As and religions. His movement gained great popularity such, the orders were called tariqas, the Arabic word among the ordinary people of all religions and his dis- for \u201cpath\u201d that is also a pun on the word for Islamic law, ciple, B\u00f6rl\u00fcce Mustafa, started a revolt against the Otto- sharia, which also means \u201cpath\u201d or \u201cway.\u201d Some of the man in 1416. The rebels had some initial success but the tariqas were scrupulously orthodox, following the lead of Ottoman army was finally able to defeat them and Bed- al-Ghazzali. But others, taking as their guide the ecstatic rettin and thousands of his followers were executed. The approach of al-Hallaj, claimed that the knowledge they Ottomans also faced other revolts led by radical Sufis in had gained through the Sufi quest negated the strict the 15th and 16th centuries. Indeed, one of the great- codes imposed by Islamic law. est challenges to the Ottoman throne came from Shah Ismail, who headed an extremist Sufi order that believed These contrary Sufi traditions had already developed him to be the long-awaited hidden imam. before the rise of the Ottomans in the 14th century and were present as alternative voices for the duration of the Although Ottoman legal scholars condemned popu- empire. The Turks were widely influenced by various lar Sufi movements as heretical, they were generally toler- strains of Sufi practice as Sufi missionaries converted their ant of the intellectual Sufi orders that outwardly followed ancestors to Islam in Central Asia by blending Islamic Islamic law. The exception to this was the Kad\u0131zadeli beliefs and practices with the Turks\u2019 shamanism. Mystic movement that emerged in the 17th century among the poets such as Yunus Emre and Hajji Bekta\u015f composed their work in the vernacular Turkish of those who were","students of Birgivi Mehmed, a fundamentalist Muslim S\u00fcleyman I 541 scholar and preacher, who died in 1573. This group con- demned anything that it considered an innovation on the This 16th century painting shows the young Sultan S\u00fcleyman Islam practiced by the Prophet Muhammad and the first I, known as Magnificent to Europeans and as Lawgiver or Law generation of Muslims, and it held that Sufism was such abider to his subjects. Several paintings, of the young sultan, an innovation. In this, the Kad\u0131zadelis foreshadowed the similar to this, are known from European museums. (Erich Wahhabis of the 18th century, a group that also refused Lessing\/Art Resource) to tolerate anything regarded as a deviation from the strictest adherence to foundational Islam. during his time. S\u00fcleyman\u2019s fame is due as much to his conquests in Europe as to the splendor of his court and In the second half of the 18th century, a more austere the elaborate propaganda that publicized his triumphs. and rigorous Sufi order, the Naqshbandiyya Order, He led his armies on 13 campaigns, spending perhaps a answered some of the objections raised by the Muslim quarter of his reign on campaigns. These brought Iraq fundamentalists to Sufism. The Naqshbandis believe in a (1534\u201335) and Hungary (1526, 1541) under Ottoman strict adherence to sharia and reject the notion of saint- rule, threatened the Habsburg capital Vienna twice (1529, hood found in many other Sufi orders, but they still hold 1532; see Vienna, sieges of); his victories at Rhodes in that the understanding of God that can only be gained the eastern Aegean (1522) and at Preveza in northwest- from a mystical experience is a vital, necessary part of ern Greece (1538) made the Ottomans masters of the Islam. The sober interpretation of mysticism offered by eastern Mediterranean, leaving only Malta and Cyprus the Naqshbandiyya Order was popular among intellectu- unconquered for the time being. The fact that he was a als within the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th cen- contemporary of Europe\u2019s most illustrious monarchs also turies as it offered a compromise between mysticism and assured S\u00fcleyman\u2019s reputation. Holy Roman Emperor the interpretations of Islam that fundamentalists such as Charles V (r. 1519\u201356) was S\u00fcleyman\u2019s chief antagonist the Wahhabis were preaching. However, critics of Sufism with whom the sultan engaged in an epic and exhausting, still did not accept the Naqshbandiyya as being rooted in yet ultimately futile, rivalry for world supremacy. Fran- a proper understanding of Islam. cis I of France (r. 1515\u201347), \u201cthe most Catholic king of France,\u201d was Charles V\u2019s archenemy and the sultan\u2019s Despite the Kad\u0131zadeli movement\u2019s criticism of Sufi reluctant ally. S\u00fcleyman\u2019s victories were commemorated beliefs and practices, Sufism remained a vibrant part of by lavishly illustrated chronicles, poem-books, festivi- Islam as it was practiced in the Ottoman Empire through ties, and by the many masterpieces of Ottoman archi- World War I. In the aftermath of the war, Mustafa tecture. Known to Europeans as \u201cthe Magnificent\u201d for Kemal, better known as Atat\u00fcrk, opened an aggressive the grandeur of his court, to his subjects and to Mus- campaign against Sufism which he considered a supersti- tion that impeded modernity and westernization. In 1925 Atat\u00fcrk banned the Sufi orders, and their property in Turkey was confiscated. Sufism continued to be practiced in the former Arab provinces of the empire but it suffered attacks from the Salafiyya, another group that strictly interprets Islamic law, and from theologians influenced by the Wahhabi tradition. Bruce Masters See also Shadhliyya Order. Further reading: Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1992); Annemarie Schim- mel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975). S\u00fcleyman I (\u201cthe Magnificent\u201d; Kanuni, or \u201cthe Law- giver\u201d) (1494\u20131566) (r. 1520\u20131566) most famous and longest-reigning Ottoman sultan under whose rule the empire reached its zenith Born on November 6, 1494, in the Black Sea coastal town of Trabzon (eastern Turkey), where his father, the future Sultan Selim I (r. 1512\u201320), was prince-governor, S\u00fcleyman I is regarded as one of the most important rulers of Islam and of the world","542 S\u00fcleyman I mainly Turkoman and Kurdish nomads, and they often deserted or allied with the enemy. They had had enough lims in general he was known as Kanuni (the Lawgiver), of the eastern wars and wanted instead to fight against because it was under his rule that sultanic or secular laws the Hungarian \u201cinfidels,\u201d whom they considered weaker (kanun) were compiled, systematized, and harmonized warriors. The sultan\u2019s troops in the Balkans likewise lob- with Islamic law (sharia). This sobriquet also reflects bied for the renewal of European campaigns from which the sultan\u2019s self-image during the latter part of his reign, they hoped to profit economically through spoils of war for he wanted to be remembered as a just ruler. The tra- and new military fiefs. dition that considers him S\u00fcleyman II is erroneous and is based on the presumption that Prince S\u00fcleyman\u2014one In 1521 S\u00fcleyman marched against Hungary and of the sons of Bayezid I (r. 1389\u20131402) who ruled parts conquered Belgrade (August 29, 1521), the key fortress of the Ottoman lands during the civil war and interreg- of the Hungarian border defense system along the lower num (1402\u201313) that followed the Ottoman defeat at the Danube. The next year S\u00fcleyman\u2019s navy set sail against Battle of Ankara in 1402\u2014was S\u00fcleyman I. the island of Rhodes, captured the fortress, and evicted the Knights of St. John from the island to Malta. The images of the S\u00fcleymanic \u201cgolden age\u201d and that These swift conquests in his early years, especially in light of a subsequent \u201cOttoman decline\u201d both seem simplistic of previous Ottoman failures (Belgrade 1456, Rhodes and inaccurate in light of recent research. These images\u2014 1480) under Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346; 1451\u201381), the con- partly the results of the sophisticated propaganda of S\u00fcl- queror of Constantinople and the most formidable sultan eyman\u2019s court that aimed at creating a favorable legacy Europeans had known hitherto, established S\u00fcleyman\u2019s for the sultan\u2014not only exaggerate S\u00fcleyman\u2019s achieve- image in Europe as a redoubtable adversary, and within ments and mask his failures, they also misrepresent later the Islamic world as a warrior sultan and defender of Ottoman transformations and adjustments in the fields Islam. of military, economic, fiscal, and organizational devel- opments as \u201cdecline.\u201d The sultan\u2019s achievements were S\u00fcleyman achieved his greatest victory at the Bat- also the result of the talent, brilliance, and hard work of tle of Moh\u00e1cs (August 29, 1526) in southern Hungary, his statesmen, military leaders, and administrators who where his armies crushed the Hungarians and killed are often overshadowed by their master in narratives of their king, Louis II (r. 1516\u201326). The battle was related Ottoman history; they include his grand viziers Ibrahim to the Habsburg-Valois rivalry between Charles V and (1523\u201336), R\u00fcstem (1544\u201353 and 1556\u201361), and Sokollu Francis I. When Charles V defeated and captured Fran- Mehmed Pasha (1565\u201379); his grand admiral Hayred- cis I at the Battle of Pavia in northern Italy (1525), the din Barbarossa (see Barbarossa brothers); his chief French king sought S\u00fcleyman\u2019s help. S\u00fcleyman chose to jurisconsult (\u015feyh\u00fclislam) Ebussuud Efendi; and his chief inflict harm on the Habsburgs (see Austria) through chancellor (ni\u015fanc\u0131) and chronicler Celalzade Mustafa. Hungary, whose king Louis II was the brother-in-law of Habsburg Ferdinand and Charles V. For S\u00fcleyman, Fran- OTTOMAN-HABSBURG RIVALRY AND cis\u2019s plea for help served as pretext and opportunity to CONQUESTS IN EUROPE divide the Europeans; it was not the cause of the Hungar- ian campaign, which had already been decided upon in S\u00fcleyman\u2019s accession to the throne in 1520 signaled a Istanbul. However, by killing King Louis II at Moh\u00e1cs, major shift in Ottoman policy. His father had devoted S\u00fcleyman miscalculated, because part of the Hungarian the empire\u2019s resources to fighting against Shah Ismail nobility elected then Habsburg Ferdinand king of Hun- (r. 1501\u201324), the founder of Safavid Iran, who chal- gary (r. 1526\u201364). This made Habsburg-Ottoman mili- lenged Ottoman rule in eastern Anatolia and Azerbai- tary confrontation in central Europe inescapable. Since jan. S\u00fcleyman reoriented Ottoman strategy against the S\u00fcleyman was unable to capture the Habsburg capital empire\u2019s Christian enemies. The reasons for this shift Vienna in 1529 and 1532, he temporarily accepted the were mainly sociopolitical, economic, and military. partition of Hungary between Ferdinand and Ferdinand\u2019s By the time S\u00fcleyman ascended to the throne it had opponent, the Hungarian aristocrat J\u00e1nos Szapolyai, also become clear that Selim\u2019s policy with regard to the Safa- elected and crowned as king of Hungary (r. 1526\u201340), vids could not be maintained. Warfare since 1511 had and supported the latter in the ensuing civil war. exhausted the eastern provinces and the imperial army was stretched too thin. Distance, inhospitable climate Szapolyai\u2019s death in 1540 and Ferdinand\u2019s unsuccess- (early winters and snow), combined with Shah Ismail\u2019s ful siege of Buda, Hungary\u2019s capital, in 1541 triggered a tactic of avoiding battle and his use of a scorched-earth new campaign, again led personally by S\u00fcleyman. This policy that destroyed crops and poisoned wells, caused ended with his capture of Buda and the incorporation serious problems for the otherwise well-organized Otto- of central Hungary into the Ottoman Empire. Hungary\u2019s man campaign logistics, rendering seasonal campaigning strategically less important eastern territories were left by ineffective. The sultan\u2019s Asian troops also fought reluc- the sultan in the hands of Szapolyai\u2019s widow and infant tantly against the shah\u2019s Anatolian K\u0131z\u0131lba\u015f followers,","son; they later became the principality of Transylvania, S\u00fcleyman I 543 an Ottoman vassal state. captured parts of Yemen and the port city of Aden on the S\u00fcleyman\u2019s 1543 Hungarian campaign established a southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, but failed to protective ring around Ottoman Buda, the center of the achieve his original aim, dislodging the Portuguese from newly created province (vilayet-i Budun), especially by their stronghold of Diu (Gujarat, western India). Another capturing Esztergom, the most important fortress north- attempt from Suez in 1552 under the command of Piri west of Buda on the Danube that guarded the city from Reis, the renowned Ottoman marine and cartographer, Hungarian and Habsburg attacks from the west. In the author of the famous naval manual Kitab-i Bahriye (Book coming years local Ottoman forces expanded the territo- of seafaring) and maker of the first Ottoman map of the ries under Istanbul\u2019s control and forced the Habsburgs to New World, also ended in failure. After recapturing Aden conclude a five-year peace treaty with S\u00fcleyman in 1547 in 1551 (lost in 1547), Piri Reis sailed from Suez in the that reflected the territorial status quo. spring of 1552 with 30 ships to evict the Portuguese from Hormuz. Although he temporarily captured Muscat (in For the next couple of years the Hungarian frontier present-day Oman), he failed to take Hormuz and with- remained relatively quiet because the sultan was at war drew to the Gulf of Basra. When a Portuguese fleet cut off in eastern Anatolia and Iraq with the Safavids. However, his route back to Cairo, he left his fleet behind and fled troubles in Transylvania led to renewed military confron- with three vessels. By the time he reached Cairo through tation in Hungary. When Ferdinand\u2019s troops\u2014following Suez, the news of his humiliation had preceded him. He an agreement with the Transylvanians in 1549 regarding was executed for abandoning his fleet. the transfer of that country to the Habsburgs\u2014attempted to capture Transylvania in 1551, the Ottomans inter- The next, equally unsuccessful, attempt was launched vened. In 1551\u201352, Ottoman forces from Buda and the in 1554 from Basra, in southern Iraq. Following the Balkans captured a series of strategically important forts Ottoman conquest of Baghdad in 1534, the commander in southeastern Hungary, including Temesv\u00e1r (Timi\u015foara of Basra accepted Ottoman suzerainty. However, it was not in present-day Romania), which became the center of the until the appointment of an Ottoman governor to Basra in Ottomans\u2019 second province in Hungary. 1546 that the Ottomans gained control over the city and the Persian Gulf. In 1554 Seydi (Sidi) Ali Reis launched his THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE campaign from Basra but was defeated by the Portuguese INDIAN OCEAN near Muscat, losing nine of his small fleet of 15 ships. The disaster did not end there. A storm brought his remaining In addition to the sultan\u2019s land campaigns, his fleet also six ships to Diu, where the Portuguese stopped him. He battled the Habsburgs and their allies in the Mediterra- sold his fleet and, returning from India to Istanbul over- nean. The Ottoman navy was considerably strengthened land, reached the Ottoman capital by May 1557. after S\u00fcleyman appointed Hayreddin Barbarossa (see Barbarossa brothers), an experienced corsair and gov- OTTOMAN-SAFAVID RIVALRY AND ernor of Algiers, as his grand admiral (kapudan pasha) CONQUESTS IN THE EAST in 1533. Hayreddin\u2019s conquest of Tunis in 1533 proved short-lived, for Charles V retook the city two years later. The other major rivalry of the 16th century involved the However, the Ottoman admiral won a splendid victory Ottomans and the Safavids of Iran. Although Shah Ismail\u2019s at Preveza (1538) against the joint naval forces of Spain death in 1524 temporarily removed the Safavid threat, and Venice, defeating his equally famous opponent, the shifting loyalties of the commanders of various fortresses Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, who had been in Span- along the Safavid-Ottoman border made conflict unavoid- ish Habsburg service since 1528. In the long run, Preveza able. When the commander of Bitlis in eastern Anatolia, proved more important than Charles V\u2019s re-capture of west of Lake Van, sided with the Safavid Shah Tahmasp (r. Tunis, because it secured the eastern Mediterranean for 1524\u201376) in 1533, the sultan sent his trusted grand vizier the Ottomans. In 1551 Turgut Reis (Dragut in European Ibrahim Pasha against Bitlis and the Safavids. Since none of sources), S\u00fcleyman\u2019s other admiral of corsair origin, took the empires of the 16th century was capable of waging wars Tripoli (Libya) from the Knights of St. John of Malta. continuously on more than one front, rivalries between var- ious empires of the 16th century were often interconnected. Less successful were S\u00fcleyman\u2019s attempts to curb Por- In the case of the Ottomans, there was an attempt to avoid tuguese expansion in the Indian Ocean, which threatened open war with the Safavids until a truce or peace could be Muslim navigation, trade, and pilgrimage between India made with the Habsburgs, and vice versa. Thus it is hardly and Arabia. After Selim I\u2019s conquest of Egypt (1517), the surprising that S\u00fcleyman undertook his eastern campaigns Ottomans reached the Red Sea, from where they man- in 1534\u201335 and 1548\u201349, after he had concluded an armi- aged to expel the Portuguese who threatened the holy stice (1533) and a peace treaty (1547) with the Habsburgs. cities of Mecca and Medina. In 1538 the governor of Egypt, S\u00fcleyman Pasha, set sail with 74 ships from Suez, In 1533, Ibrahim Pasha not only retook Bitlis but also captured the Safavid capital Tabriz, abandoned by the","544 S\u00fcleyman I childhood, skilled commander, and diplomat. Ottoman chroniclers claim that S\u00fcleyman got rid of his trusted shah. S\u00fcleyman joined his grand vizier in Tabriz in Sep- statesman because the latter abused his power. How- tember 1534. At the end of November, the two captured ever, it is plausible that Ibrahim Pasha was a victim of Baghdad, the most important city in Iraq, which controlled the intrigues of the sultan\u2019s beloved wife, Hurrem Sultan, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and thus controlled known as Roxalane in the West, especially considering the regional and international trade. In Baghdad the sultan\u2019s grand vizier\u2019s support for Prince Mustafa, S\u00fcleyman\u2019s old- \u201crediscovery\u201d of the tomb of Abu Hanifa, the eighth-cen- est living son, who would also be executed in 1553 on the tury Muslim jurist whose school of law the Ottomans grounds of planning to dethrone his father. With the exe- favored, had symbolic importance and was used to further cution of Ibrahim Pasha, S\u00fcleyman lost his chief ideologue strengthen S\u00fcleyman\u2019s legitimacy within the Islamic world. and strategist who had carefully orchestrated S\u00fcleyman\u2019s Similarly, the first law code (kanunname) of the recently image as sahib-kiran, the ruler of a new universal empire. organized province of Baghdad, which, although simi- lar to that of the Safavids, contained easier tax burdens, Confrontation with the Habsburgs in Hungary suggested to the newly conquered people that S\u00fcleyman (campaigns of 1541 and 1543), and the Mediterranean would rule with moderation and justice. In 1535 the sultan (Preveza, 1538) temporarily diverted the sultan\u2019s atten- returned to Anatolia through Tabriz. Unable to find the tion from the eastern frontier. Returning here after shah, he ended his campaign, which secured eastern Ana- the Habsburg-Ottoman peace treaty (1547), S\u00fcleyman tolia (Erzurum and Van) and Baghdad for the time being. wanted to seize the Van region from the Safavids who had retaken it after the main Ottoman forces returned home Back in Istanbul, S\u00fcleyman ordered the strangling of grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha, a faithful companion from The mosque of R\u00fcstem Pasha in the main port district of Emin\u00f6n\u00fc in Istanbul, is famous for its lavish Iznik ceramic decoration. R\u00fcstem Pasha was a grand vizier of S\u00fcleyman I and the wife of S\u00fcleyman\u2019s daughter Mihrimah. (Photo by G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston)","from their last eastern campaign in 1534\u201335. The excuse S\u00fcleyman I 545 for the campaign was provided by a plea from Elkas Mirza, Shah Tahmasp\u2019s brother, who had fled to Istan- rem, his beloved companion for four decades (1558), and bul. In August 1548 S\u00fcleyman retook Van and fortified troubled by the succession fight among his two remaining the frontier with Georgia. Since the planned insurrection sons, S\u00fcleyman\u2019s behavior and style of governance changed against the shah by Elkas Mirza never materialized, late toward the end of his reign. He devoted most of his atten- in 1549 S\u00fcleyman returned to Istanbul. tion to just governing, law-making, and a pious life. The sultan set off for another campaign against the In May 1566, however, the 72-year-old sultan set off Safavids in late August 1553. Almost 60 years old and for what proved to be his last campaign against Hun- in ill health, he initially declined to lead his army per- gary. Some speculated that it was to offset the failure at sonally and wanted instead to send R\u00fcstem Pasha (his Malta (1565), others claimed that his target was again the grand vizier and son-in-law who had been married to Habsburg capital, Vienna. Whatever the reason, the sultan Mihrimah, S\u00fcleyman\u2019s favorite daughter from Hurrem) was hesitant as to his target. While in Belgrade he changed as commander in chief to Iran. However, among rumors his mind twice. First he wanted to capture Szigetv\u00e1r in that Prince Mustafa\u2014his eldest living son, child of his southwestern Hungary, but altered his plan when flood- first concubine Mahidevran, and the heir to the sultan- ing made crossing the Drava River impossible. Instead he ate preferred by the Janissaries\u2014wanted to dethrone decided to cross the Danube at Petrovaradin (northwest him, he changed his mind. On his way to Aleppo in the of Belgrade) and conquer Eger in northern Hungary, province of Karaman the sultan summoned his son and which the Ottomans had besieged in vain in 1552. How- ordered his execution (October 5, 1553). Contempo- ever, when the Drava subsided enough to allow his troops raries and later Ottoman chroniclers ascribed Mustafa\u2019s to cross it, the sultan returned to his original plan. The killing to the influence of Hurrem, who wanted to elimi- ailing sultan now marched against Szigetv\u00e1r, a fort close nate Mustafa so that one of her two sons, either Selim or to Moh\u00e1cs, the site of his most splendid victory. He died Bayezid, could succeed the ailing S\u00fcleyman (her hunch- in front of Szigetv\u00e1r on September 6, two days before the backed son Jihangir was not considered a potential heir castle surrendered. Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha because of his physical deformity). They also noticed concealed his master\u2019s death until his successor, Prince that Hurrem acted in concert with Grand Vizier R\u00fcstem Selim, was enthroned in Istanbul and acclaimed by the Pasha and his wife Mihrimah. Contemporaries inter- returning army in Belgrade. preted the dismissal of R\u00fcstem Pasha from the grand vizierate on the day of Mustafa\u2019s execution as proof of It is difficult to arrive at a balanced assessment of S\u00fcleyman\u2019s remorse and a necessary temporary sacrifice S\u00fcleyman\u2019s reign. Like all long reigns, it witnessed ups to quiet down Mustafa\u2019s partisans. (R\u00fcstem resumed his and downs as well as major policy changes. His con- position within two years.) Traumatized by the execution quests substantially expanded the empire\u2019s territories of his half-brother, Jihangir died three weeks later, leav- from 576,900 square miles in 1520 to 877,888 square ing only two of Hurrem\u2019s sons alive. miles in 1566, an increase of more than 50 percent. His most important conquests, central Hungary and Iraq, The campaign of 1553 achieved little, and with win- were seized from his two formidable opponents, the ter approaching the sultan moved to Aleppo. The cam- Habsburgs and Safavids. Up until the early 1540s S\u00fcley- paign in 1554 brought Nakhichevan (in present-day man and Charles V fought in vain for world supremacy. Azerbaijan) and Yerevan (capital of present-day Arme- In the later years of the sultan\u2019s reign just government, nia) under Ottoman rule. However, negotiations with law and order, the well-being of his subjects, the eco- Shah Tahmasp, who had carefully avoided open battle nomic and financial health of his empire, and religious- with S\u00fcleyman\u2019s forces, resulted in the peace treaty of ness and Muslim piety were given more attention. Amasya (1555). The treaty left Iraq, parts of Kurdistan, and eastern Armenia in Ottoman hands, and returned These changes also reflected the policy of the sultan\u2019s Tabriz, Yerevan, and Nakhichevan to the shah. With the statesmen and advisors, whose influence upon the sul- exception of a short period when Baghdad was in Safavid tan, although widely discussed in contemporary sources, hands in the 17th century (1623\u201338), the border between still awaits satisfactory analysis. Ibrahim Pasha symbol- the Ottoman Empire and Iran established by the Ama- ized conquest, struggle for world supremacy, and lavish sya treaty was to remain essentially unchanged through display of grandeur, and was also instrumental in formu- World War I. lating Ottoman strategy and S\u00fcleyman\u2019s image as world conqueror and defender of Islam. R\u00fcstem Pasha\u2019s tenure LAST CAMPAIGN AND LEGACY as grand vizier (1544\u201353 and 1556\u201361) was important with regard to administrative and financial consolidation, The sultan\u2019s health started to deteriorate from the late legal codification, and greater emphasis on the Islamic 1540s when he was in his 50s. Saddened by the loss of Hur- character of the sultan\u2019s reign. It was an age of regular land and revenue surveys, but also of novel fiscal prac- tices (such as using tax farming rather than military","546 S\u00fcleyman I even more astonishing for contemporaries. It was a break with the \u201cone concubine\u2014one son\u201d rule and with the The tug\u02d8 ra, or sultanic monogram, of S\u00fcleyman was rec- practice by which the mothers of princes accompanied ognizable and proved the authenticity of the sultan\u2019s their sons to the provinces when these were appointed decree. (Bridgeman-Giraudon \/ Art Resource). as prince-governors. The rivalry between Hurrem and S\u00fcleyman\u2019s first concubine, Mahidevran, initiated a fiefs as salaries for officials and soldiers), many of which troublesome process, known in Ottoman history as the were perceived as harmful; R\u00fcstem was also accused of \u201csultanate of women.\u201d The emergence of favorites, both avarice and corruption. among the women of the sultan\u2019s harem and among the damads (sons-in-law, men married to princesses), also Perhaps the most influential adviser was S\u00fcleyman\u2019s dates back to S\u00fcleyman\u2019s time. The two processes radi- wife Hurrem. Whether ibecause of her beauty, charm, cally changed the way politics was done in Istanbul. Not and other personal qualities extensively discussed by surprisingly, S\u00fcleyman\u2019s reign also witnessed dynastic contemporaries, or because she gave birth to several dramas such as the execution of Prince Mustafa and of potential heirs, Hurrem had exceptional influence on the Bayezid. sultan during their 40-year-long romance. S\u00fcleyman\u2019s marriage to his favorite concubine (hasseki) was itself In the early years of S\u00fcleyman\u2019s reign Ibrahim Pasha unprecedented, but the fact that Hurrem had more than consciously and masterfully propagated the sultan\u2019s image one son with the sultan and remained in the palace was as the new world conqueror, the successor of Alexander the Great, his master\u2019s favorite historical hero. In his lat- ter years the sultan viewed himself as the \u201cLawgiver,\u201d a just ruler in whose realm justice and order reigned. Jus- tice was also associated with his growing religiousness and piety. Religion was an important part of S\u00fcleyman\u2019s legitimacy. He not only continued using the title \u201cServant of the Two Noble Sanctuaries\u201d (Mecca and Medina), first introduced by his father Selim I, but from the 1540s he also adopted the title of caliph. In the formulation of his Grand Mufti Ebussud Efendi, this was to counterbalance the Safavid shah Tahmasp\u2019s assertions regarding sover- eignty over Ottoman subjects living in eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan, as well as Charles V\u2019s claims to universal Christian rulership. The restoration of religious buildings (the tomb of Abu Hanifa, mosques in Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina) was important for strengthening his legitimacy, while the great building projects in Istanbul and in the provinces all contributed to the image of the S\u00fcleymanic golden age. Of these, the S\u00fcleymaniye and Selimiye mosque com- plexes in Istanbul and Edirne are the most imposing, built by the sultan\u2019s chief architect, Sinan (see architec- ture), who in his long tenure (1538\u201388) allegedly built, designed, or supervised the construction of some 300 mosques and other public buildings. While S\u00fcleyman\u2019s conquered territories were lost in subsequent centuries, these buildings, along with the countless illustrated man- uscripts and artifacts preserved in the Turkish libraries and museums, remind us of the wealth and splendor that the empire enjoyed at its zenith under his rule. G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston Further reading: Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k and Cemal Kafadar, eds., S\u00fcleyman the Second and His Time (Istanbul: Isis, 1993); Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, eds., S\u00fcleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Longman, 1995); G\u00fclru Necipo\u011flu,","The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire S\u00fcleyman II 547 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Topkap\u0131 Palace to generate cash with which he paid Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) his unruly troops, and co-opted one of the ringleaders Donald Edgar Pitcher, An Historical Geography of the Otto- of the rebellion, Ye\u011fen Osman Pasha, by appointing him man Empire from the Earliest Times to the End of the Sixteenth commander of the Hungarian front. However, he proved Century (Leiden: Brill, 1972); Gilles Veinstein, \u201cS\u00fcleym\u0101n,\u201d in unable to halt the advance of the Holy League\u2019s troops Encyclopaedia of Islam, online edition (by subscription), edited and lost Belgrade (September 6, 1688), the key to Hun- by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, gary and the most important Ottoman logistical center and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. 31 May 2007 on the Danube. In a few months, he was made respon- <http:\/\/www.brillonline.nl\/subscriber\/entry?entry=islam_ sible for allowing the Habsburgs to march into the Otto- COM-1114>; Gilles Veinstein, ed., Soliman le Magnifique et man Balkans, was declared a rebel, and killed. son temps (Paris: Documentation fran\u00e7aise, 1992); Galina Yer- molenko, \u201cRoxolana: The Greatest Empress of the East.\u201d The With Belgrade gone, the way to the Ottoman Bal- Muslim World 95, no. 2 (2005): 231\u201348. kans was open. When the troops of the Holy League cap- tured Vidin (October 14, 1689), it became obvious that S\u00fcleyman II (b. 1642\u20141691) (r. 1687\u20131691) Otto- the empire\u2019s dire situation required an experienced and man sultan Born to Sultan Ibrahim (r. 1640\u201348) and capable statesman. On October 25 the sultan appointed Saliha Dilasub, S\u00fcleyman II became ruler of the Otto- K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fczade Fazil Mustafa Pasha as his grand vizier. Like man Empire on November 8, 1687, following the depo- his predecessors from this distinguished family of Otto- sition of his half-brother Sultan Mehmed IV (1648\u201387). man grand viziers, the K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fcs, Fazil Mustafa Pasha Despite the turmoil at the beginning of his reign and the brought order into the administration and the military by devastating military and financial situation he inher- purging it of corrupt officials and incapable and ignorant ited, S\u00fcleyman managed to bring order into the military, officers and soldiers. He instituted strict roll calls to elim- administration, and state financing during his short inate the widespread practice of soldiers collecting their reign. In 1690 his troops also recaptured Belgrade (lost deceased comrades\u2019 salaries, putting an extra burden on in 1688), and stabilized the empire\u2019s northern borders the treasury. He also proclaimed a general mobilization for the time being. of the Muslim subjects of the empire and the conscrip- tion of Turkoman and Kurdish nomadic tribes, who The military rebellion that forced the abdication of had to send thousands of soldiers to the Balkan front. Mehmed IV lasted for several months. It was not until Other measures were aimed at winning over the popula- April 1688 that the new sultan and his frequently chang- tion of the hinterland. The grand vizier reinstituted the ing statesmen managed to quell the Janissaries and the custom by which the poll tax paid by the empire\u2019s non- other mutinous troops who brought havoc to Istanbul Muslim subjects, was assessed on individual adults. In during their five-month rebellion. Once the sultans\u2019 elite earlier years Istanbul had switched to collective assess- infantry, the legendary military discipline of the Janis- ment, which hurt communities whose population had saries had given way to an unruly band of privileged dwindled, because the same (or increased) tax burden troublemakers who habitually made and unmade sultans. had to be paid by fewer people. It was especially unjust In the 1680s the Janissaries were repeatedly defeated by in wartime and in regions ravaged by war. Resettle- the troops of the Holy League, an alliance of Habsburg ment and repopulation were also encouraged by tax and Austria, Venice, the Papacy, Poland-Lithuania, and other incentives, and permits to fix or rebuild Christian Russia that was formed in 1684 after the unsuccessful churches were issued more easily. Ottoman siege of the Austrian capital Vienna (1683). Sultan Mehmed IV had suffered his most devastating The 1690 campaign brought much-needed military defeat on August 12, 1687 at a battle in Nagyhars\u00e1ny, success. The Ottomans recaptured Ni\u0161 in September, and some 15 miles southwest of Moh\u00e1cs, the site of Sultan several key forts along the Danube River, such as Vidin, S\u00fcleyman I\u2019s (r. 1520\u201366) most splendid victory over Smederevo, and Golubac. By the beginning of Octo- the Hungarians in 1526 (see Moh\u00e1cs, Battle of). With ber 1690, Fazil Mustafa Pasha besieged Belgrade with the defeat at Nagyhars\u00e1ny, most of Hungary was lost. his 40,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. On October 8, Abandoned by the sultan\u2019s main forces, several key Otto- after a major explosion destroyed the defenders\u2019 armory, man garrisons in Hungary surrendered, including Eger Belgrade\u2019s Habsburg commander capitulated. Although (December 17, 1687) and Lippa (June 20, 1688). Fazil Mustafa Pasha had some three weeks before the tra- ditional end (October 26) of the campaign season, heavy Desperate times required desperate measures. The rains prevented him from continuing to fight. new sultan dismissed several of his incapable viziers and advisors, melted down the gold and silver plates of the Although his achievements are important, one should also remember that his success was partly due to the renewed Habsburg-French conflict (War of the League of Augsburg\/Nine Years\u2019 War) that required the","548 Sunni Islam absent in the Sunni tradition until the Ottoman Empire. They also believed in the eventual return of the \u201chidden Habsburgs to redeploy their best forces from Hungary imam,\u201d the 12th imam who vanished in the ninth century to the Rhine front. However, not even a K\u00f6pr\u00fcl\u00fc could but whose return will bring a reign of absolute justice. In produce a miracle. In the 1691 campaign the Ottomans contrast, the Sunnis emphasized the legal training of their suffered a crushing defeat at Slankamen (August 19), clerics, creating a system wherein the quality of training north of Belgrade. They lost some 20,000 men, includ- and scholarship determined prestige. There was no single ing Grand Vizier Fazil Mustafa Pasha. Sultan S\u00fcleyman religious authority that all Sunni clergy were compelled had died on June 22 in Edirne and was succeeded by his to obey. While the Shia rejected the political authority brother Ahmed II (r. 1691\u20131695). of the caliphs after Ali, the Sunni clergy worked within the system as the caliph\u2019s advisers. This compromise was G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston fully articulated during the Abbasid Caliphate when the Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream (Lon- caliphs agreed to let the Sunni clergy administer the law don: John Murray, 2005); Ivan Parvev, Habsburgs and Otto- of their state in return for the clergy\u2019s acknowledgement mans between Vienna and Belgrade, 1683\u20131739 (Boulder, of the caliphs\u2019 sovereignty over political affairs. Colo.: East European Monographs, 1995). In the 11th century, Shia dynasties seemed on the verge Sunni Islam All Muslims practice either Sunni or of ruling most of the Muslim world as they seized political Shia Islam. Approximately 85 percent of the world\u2019s control of Egypt, most of North Africa, and Iran. These Muslims are Sunni and the rest are Shiis. The origins of were all areas that had previously been under the rule of the two sects lie in the early division over who would lead the Sunni Abbasids. In Baghdad, however, the Turkish the community after the death of the Prophet Muham- Seljuk family sponsored a revival of Sunni Islam through mad in 632. Some felt that it should be Ali, the Prophet\u2019s the establishment of religious schools and the sponsorship cousin and son-in-law and the father of his only surviv- of religious scholars, thus establishing a link between Sunni ing grandchildren. But the majority chose Abu Bakr as Islam and the various Turkish dynasties that emerged in the the Prophet\u2019s successor or caliph. Abu Bakr was an early Middle East from the 11th through the 14th centuries dur- convert to Islam, a close confidant of the Prophet, and his ing the period of the Crusades. Although devotion to Ali father-in-law. He was also much older than Ali and the and his descendants was strong among the Turks in Ana- majority of the community felt that his maturity would tolia, almost all of them were nominally Sunni Muslims be necessary to help steer the new community after the who followed the Hanafi school of legal interpretation. The unexpected death of the Prophet. The rift caused by this Hanafi school was one of four in Sunni Islam; the others are decision was not healed, however, and when a group of the Shafii, Maliki, and the Hanbali. As the Hanafi school disgruntled soldiers murdered the third caliph, Uthman, had developed in the caliph\u2019s court in Baghdad during the in 656, the rift opened into civil war. Following these hos- Abbasid period, it was particularly attuned to the political tilities, the majority of the community chose Ali as caliph needs of a Muslim state. but Uthman\u2019s kinsmen, the clan of the Banu Umayya (Umayyads), rejected Ali\u2019s leadership as they said his THE HANAFI SCHOOL hands were stained with Uthman\u2019s blood. Starting with Sultan Orhan (r. 1324\u201362), Ottoman The two sides prepared for battle in 661 but Ali, who sultans promoted the Hanafi version of Sunni Islam, did not want to plunge the community into further vio- although they did not make it mandatory. In Egypt, lence, agreed to arbitration of the dispute. A splinter group the Shafii school continued to dominate in nonofficial of his supporters, angry at his attempt at compromise, life, and the Maliki school persisted in North Africa. assassinated Ali in the same year and civil war ensued. In However, the chief judges appointed to any of the Otto- 680 the forces of the Banu Umayya slaughtered Ali\u2019s son man provincial capitals had to be graduates of the Otto- Husayn at Karbala, in present-day Iraq. This action cre- man legal schools, the madrasas, and administer the law ated the historical basis for the cleavage of the two sects according to Hanafi interpretations. The sultans lavishly of Islam, the Shia maintaining that the caliphate rightly supported the legal schools; after the conquest of Con- belonged to Ali\u2019s descendants while the Sunnis accepted stantinople in 1453, they established an imperial hier- the leadership of the Banu Umayya, under Caliph Yazid (d. archy for the clergy. Direct state control over the training 683) and later the Abbasid Caliphate (750\u20131258). and licensing of the clergy was an Ottoman innovation, as no other Sunni state had attempted to enter so directly The name Sunni derives from the phrase ahl al- into their subjects\u2019 spiritual lives. The Ottoman state trea- sunna, which refers to the people who follow the righ- sury also paid all the leading clergy\u2019s salaries. At the top teous path established by the Prophet Muhammad. In of the clerical hierarchy was the \u015feyh\u00fclislam, or chief truth, there is very little doctrinal difference between the judge of the empire, who approved the appointments of Sunni and the Shia. But over time, the Shia developed a hierarchy in the ranks of their clergy that was noticeably","the judges to the provincial centers and who, along with Svishtov, Treaty of 549 his immediate subordinates, the chief judge of Rume- lia (European provinces) and the chief judge of Anatolia who ruled their homelands. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, (Asian provinces), sat with the sultan when he conducted who was perhaps the most influential Muslim intellec- the Imperial Council (Divan-\u0131 H\u00fcmayun). tual in the late 19th century, was an ardent promoter of this claim because it bolstered his belief that the Otto- THE OTTOMANS AND SUNNI ISLAM man Empire remained the last hope of the Muslim world retaining its independence in the face of European impe- The connection between the Ottoman ruling house and rial ambitions. When World War I broke out in 1914, Sunni Islam intensified in the 16th century after the revolt Ottoman sultan Mehmed V (r. 1909\u20131918), claiming of the Shia Kizilba\u015f. This group regarded Shah Ismail I (r. to be caliph, called all the world\u2019s Muslims to holy war 1501\u201324) of Iran as the long-awaited imam who the Shia (jihad) against the western Allied Powers, but few Mus- lims outside the Ottoman Empire took the call seriously. believed would restore justice to the world, and they sup- Bruce Masters ported his uprising against the Ottomans. For the next Further reading: John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path three centuries the Iranian shahs espoused Shia Islam as the (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Madeline Zilfi, The state religion and did not permit other forms of worship in Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age, their territories, including that belonging to the Sunni tra- 1600\u20131800 (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988). dition. While the Ottoman sultans promoted Sunni Islam as the empire\u2019s official faith, they did not retaliate against suq (\u00e7ar\u015f\u0131) See markets. the Iranian shahs by taking any action against the peaceful Shia in their realm, whose freedom of worship was allowed Svishtov, Treaty of (Zi\u015ftovi [tr.]; Zistovi; Zistow; Sis- to continue. At the same time, the Ottoman adherence to tov; Sistovi) Signed on August 4, 1791, in the village Sunni Islam became one of the legitimating factors for the of Svishtov (on the right bank of the Danube in pres- regime in the eyes of the sultan\u2019s Sunni subjects. ent-day Bulgaria), the Treaty of Svishtov concluded the 1787\u201391 Ottoman-Habsburg War, the last war to break In the 17th century, a Sunni reform movement out between the two powers. Except for ceding Old known as the Kad\u0131zadeler gained strength in the empire. Orshova\u2014the renowned gorge, also called the Iron Gate, It promoted the teachings of Birgili Mehmed (d. 1573) forming part of the boundary between Romania and Ser- and his disciple Kad\u0131zade Mehmed (d. 1635). Their doc- bia\u2014to the Habsburg Empire and some minor changes trines were very strict and rigid, resembling those of the made to the Croatian frontier in favor of the Habsburgs, later Wahhabis. In particular, the Kad\u0131zadeler move- this treaty restored the position that had been established ment opposed Sufism and the prominent role that the by the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade. Ottoman state played in training the Sunni clergy and providing them with salaries. In short, they saw as sinful The Ottoman declaration of war on Russia in 1787, anything they considered an innovation from the prac- with the aim of recovering the Crimea, provided the pre- tice of the Muslim community at the time of the Prophet\u2019s text for Habsburg emperor Joseph II (r. 1765\u201390) to enter death. Among the things they considered sins were sing- war in that same year on the side of his ally Catherine the ing, dancing, illustrated manuscripts and miniature Great (r. 1762\u201396) of Russia. The Habsburg\u2019s war aims paintings, the drinking of coffee, and the smoking of concentrated on the conquest of Belgrade while Rus- tobacco. Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623\u201340) sought to placate sia sought to consolidate its previous gains by defeating the movement by banning alcohol, coffee, and tobacco in the Ottomans. The two allies are also said to have con- Istanbul, inaugurating an era of extreme religious purity. templated the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in the After his death, the movement lost much of its appeal in 1780s. The Ottomans were unprepared to fight on two the inner circle of the sultan\u2019s palace, but it remained an fronts, and in spite of early Ottoman victories on the Hun- intellectual current present in religious debates among the garian front, Belgrade fell to the Habsburgs, while a joint empire\u2019s Sunnis through the start of the 20th century. army of Habsburg and Russian troops occupied the Roma- nian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia by 1790. SULTAN AS CALIPH The outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) and Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid II (1876\u20131909) promoted the idea the death of King Joseph II of Germany (February 1790) that the sultan of the Ottoman Empire was rightfully coincided with the formation of an Ottoman-Prussian the caliph of all Sunni Muslims. Although some Muslim Alliance against the Habsburgs (January 31, 1790). All scholars challenged the legitimacy of that claim because these developments, coupled with an important Otto- the sultans were not descended from the family of the man victory over the Habsburgs at Yerg\u00f6\u011f\u00fc (Giurgiu, Prophet Muhammad, others, especially those in India present-day Romania), forced the new Habsburg emperor, and the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), saw that claim as a potential weapon against the Europeans","550 Sykes-Picot Agreement British had received Arab support in return for promises apparently contravened by the terms of the Sykes-Picot Leopold II (r. 1790\u201392), to agree to a truce. After lengthy Agreement. Having offered, in the Husayn-Mcmahon negotiations, the two powers signed the Treaty of Svish- correspondence, to support an Arab kingdom as rec- tov through the mediation of Prussia, England, and the ompense for Arab assistance in the war, the British were Netherlands. The treaty consisted of 14 articles and a spe- embarrassed by the untimely release of information from cial pact of seven clauses that stipulated the restoration of Russia, and British officers on the ground denied to their the prewar status except for the aforementioned changes erstwhile Arab allies that any such agreement existed. in the border, and left the fortress of Hotin (Khotin) to the Habsburgs until the end of the war with Russia. British historians have argued since that the terms of the secret agreement did not contradict the promises Kahraman \u015eakul made to Husayn ibn Ali al-Hashimi, but in the negoti- Further reading: Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Wars 1700- ations in Paris that followed the end of the war, the result- 1870: An Empire Besieged (Harlow, England: Longman\/ ing settlement closely followed the outlines provided by Pearson, 2007), 160\u2013180; Caroline Finkel, Osman\u2019s Dream: the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The Treaty of San Remo of The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300\u20131923 (London: John 1920 established the French mandates over Lebanon and Murray, 2005), 383\u201389; Ekmeleddin \u0130hsano\u011flu, ed., History Syria and the British mandates in Palestine and Iraq; the of the Ottoman State, Society, and Civilisation, vol. 1 (Istan- boundaries drawn for those mandates were very similar bul: Ircica, 2001), 68\u201369; Virginia Aksan, \u201cSelim III,\u201d in to those drawn on a map of the region as an appendix of Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed., edited by P. J. Bearman et the Sykes-Picot Agreement. al., vol. 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1960\u2013), 132\u2013134. Bruce Masters Sykes-Picot Agreement This was the name given to a secret agreement reached among Great Britain, France, Syria (Ar.: Bilad al-Sham, Suriyya; Heb.: Aram; Turk.: Italy, and Russia in 1916 to dispose of former Ottoman Arabistan, Suriye) The nation of Syria did not exist territories in the anticipated aftermath of World War I, in the Ottoman period. Most of the territory that makes a war that the Allied Powers were confident of winning. up the present-day Syrian Arab Republic was divided The two principal framers of the document were Mark between the provinces of Damascus and Aleppo. Euro- Sykes, a British diplomat who spent some time in the peans used the term Syria to mean the geographical Ottoman Empire and had written a popular book about region that was bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the his travels, and Fran\u00e7ois Georges Picot, who had served west, the Taurus Mountains to the north, and Syrian Des- as France\u2019s consul in Beirut. ert to the south and east. That was the name by which the region had been known in the Classical Period, and west- The original agreement was simply between Great Brit- ern Europeans had used that term for the region from at ain and France and was signed on January 3, 1916. It gave least the time of the Crusades (1095\u20131291). In the 18th France direct control over Lebanon and the coast of Syria century, influenced by the Europeans, some Arab Chris- as well as a large parcel of what is today southern Turkey. tians also began to use the term Syria, Suriyya in Arabic, France also gained a recognized sphere of influence over for their homeland. More commonly, however, they and any possible Arab state or states that might emerge in the their Muslim neighbors called it Bilad al-Sham (country Syrian interior after the war. Britain received direct control of Damascus). At the same time, Arab authors in Aleppo of Baghdad and Basra, as well as the Palestinian ports or other parts of northern Syria never used that term, of Haifa and Acre. The rest of Palestine was to be put and presumably they would have chafed at the implica- under the control of an international consortium. tion that they were somehow subordinate to Damascus. Although some Ottoman authors used the term Arabi- Russia soon became aware of the agreement and stan (land of the Arabs) for the region, more commonly demanded a share of the territory. Britain and France they simply delineated it by listing its principal cities. agreed to Russia\u2019s inclusion in the secret pact, and in The Ottoman authorities reorganized the boundaries May 1916 the agreement was amended to grant Russia of Damascus Province in 1864 to include much of what extensive territories in Ottoman Armenia and Kurdistan. is today southern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Italy, which had joined the Allied Powers in 1915, also the Palestinian territories. They renamed the province demanded a share of the spoils. To satisfy that demand, Suriye, establishing the ancient name for the region in the three powers already in on the division agreed to Italy\u2019s official Ottoman usage for the first time. After that, Arab occupation of Turkey\u2019s Mediterranean coast and its reten- nationalist writers began to use the Arabic form of Syria. tion of the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea, which Italy had taken from the Ottomans in 1912 but which had Bruce Masters not yet been granted to Italy officially and internationally. Syrian Orthodox Christians See Jacobites. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks leaked the contents of the hitherto secret agreement, caus- ing outrage in the Arab provinces of the empire where the","T al-Tahtawi, Rifaat (b. 1801\u2013d. 1873) Egyptian religious pursued his real passion, translating European works into scholar and educator Rifaat al-Tahtawi was one of first Arabic. intellectuals in the Arabic-speaking world to gain an appreciation of Western civilization and to seek to apply Al-Tahtawi also played a major role in choosing elements of it to improve conditions in his native Egypt. which Arabic-language classics would be printed by the Al-Tahtawi was born into a scholarly Muslim family in new government press in Bulaq. His work as an editor Cairo and, like his ancestors, he studied at the famed al- and publisher helped make the classics of Arab culture Azhar university, the leading institution of higher study available to a growing middle class; these had previously in the Arabic-speaking Sunni world in the 17th and 18th been available only in manuscript form. centuries. But his career path diverged from that of the traditional Muslim cleric when he accepted the position Al-Tahtawi also wrote some works of his own, of chaplain to the new army being created by Mehmed including a description of Egyptian society and his rec- Ali, ruler of Egypt from 1805\u201349. After this, as chaplain ommendations for how it should be modernized. But it is to the Egyptian mission, al-Tahtawi lived in Paris from for his work in educational reform that he is best remem- 1826 until 1831; there he learned excellent French and bered, and he is often called the \u201cFather of Modern Egyp- read widely in European history and philosophy. He was tian Education.\u201d He was the first in Egypt to propose particularly interested in the Enlightenment philosophers universal primary schooling for both boys and girls, and Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. to propose universal secondary schooling for boys. Al- Tahtawi also worked to integrate the study of science into Upon his return to Cairo, al-Tahtawi wrote the first a model curriculum for the proposed schools and popu- account of Parisian manners and customs to appear in larized the idea that Western science was not contradic- Arabic. He did official translations of French texts into tory to Islamic principles. Although he did not see these Arabic for the Ottoman government and, in 1836, he was proposals implemented in his lifetime, they provided the placed in charge of a new school to train translators and blueprint for the modern Egyptian educational system officials in Western languages. Of his own accord, al- that emerged in the early 20th century Tahtawi also translated a number of European works he considered important. Through his efforts, he made clas- Bruce Masters sic texts of Western history and philosophy available for Further reading: Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Arab Rediscov- the first time to an Arabic-reading public. ery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963). Al-Tahtawi was less successful in gaining the patron- age of Mehmed Ali\u2019s successor, Abbas. In 1850, after takfir Takfir is the act of declaring that a Muslim has, Mehmed Ali\u2019s death, he was assigned a teaching position by his or her actions, become an infidel or unbeliever in Khartoum in Sudan and was not permitted to return (kafir). This is an extreme step because historically, any- to Cairo until 1854. He then worked in education and one within the Muslim community who has professed to 551","552 Takiy\u00fcddin astronomer, scholar of optics and mechanics, founding director of the Istanbul Observatory Takiy\u00fcddin is best be a Muslim remains one. All that is required to become known as the founder of the Istanbul Observatory and is a Muslim is to say, with a sound mind and under no widely acknowledged for his activities there. An accom- compulsion, three times, in front of witnesses, \u201cI tes- plished astronomer and physicist, Takiy\u00fcddin developed tify that there is no god but God and Muhammad is the a number of new instruments and techniques, including Prophet of God.\u201d Since admission to the community of the automatic mechanical clock. Takiy\u00fcddin\u2019s applica- believers is a matter of individual conscience, there has tion of decimal fractions to trigonometry and astronomy also traditionally been a reluctance on the part of the stands as another important contribution to astronomy Muslim community to formally censure individuals and mathematics. Although Takiy\u00fcddin was deeply for their beliefs, and the community typically leaves it involved in the intellectual world of Istanbul, he spent to God to punish anyone who has sinned. This attitude most of his adult life living and working in Egypt. emerged as a response to the murder of Ali in 661 c.e. by a member of a Muslim splinter group, called by their Born in Damascus in 1526, Takiy\u00fcddin began his opponents the Kharijiyya, or \u201cthose who break away.\u201d studies according to the conventions of the period with Having broken away from the larger Muslim community, the basic religious sciences and Arabic, going on to the Kharijiyya held that they could judge who was a good advanced mathematical study with scholars in Damascus Muslim and claimed the right to kill anyone they judged and Egypt, including most significantly his father, Maruf to be an unbeliever for having strayed from the princi- Efendi. Takiy\u00fcddin taught for a short while at various ples of Islam as they defined them. Because mainstream colleges or madrasas in Damascus before accompanying Muslims feared the result of this extremist position, his father to the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, around 1550. there were very few cases in the first centuries of Islam in Although he remained in Istanbul only a short time, the which people were punished for what they wrote or said. associations Takiy\u00fcddin formed during this trip, includ- ing those with a number of prominent scholars, did much This reluctance to condemn a fellow Muslim was to serve him in later life. Among these associates was challenged by Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, who lived in Damas- Grand Vizier Samiz Ali Pasha, whom Takiy\u00fcddin met on cus in the early 14th century. He affirmed that it was the a brief trip back to Istanbul in the early 1550s, when Ali duty of pious Muslims to identify those who by their Pasha allowed Takiy\u00fcddin to use his private library and actions did not uphold Islam and to declare them infi- clock collection. When Ali Pasha was later appointed dels. Because he stated that the rulers of the Mamluk governor of Egypt, his influence helped Takiy\u00fcddin, who Empire represented just this sort of \u201cinfidel,\u201d ibn Taymi- held positions as a teacher and judge (kad\u0131). It was at this yya became one of the few Muslims up to that time to be point that Takiy\u00fcddin was encouraged to continue his imprisoned for what he wrote. After his death in prison pursuits in mathematics and astronomy by a grandson of in 1327, the Muslim scholarly community largely ignored the famous astronomer Ali Ku\u015f\u00e7u. Armed with various ibn Taymiyya\u2019s radical ideas. In the 18th century, however, observation instruments and books written by Ali Ku\u015f\u00e7u another radical interpreter of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abd and other important astronomers, Takiy\u00fcddin under- al-Wahhab, revived the practice of takfir. He wrote that took a serious pursuit of astronomy and mathematics. Muslims who venerated Ali, worshipped Sufi saints, or While still serving as a judge in Tinnin, Egypt, Takiy\u00fcd- claimed to be sultan but did not rule in strict accordance din mounted an instrument in a well that was 85 feet (25 with Islamic law, were all to be considered infidels by meters) deep to make astronomical observations. believing Muslims. According to ibn Abd al-Wahhab, it was therefore legal for true Muslims, as defined by him, to Returning to Istanbul in 1570 with the knowledge kill the unfaithful. This principle became the legal justifi- gained from his further study and observations, Taki- cation for the devastating 1801 attack on the Shii shrine y\u00fcddin was appointed head astronomer (m\u00fcneccimba\u015f\u0131) city of Karbala by those who accepted the teaching of by Sultan Selim II (r. 1566\u201374) in 1571. As head astron- ibn Abd al-Wahhab, commonly called Wahhabis. This omer, Takiy\u00fcddin conducted his observations in a group also justified their later occupation of Mecca and building situated on a height overlooking the Imperial Medina based on the same principle. Cannon Foundry (Tophane) and in the Galata Tower in the Galata district of Istanbul. Impressed with the Bruce Masters data Takiy\u00fcddin thus gathered, several high state offi- Further reading: Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Politi- cials encouraged the construction of a formal observa- cal Islam (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002). tory. This led to an imperial edict by Sultan Murad III (r. 1574\u201395) in early 1579 to build an observatory in Takiy\u00fcddin (Taqi al-Din; Taqi al-Din Abu Bakr Istanbul, which was to be located on a hill overlooking Muhammad ibn Zayn al-Din Maruf al-Dimashqi al- the Tophane where the French Palace is located today. Hanafi; Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma\u2019ruf al-Shami Vital astronomical books and instruments were col- al-Asadi) (b. 1526\u2013d. 1585) Ottoman mathematician,","lected there. Illustrated manuscripts of the period Tanzimat 553 offer magnificent depictions of the scholars at work and of the astronomical instruments in use. In addition to a monograph on the specific gravity of substances and the observatory building, Takiy\u00fcddin also used a well to on Archimedes\u2019 hydrostatic experiments. All of his books make observations. The observatory was demolished on are written in Arabic. January 22, 1580, due in large part to Takiy\u00fcddin\u2019s incor- rectly interpreting the sighting of a comet as heralding a In his mathematical treatises Takiy\u00fcddin treats vari- victory for the sultan\u2019s success in a military conflict. ous aspects of trigonometry, geometry, algebra, and arith- metic, and his arithmetical work, in particular, carries Takiy\u00fcddin intended to correct and augment the on the work of Jamshid al-Kashi in developing the arith- uncompleted but seminal astronomical text written by metic of decimal fractions both theoretically and practi- the great Timurid astronomer, mathematician, and sul- cally. Takiy\u00fcddin\u2019s works on physics and mechanics also tan Ulugh Beg (1394\u20131449). As was usual in the Islamic have connections with astronomy. One concerns physics astronomical tradition, Takiy\u00fcddin used trigonomet- and optics and treats the structure of light, its diffusion ric functions such as sine, cosine, tangent, and cotan- and global refraction, and the relation between light and gent rather than chords. Following the work done at the color. A number of others investigate various aspects of Samarkand observatory, Takiy\u00fcddin developed a new the mechanical clock. In 1559, while in Nablus, he wrote method to find the exact value of Sin 1\u00ba, which Per- the first text to appear in the Islamic world on the subject sian mathematician and astronomer Jamshid al-Kashi of mechanical-automatic clocks (al-Kawakib al-durriyya fi (1380\u20131429) had put into the form of an equation of wad al-bankamat al-dawriyya). In the foreword to this text third degree. In addition, Takiy\u00fcddin was the first to use Takiy\u00fcddin mentions that he benefited from using Samiz the method of three observation points, which he used Ali Pasha\u2019s private library and his collection of European for calculating solar parameters. Apparently the emi- mechanical clocks. In this work Takiy\u00fcddin discusses var- nent Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546\u20131601), who ious mechanical clocks from a geometrical-mechanical was a contemporary, was aware of Takiy\u00fcddin\u2019s work, perspective. Another book on mechanics, written when in part because Takiy\u00fcddin\u2019s technique for determining he was 26, focuses on the geometrical-mechanical struc- the longitudes and latitudes of fixed stars provided val- ture of clocks previously examined by other scholars. ues that were more precise than those of either Brahe or the famed European astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus Takiy\u00fcddin was a successor to the great school of (1473\u20131543), thus evidencing the precision of Takiy\u00fcd- Samarkand established by Ulugh Beg and the Timurids din\u2019s methods of observation and calculation. Takiy\u00fcd- and, following the lead of Ali Ku\u015f\u00e7u, he tended toward din used Venus, Aldebaran, and Spica Virginis, which a more purely mathematical approach in his scientific are near the ecliptic (rather than the moon), as reference work, anticipating the discrediting of Aristotelian physics stars. As a result of his observations, he found the eccen- and metaphysics. tricity of the sun to be 2\u00ba 0\u2019 and the annual motion of apogee 63\u2019\u2019. \u0130hsan Fazl\u0131o\u011flu See also sciences. Takiy\u00fcddin\u2019s second most important work on astron- Further reading: \u0130hsan Fazl\u0131o\u011flu, \u201cTaq\u012b al-D\u012bn,\u201d in Bio- omy is an astronomical\/mathematical table or zij (enti- graphical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers, edited by Thomas tled Jaridat al-durar wa kharidat al-fikar). In this work, Hockey (Springer\/Kluwer forthcoming); Ayd\u0131n Say\u0131l\u0131, The decimal fractions in trigonometric functions are used Observatory in Islam (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, for the first time. Takiy\u00fcddin also prepared tangent and 1960), 289\u2013305. cotangent tables. Moreover, in this zij, as in another of his observational tables, Takiy\u00fcddin gave the parts of degree Tamerlane See Timur. of curves and angles in decimal fractions and carried out the calculations accordingly. Excluding the table of fixed Tanzimat The word tanzimat means \u201creforms,\u201d \u201crear- stars, all the astronomical tables in this zij were prepared rangement,\u201d and \u201cre-organization,\u201d and in Ottoman his- using decimal fractions. tory, the Tanzimat period refers to a time of Westernizing reforms from 1839 until 1876. Although there had been Takiy\u00fcddin also wrote other astronomical works periods of reform under earlier sultans, major reforms of secondary importance, including one about the pro- were begun with the ferman, or imperial mandate, issued jection of a sphere onto a plane as well as other topics by Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid (r. 1839\u201361) in November 1839, in geometry. Another of his works deals with sundials called the G\u00fclhane Imperial Rescript (G\u00fclhane Hatt- drawn on marble surfaces and their features. In addi- \u0131 H\u00fcmayunu), in reference to the imperial rose garden tion to his 20 books on astronomy Takiy\u00fcddin wrote one where it was proclaimed. A second reform decree, the book on medicine and zoology, three works on physics Imperial Rescript of Reforms (Islahat Ferman), was issued and mechanics, and five on mathematics. He also wrote in 1856 following the Crimean War (1853\u201356). Many","554 Tanzimat lished. However, after three years, the old systems were re-established. scholars divide this era into the first Tanzimat period (1839\u201356) and the second Tanzimat period (1856\u201376). REACTIONS TO THE TANZIMAT REFORMS Throughout the Tanzimat period there was a movement toward a European-style governing structure through the The declaration of the Tanzimat initially received strong establishment of councils and ministries. New reforms support from certain domestic factions and from Euro- were implemented in local governing structures. Several pean states. Nonetheless, the initial positive attitude journals and newspapers began to be published and the toward the Tanzimat reforms was slowly eroded as dif- press emerged as a distinct power within the Ottoman ferent groups tried to interpret the ferman based on political and cultural structure. Interaction with Europe- their own interests. Many Muslims complained because ans and travel to Europe, mostly for education, increased, of the privileges given to non-Muslims. Muslim tax and the state became more open to the outside world. farmers who had been taking advantage of the iltizam system, bankers, and other intermediary groups criti- The Tanzimat ferman was proclaimed in a huge, cized the new structure that arose as the tax farms were unprecedented ceremony in the G\u00fclhane, or rose garden, abolished because this resulted both in direct material near the imperial Topkap\u0131 Palace. The ferman was read losses and in anticipated future losses as their means of out by Mustafa Re\u015fid Pasha and witnessed by Sultan acquiring wealth were restricted. These Muslims often Abd\u00fclmecid, the grand vizier, the \u015feyh\u00fclislam, offi- expressed their concerns by referring to the sharia, cials of the palace, representatives of guilds, prominent claiming that the new regulations and rights given to statesman and religious leaders, the Armenian and Greek Christians were inconsistent with Islamic sacred law. patriarchs, the chief rabbi of the empire, and foreign rep- These disgruntled factions began to spread rumors that resentatives. After the declaration, the Tanzimat ferman the new regulations were fabricated by infidels (kafirs) was published in the official state newspaper, Takvim-i for their own benefit. Vekayi (The calendar of events), and French translations were sent to foreign embassies in Istanbul. At the same time, many non-Muslims perceived the planned reforms as inadequate to meet their needs. The The Tanzimat reforms built on earlier edicts of the absence of tax exemption for religious representatives sultans, such as the Nizam-\u0131 Cedid reforms of 1792\u201393, and the continuation of the jizya or poll-tax system were which wee largely associated with the military but which harshly criticized. Greeks, in particular, were discon- also initiated administrative and fiscal reforms. The tented with the reforms that stripped them of their pre- Tanzimat ferman included a foreword that presented the Tanzimat position as the most privileged non-Muslim reasons for the preparation of the imperial rescript, such group in the empire and as the pre-eminent group in the as the escalating decline and weakness of the Ottoman Ottoman Christian community. The Tanzimat reforms state. The main body of the ferman addressed basic prin- that proposed to treat Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and ciples and issues: the right of all subjects to life, property, other discrete communities within the empire as equals and honor regardless of their religion or sect; the tax- were disadvantageous to many. farming system (iltizam); military conscription; the safety and security of all subjects in the empire; and the Internationally, four European powers were keenly equality of all Ottoman subjects before the law. After set- interested in the Tanzimat ferman and closely moni- ting out these basic principles, the planned implementa- tored the reforms. Of these, England and France, who tion of the reforms was explained. were active in the preparation of the G\u00fclhane Imperial Rescript, responded to the declaration quite positively. The G\u00fclhane Imperial Rescript, which was intended However, the two other great states, Russia and Austria, to reform the administrative structure of the state, responded negatively. Russia was concerned with the rise focused specifically on financial reforms. The first mod- of British influence within the Ottoman government, or ern budget regulations were prepared during this time, Sublime Porte, and the possible effects of Britain\u2019s anti- the first foreign loans were undertaken, and a liberal Russian policies. Austria declared its opposition directly economic policy was pursued. The Rescript identified through Prime Minister Prince Metternich. three specific areas of financial reform: the implementa- tion of a just tax collection and assessment system; the OBSTACLES TO REFORM plan to abolish tax farms; and the development of bud- gets for administrative expenditures. New regulations One difficulty with the Tanzimat reforms was the lack for the tax system were presented to realize these goals. of clear means and guidelines for implementing the pro- Among these, the most important was the abolition of gram. For example, there was a crucial need for a current tax collection under multiple titles. All taxes were to be population and property census so that fair and reason- combined under a single title, and the people were to be able reforms of Ottoman assessment and tax collection taxed accordingly. Tax farms were abolished and instead and assessment could be instituted, but there were not a new muhassillik (tax collection) system was estab-","tax farming 555 enough qualified staff to carry out this project. Further- Tatars See Crimean Tatars. more, there were serious concerns among the empire\u2019s provincial elite (ayan) that it would not be to their Tawfiq, Khedive (b. 1852\u2013d. 1892) (r. 1879\u20131892) ruler advantage for the government to have an accurate pic- of Egypt Khedive Tawfiq came to power as the ruler ture of their assets and economic power. For these and of Egypt in the late 19th century when a combination of other reasons, the proposed reforms to the economy, the French and British pressure led Sultan Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. central and provincial administration, and the mili- 1876\u20131909) to depose Tawfiq\u2019s father, Khedive Ismail, tary structure were implemented only in certain Otto- after he refused to abdicate. The fact that it was European man provinces. These were selected quite carefully as the pressure that brought his father down did not bode well Tanzimat was applied only in provinces near the center for the young Tawfiq, who was not particularly suited and under the strict control of the state. At first, these for the responsibilities he faced. Egyptian nationalist included the provinces of Bursa, Ankara, Ayd\u0131n, Izmir, sentiment against foreign meddling in the country was Konya, and Sivas. Trabzon was later added to the list. growing and it coalesced around an Egyptian army offi- Provinces in which the programs of the Tanzimat were cer, Ahmad Pasha Urabi. Urabi organized a military not implemented were defined as \u201cexceptional districts\u201d demonstration outside Tawfiq\u2019s Abdin Palace in Cairo (mustesna mahalleler). on September 9, 1881, and demanded the dismissal of the prime minister, the recall of the Assembly of Del- The Tanzimat period remains one of the most con- egates, which had been suspended, and an increase in the tested eras in modern Ottoman history and it has had its size of the army. Tawfiq met all three demands, but this advocates and its opponents since it was first decreed. In capitulation demonstrated his political weakness, and a fact, discussions regarding the meaning and importance series of maneuvers followed that strengthened Urabi\u2019s of the Tanzimat era continue to influence the Turkish political position while that of Tawfiq went into decline. social, intellectual, and political climate as well as politi- The British and the French intervened in this emerging cal positioning, and historians continue to debate and power struggle on January 8, 1882, with a joint note that critique the Tanzimat ferman. One of the most signifi- supported Tawfiq. This enraged the Assembly, and they cant aspects of this debate is whether the decree should named Urabi Minister of War. be understood as a constitutional text or if it more nearly resembles a charter (carta), European documents that The crisis reached a boiling point in an anti-Euro- provide the basis for establishing constitutional govern- pean riot that broke out in Alexandria on June 11, ment through legal and written recognition by the king 1882. The British bombarded Alexandria on July 11; of the rights of his subjects. This is why the ferman is with the situation in Egypt sliding into chaos, Tawfiq fled called a \u201csocial contract\u201d by some researchers. For oth- to the British fleet off Alexandria and declared Urabi a ers, it is merely a warrant that recognizes and guarantees rebel. The British then moved on Cairo and restored the rights of the sultan\u2019s subjects. The ferman is also criti- Tawfiq to his throne. From that point, Tawfiq had no cized as being inadequate in the protection and decla- support within the Egyptian nationalist camp or in the ration of what are now regarded as basic human rights. Egyptian army. As such, he was largely dependent on Even today, the Tanzimat reforms continue to be one of British advice and cooperated with the new British high the most heated subjects of discussion for Turkish intel- commissioner, Evelyn Baring, later to be named Lord lectuals and scholars. Cromer. Khedive Tawfiq died in 1892. Co\u015fkun \u00c7ak\u0131r Bruce Masters Further reading: Roderic Davison, Reform in the Otto- man Empire, 1856\u20131876 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer- tax farming Tax farming was a widely used method by sity Press, 1963); Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in which the Ottoman state collected revenues. Rather than the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789\u20131922 (Princ- collecting taxes directly, sultans farmed out the collection eton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980); Donald Qua- of taxes to eligible applicants. The most widely practiced taert, \u201cThe Age of Reforms, 1812\u20131914,\u201d in An Economic forms of tax farming were known as iltizam and malikane, and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Halil but the latter was also associated with esham, a mecha- \u0130nalc\u0131k and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- nism of domestic borrowing based on treasury issues. versity Press, 1997); Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2, Reform, Revolution and THE ILTIZAM SYSTEM Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808\u20131975 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Moshe Ma\u2019oz, In the iltizam system the sources of state revenue were Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840\u20131861: The farmed out to applicants by means of a public auction. Impact of The Tanzimat on Politics and Society (Oxford: An iltizam might consist of different sources of revenue Oxford University Press, 1968).","556 tax farming could only maintain his position by offering a higher price than his rival. The replacement of an existing including various state revenue sources (mukataas), the m\u00fcltezim by a new one, however, did not bring about a poll tax (cizye), and extraordinary levies (avar\u0131z). The change in the term of computation or in the starting date holders of iltizam were called m\u00fcltezim. The m\u00fcltezim of the collection period (tahvil). The iltizam system was who undertook the collection of taxes from a group of often abused, with the positions becoming hereditary revenue sources would have the revenues dealt with either and m\u00fcltezims eventually developed into a separate class through his own agents or would further farm out the between the government and the peasants. enterprise to a third person. In the latter case, the sub- farming would be approved and registered by the state. Another practice closely associated with iltizam was that of the emanet system (emanet ber-vech-i iltizam), There was a certain amount of flexibility in a tax- which entailed the transfer of revenue administration farming unit. It could always be bolstered with additional to tax farmers with the status of emins (state agents) in sources of revenue, or altered by the transfer of revenue return for a profit limit of 10 percent of the yearly total. sources to another unit. It was also possible to form a Those who were assigned as emins were not liable for the new farming unit by grouping together revenue sources accumulation of a specified yearly total. culled from other tax farm units. THE MALIKANE SYSTEM The m\u00fcltezim had to guarantee a predetermined sum of taxes from specific lands to the Imperial Treasury in To eliminate the insecurity of the iltizams, which order to be allowed to collect taxes from those regions for changed hands too frequently, and to raise more cash one to three years. The process was legalized by a con- for a state in financial crisis due to the protracted wars tract between the Ottoman state and the m\u00fcltezim, who of the late 17th century, the Ottoman government was given a kanunname, or the legal regulation that listed introduced a new tax farming system in 1695 called and specified all the sources of state revenues from which malikane. The system of malikane initiated the prac- he could collect taxes. The m\u00fcltezim could undertake the tice of life-long tax farms. The malikane holders had enterprise either singly or jointly. The three-year span of to settle their accounts at the end of the year; other- operating the tax farms was called tahvil. A tax-farmer wise the contract would be cancelled and the tax col- could undertake two or three of these tahvils together, lector arrested. Holders of big estates (has) also could which meant the extension of the span to six or nine retain a malikane provided that they paid the requisite years. He would be able to make a profit if the amount he sum of the down payment (muaccele), which was fixed collected surpassed the predetermined sum; otherwise, in auction, a transfer fee that did not generate income he suffered losses. for the treasury. The holder of the malikane would either exploit the various state revenue sources himself The iltizam system did not require a military obli- or farm these out to a third person, which was also a gation and was strictly a financial arrangement for legal practice. The malikane holders could reassign the leasing the collection of taxes. The m\u00fcltezim legally revenue sources under their disposal to someone else as had to bring a guarantor before he could undertake well. The malikane system remained in force through tax collections. The guarantor was expected to assume the Tanzimat reform era (1839\u201376). responsibility in case of financial loss or in case of the m\u00fcltezim deserting his duty. The m\u00fcltezim had to make THE ESHAM SYSTEM a payment (kefalet bedeli) fixed by a judge (kad\u0131) who sanctioned the process. This was initially regarded as a Between 1775 and 1870, as Ottoman state finances came deposit (pe\u015fin), but starting in 1632, was legalized as a under increasing pressure, the Sublime Porte devel- down payment. oped a new type of tax farming, called esham, that was, in fact, a form of long-term domestic borrowing similar The presentation of financial accounts related to the to a bond issue. In order to fill the imperial coffers, the business was another obligation of the m\u00fcltezim and fail- sultan borrowed money from his subjects by estimat- ure to maintain or present proper records could cost him ing the income of a particular revenue source, dividing his position. Settlement of accounts between the state this into a large number of shares, called faiz, and sell- and the m\u00fcltezim was done annually and was not subject ing these shares to the people. The sum paid for the faiz to the duration of the iltizam contract. The annual pay- was generally between five and seven times greater than ment (k\u0131stelyevm) was equal to the yearly amount that its annual value, but the faiz would continue to generate the m\u00fcltezim pledged during the auction. The m\u00fcltezim an annual income (similar to an annuity) for the hold- was typically accompanied to the annual presentation of er\u2019s lifetime. The rises and falls in the annual profit rate his accounts by two subsidiary officials, a clerk and an of the mukataa, or revenue source, did not affect the accountant. annual sums paid by the state to the holders of faiz. The Throughout the period of the collection of state rev- enue by m\u00fcltezims, new bidders might emerge at the auc- tions to challenge the current tax farmer. The incumbent","esham practice resembled the malikane system in many telegraph 557 ways and was supposed to have been a continuation of it, although it aimed to eliminate the defects of the iltizam graph Department, had been set up. Its first project was and mukataa systems. the construction of a telegraph line between Edirne and Istanbul. Built by French engineers, it was completed in Baki \u00c7ak\u0131r time to relay the news of the end of the war. See also agriculture; banks and banking; econ- omy; jizya; money and monetary systems. After the war, the Ottoman desire to expand its Further reading: Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k, An Economic and Social telegraph network eastward coincided with the British History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge push for a telegraph link with India via the Persian Gulf University Press, 1994); Sevket Pamuk, \u201cThe Evolution of through Ottoman territories. Britain would have pre- Institutions of State Finance in the Ottoman Empire, 1500\u2013 ferred an all-undersea cable, but the technology available 1800\u201d (paper presented at 14th International Economic His- for submarine telegraphy was not yet suitable for long tory Congress, Helsinki, Finland, August 21\u201325, 2006). distances. The British government offered its cooperation and allowed more than a dozen of its telegraph engineers technology See science. to enter Ottoman service. Work on the line between Istanbul and the Persian Gulf began in August 1858, but telegraph The excitement over the electric telegraph progress on the line east of Diyarbak\u0131r was particularly in Europe and America in the 1830s did not take long slow, and a boundary dispute with Persia impeded its to reach the Ottoman Empire, which Western inven- completion. Finally, in January 1865, the Ottoman over- tors, entrepreneurs, and travelers viewed as an exotic land telegraph reached Fao on the Persian Gulf, where it locale, favorable for introducing such a \u201cmagical\u201d appa- met the Indo-European submarine cable from Karachi, ratus. Shortly after Samuel F. B. Morse exhibited a work- allowing telegraphic communication between Europe ing model of his electric telegraph in Paris at the French and India for the first time. While serving the Ottoman Academy of Sciences in 1838, Mellen Chamberlain, a government, the line also carried most of the British elec- Vermont businessman who was present, made an agree- tric communications with India until the 1870s when the ment with Morse to sell the telegraph to a number of more reliable undersea lines were finally established. At governments, including that of the Ottoman Empire. Fao, Britain maintained a large office, while the Ottoman Chamberlain arrived in Istanbul in May 1839, but his government agreed to employ operators with a knowl- set of Morse instruments was still crude and failed to edge of English at the other main stations. produce good results; Chamberlain died before he was able to demonstrate the device to the sultan. In 1847 By the time the line to Fao was completed, major another American, John Lawrence Smith, an agricultural Ottoman cities and towns along the route were linked. chemist and mineralogist in Ottoman employ, demon- The Ottoman telegraphic network thereafter contin- strated the electric telegraph in an elaborate presenta- ued to expand rapidly, far ahead of conventional roads tion to the young Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid (r. 1839\u201361) and or railroads. By the time of the enthronement and his officials. The sultan, impressed, bestowed on Morse accession of Abd\u00fclhamid II (r. 1876\u20131909) in 1876, the prestigious Nishan-\u0131 Iftihar, or Order of Glory of the the empire boasted one of the largest telegraph networks empire, which was Morse\u2019s first official honor. in the world. Abd\u00fclhamid II\u2019s reign saw it expand to the remote corners of the empire and become an efficient BUILDING THE OTTOMAN tool in running the empire. TELEGRAPH NETWORK The Ottoman government employed British and Although Smith\u2019s demonstration raised temporary enthu- French experts to help build, operate and organize the siasm for the telegraph, the first Ottoman telegraph line system. Initially, French, the official foreign language, was not built until the Crimean War (1853\u201356). Otto- was used. As early as 1856, Ottoman operators at Edirne man allies England and France then cooperated in developed a Turkish version (then written in Arabic connecting Bucharest (the capital of present-day Roma- script) of Morse code, which became the basis of the offi- nia), the eastern terminus of European telegraphs, with cial Turkish code. It took several years before this code Varna on the Black Sea, and thence to the Crimea and became fully operational and the service in Turkish was to Istanbul by undersea cable, putting the Ottoman established. Later, the Ottoman telegraph service could Empire in electric communication with Europe. At the handle more than a dozen languages, led by French and beginning of the war, an Ottoman commission of high- English. As elsewhere, the telegraph had a profound ranking officers, which later became the Ottoman Tele- impact on the way language was used and written, and perhaps gave a considerable momentum to the use of \u201csimple\u201d Turkish at the expense of the sophisticated Ottoman-Turkish. All equipment, other than poles, was initially imported from Britain and France. In a matter of a","558 temettuat widely to petition, protest, report disasters, and complain about officials. They often tried to telegram their politi- decade, however, the Ottomans were able to produce cal demands directly to the sultan. locally most of its telegraph materials, including telegraph instruments. Its dependency on foreign experts also fell The story of the electric telegraph in the Ottoman sharply. As early as 1861, an Ottoman telegraphic school Empire concludes with a paradox. Although the tele- was established, with a second following six years later. graph played a crucial role in extending the authority of Prestigious colleges began to offer courses in telegraphy. the sultan and his central rule, it also proved an effective The telegraph thus represents one of the few 19th-cen- tool for his opponents in undermining the sultanate and tury technological innovations in which the Ottomans ultimately bringing it down. The formation of the Young quickly achieved self-sufficiency. Turk movement and its revolution in 1908, which ended the long rule of Abd\u00fclhamid II and reduced him to a fig- SOCIAL AND POLITICAL BENEFITS urehead, owe much to the telegraph. A leading figure in the movement, Talat Pasha (1874\u20131921), who became As in Europe and America, the telegraph became a huge minister of the interior and grand vizier, began his career apparatus for social and cultural experimentation. It as a telegraph clerk. The telegraph enabled him and other facilitated the speedy and expansive circulation of new Young Turks to organize and spread the movement in ideas and news, foreign and local, far and wide. It stimu- spite of the sultan\u2019s spies and later to suppress any move- lated the study of foreign languages, as well as sciences ment of the empire\u2019s minorities in Anatolia (Greeks, related to electricity and magnetism. Although it was ini- Armenians, Kurds) for social reforms and autonomy. The tially perceived as a military and state apparatus, it soon telegraph was also essential to the resistance movement came to be widely used by the public and businesses. after the Ottoman defeat in World War I and contrib- Telegraph offices became material symbols of modernity, uted significantly to the success of Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, the standing as monuments of a new technological age. The founding father and first president of the Republic of incorporation of European architectural style in their Turkey. design enhanced the up-to-date tone they created. The technology also offered new employment opportunities Yakup Bekta\u015f for the empire\u2019s many minorities, who came to be well Further reading: Yakup Bekta\u015f, \u201cThe Sultan\u2019s Messen- represented in the telegraph service, from top officials ger: Cultural Constructions of Ottoman Telegraphy 1847\u2013 down to operators. It provided a space where the empire\u2019s 1880.\u201d Technology and Culture 41 (October 2000): 669\u2013696; diverse ethnic and religious communities, which had Yakup Bekta\u015f, \u201cDisplaying the American Genius: The Elec- previously kept themselves largely aloof, could interact tromagnetic Telegraph in the Wider World.\u201d British Journal with the general community. In 1871, the telegraph office for the History of Science 34 (2001): 199\u2013232; Roderick H. merged with the postal service. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774\u20131923 (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1990). The telegraph separated communication from trans- portation and freed it from the restrictions of time, dis- temettuat (income surveys) The word temettuat is the tance, and geography. This made it an ideal apparatus plural form of temettu, which means \u201cprofit\u201d or \u201cincome.\u201d of control for the still huge Ottoman Empire, which However, temettuat is generally used to refer specifically spanned three continents, allowing it to consolidate to Ottoman income surveys (temettuat tahrirleri). These its territorial boundaries as well as its political will at a temettuat surveys were conducted immediately after the time of frequent revolts and independence movements. proclamation by Sultan Abd\u00fclmecid (r. 1839\u201361) of the Many Ottomans expected the telegraph to help keep the Tanzimat reform edict in 1839 They were planned, in empire united. This expectation was to a great extent ful- large part, to gather economic and social data required for filled. As the telegraph brought the distant regions within the implementation of reforms. The temettuat surveys had quick reach of the central government, it helped central- two main goals: to determine the economic conditions of ize political power. As early as 1874, an American mis- the people in order to establish a fair tax system, and to sionary in Beirut wrote that the telegraph system enabled increase state revenues. The information gathered in these the Ottoman government \u201cto move the whole empire surveys resulted in the compilation of detailed registers like a machine.\u201d But it was not until the32-year reign of containing rich and useful data regarding real estate, land, Abd\u00fclhamid II that it attained its full power. The sultan animals, and income; the registers offer a wealth of infor- had a telegraph office established at his Y\u0131ld\u0131z Palace, mation regarding Ottoman economic and social history. and his network of spies and secret agents relied on the device, sending their reports directly to this office. The There are 17,747 temettuat registers at the Prime sultan was able to have pashas, governors, and gener- Ministry\u2019s Ottoman Archives in Istanbul. These als dismissed, replaced, or arrested in a matter of min- registers contain information about 543 kaza (districts utes, before they could organize any opposition. Private citizens in the remote hinterland also used the system","or townships) of 15 provinces. In total, it is estimated Tersane-i Amire 559 that the registers include information about 1.1 million households. There are nine volumes of catalogues cover- seized primarily from the Byzantines and Turkomans ing the registers. The first limited survey was conducted in the mid-15th century. This includes arsenals such as in 1840. A second was conducted in 1845 and included those in Nicomedia (Izmit), Gemlik, Edincik, Gallipoli all the villages or towns where the government intended (on the west shore of the Dardanelles), and the harbor to implement reforms immediately. The surveys regis- of Kad\u0131rga in Istanbul, as well as the Seljuk arsenals in tered a variety of information, including the name of Sinop (on the Black Sea) and Alanya (on the Mediter- the head of the household, his title, lands, animals, other ranean in southern Anatolia). revenues, professions, the value of his belongings, his household income, taxes that had been paid, and taxes The term tershane, or dershane, was used to designate that would be paid. These data were highly detailed and ship construction yards as early as 1514, when it appears included the types of land (such as field, vineyard, yard, in the Kitab-\u0131 Bahriye (Book of navigation) by renowned mill, meadow) and animals (such as buffalo, ox, cow, calf, cartographer Piri Reis (d. 1553). Soon after, the term began horse, mule, camel, donkey, sheep, goat, hen, beehives). to be used to refer to the naval construction center on the north shore of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, which finally These temettuat registers contain information about attained the official name Tersane-i Amire (Imperial Arse- the demographic, economic, fiscal, agricultural, and nal) during the time of famed Ottoman navy commander social structure of the area surveyed and provide valu- Hayreddin Barbarossa (1534\u201346) (see Barbarossa broth- able demographic information, including data regard- ers). Although the Tersane remained the center of ship ing total population, household structures, and nomadic construction and naval administration throughout the tribes (g\u00f6\u00e7ebes). In terms of economics, these records Ottoman period, the arsenal served many other functions enable scholars to estimate sources of wealth and to as well; it included all the social facilities required to accom- identify trades and crafts practiced in particular areas. modate its massive workforce, and it also became home to In terms of agriculture, they include important informa- several important Ottoman educational institutions. tion about cultivated lands, crop distribution, and cul- tivation methods. The registers have even been used to THE IMPERIAL ARSENAL OF ISTANBUL aid in the practice of stock-breeding for they identify the (TERSANE-I AMIRE) variety and number of animals. In terms of fiscal policy, the information given in the registers is mainly related to The principal arsenal of the empire, in the Golden Horn, taxes, especially agricultural taxes, including data about was founded by Mehmed II (r. 1444\u201346, 1451\u201381) at the regulation of special taxes (vergiyi mahsusa), tithe the time of the 1453 conquest of Constantinople or produce tax (a\u015far), and the head tax (jizya) collected and supplemented in the time of Sultan Bayezid II (r. from non-Muslims. 1481\u20131512). During the reign of Sultan Selim I (r. 1512\u2013 20) significant extensions were undertaken by Captain Co\u015fkun \u00c7ak\u0131r Cafer Agha (1516\u201320), after which the arsenal acquired Further reading: Hayashi Kayoko and Mahir Ayd\u0131n, its current size, stretching from the district of Galata to eds., The Ottoman State and Societies in Change: A Study of the Ka\u011f\u0131thane stream on the shore of the Golden Horn. the Nineteenth Century Temettuat Registers (London: Kegan The reorganization encouraged the government to shift Paul, 2004); Halil \u0130nalc\u0131k and \u015eevket Pamuk, eds., Osmanl\u0131 shipbuilding activities from Gallipoli to Istanbul. In the devleti\u2019nde bilgi ve istatistik\/Data and Statistics in the Otto- middle of the 16th century, the number of docks within man Empire (Ankara: State Institute of Statistics, 2000). the arsenal had risen to 140, and on the land side a wall had been erected to encircle the arsenal and to conceal Tepedelenli Ali Pasha See Ali Pasha of Janina. the resources and activities of the arsenal from outside observers. In addition, a number of subsidiary shipbuild- Tersane-i Amire The Tersane-i Amire, or Tersane, ing facilities\u2014probably as many as 90\u2014bound to the was the Ottoman imperial naval arsenal, the administra- Tersane were located at strategic spots throughout the tive base and construction center for the Ottoman navy empire, in Suez and Basra, on rivers such as the Dan- in Istanbul\u2019s Golden Horn (Hali\u00e7). The word tersane orig- ube and the Euphrates, and along the Mediterranean inally comes from the Arabic word dar as-sin\u00e2a (arsenal) and Black Sea coasts. In fact, among its counterparts in and possibly comes into Turkish by way of the Italian the Mediterranean world in the 16th century, the Tersane darsena, a word found in various forms in contemporary was matched only by the Venetian arsenal. European languages. The Ottoman naval arsenals were established on the foundation of existing naval arsenals Within the confines of the Tersane were located many industrial structures such as shipyards, drydocks, storehouses, a rope spinning factory, iron and anchor foundries, and social facilities such as a mosque, foun- tain, hospital, and prison. In 1800 the arsenal heralded the opening of its great dock to facilitate repair work","560 Tersane-i Amire The shipyard of Alanya was built by the Seljuks in the 1220s and inherited by the Ottomans. Shipyards of this kind once dotted the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. (Photo by G\u00e1bor \u00c1goston) on galleons. A naval engineering college (1775) and a nitaries were the high officials who held administra- medical school (1806), two institutions of great signifi- tive posts within the shipyard and included the tersane cance for both military and civil educational purposes, keth\u00fcdas\u0131 (chamberlain), the tersane a\u011fas\u0131 (majordomo), were also established within the walls of the arsenal. The the tersane emini (paymaster general), the tersane reisi Aynal\u0131kavak pavilion in the Tersane, in front of which (warden), the liman reisi (harbormaster), and the \u00e7avu\u015f ships were constructed, and the Arsenal Garden served as (herald); the last three worked under the command of resting residences for the sultan. the tersane emini. During the age of sailing ships, the navy added three critical positions: a galleon naz\u0131r\u0131 The Tersane, which remained the main naval base of (superintendent), a galleon defterdar\u0131 (treasurer), and a the empire throughout its history, also helped to lead the galleon katibi (scribe). Ottoman Empire in industrial change; as the center of an industrial district, it was at the forefront of industrial The arsenal corps consisted of various shipyard modernization, especially during the 19th century. workers such as captains, azabs (marines), shipwrights, caulkers, oarmakers, ironsmiths, repairmen, spoolers, From the very beginning the Tersane served as a oakum workers, bomb makers, quarantine guardians, construction site for ships, both with oars and sails; as a g\u00fcmis (overseers), and guards. In the 1570s, the member- supply center for naval equipment, and as a repair shop ship of the arsenal corps reached 2,650, whereas toward for ships. In time the arsenal came to expand over the the end of the 17th century this figure fell to nearly 800, entire coastline of the Golden Horn. While it is difficult a reduction most probably linked with a change in the to imagine the immensity of the work undertaken there, administrative structure of the Tersane. it should be noted that during the 17th century 317 new ships were built there and 808 ships were repaired. The tersane emini was the state official who was responsible for the procurement of all necessary materi- STAFF OF THE IMPERIAL ARSENAL als for shipbuilding. The Tersane produced or managed the transportation of supplies such as timber, masts, iron, The personnel at the Tersane, under the leadership of nails, lead, tar, pitch, cod oil, tallow, wax, dyestuff, linen, the grand admiral, was divided into two groups: the oakum, oars, anchors, compasses, sailcloth, tents, broad- arsenal dignitaries and the arsenal corps. Arsenal dig-"]