Under the Ottoman land tenure system, peasants enjoyed the hereditary right to cultivate the land but could not sell it or transfer the title without permission from the central government (Inalcik: 109). The hereditary right to cultivate the land passed from father to son (Inalcik: 109). The Ottoman Empire frequently suffered from a scarcity of silver coinage, which posed a fundamental challenge to the central government (Inalcik: 107). How could the government collect taxes from peasant farmers who could not pay their taxes in cash? And how could the sultan pay his officials and troops their salaries? In response to these challenges, the empire was divided into numerous timārs (literally meaning care, sorrow, and attendance in Persian). Timārs were grants of lands and revenues by the sultan to officials as compensation for their services. To each timār the sultan assigned a sipāhi or a cavalryman. The sipāhi did not own the timār he held. He was responsible for collecting taxes and maintaining security in the area under his control, making sure that the cultivation of land would not be disrupted (Shaw: 1:26). He provided troops to the army during campaigns, thereby contributing to the central government’s cavalry force. Unlike the janissary, who used firearms, the sipāhi and the men he recruited and organized were armed with medieval weaponry (Inalcik: 108). Thus, the cavalryman was simultaneously the tax collector, the local policeman, and the army recruiter. The revenue generated by his timār paid for the sipāhi’s military services.
At the time of the conquest of each new territory, the Ottoman government sent agents to the newly acquired districts to identify and quantify taxable sources, such as crops, and to assess the amount of tax that particular community was to pay. These calculations were then entered into government registries. Every 20 to 30 years these tax assessments were revisited and, if necessary, revised. Instead of paying the salaries of military personnel from the sultan’s treasury, the troops were thus allowed to directly collect the revenue from agricultural production in lieu of their salary. The sipāhi, who lived in a village among peasant farmers, collected the taxes in kind, and it was his duty to convert this to cash. Through the sipāhis the central government established direct control over the process of agricultural production and collection of taxes from the peasantry.
The timār holders were grouped together under sancāks (sanjāks) or military-administrative units, which were run by a military governor or a sancāk bey (sanjāk bey) (Shaw: 1:26). The military governor was called sancāk bey because he had received a sancāk or a standard from the sultan as the sign and symbol of power and authority (Inalcik: 104). As the Ottoman state expanded and the number of sancāk beys increased, the central government created a new position, the beylerbey, or bey of the beys, responsible for the sancāk beys in his province (eyālet) (Inalcik: 104–106). Each beylerbey ruled from a provincial capital, which had its own janissary garrison, religious judge (kādi), and administrators in charge of assessing taxes (McCarthy: 121). This system did not prevail in all provinces and territories controlled by the sultan, however. In some Kurdish- and Arab-populated regions, tribal chiefs were appointed as hereditary sancāk beys. They were responsible for collecting taxes and sending troops to Istanbul at the time of war with foreign powers. There were also vassal Christian states such as Moldavia and Wallachia, which were ruled by their princes, and Muslim principalities such as Crimea that were administered by their khāns (hāns). Aside from the beylerbeys and the sancāk beys, who acted as the direct representatives of their royal master and were recruited from the military class, in all legal matters the sultan was represented by a kādi who hailed from the ranks of the ulema. The governors could not carry out justice without receiving a legal judgment from the kādi, but the kādi did not have the executive authority to carry out any of his religious rulings (Inalcik: 104). Until the second half of the 16th century kādis were appointed for life, but as the number of prospective judges increased, term limits were imposed by the central government.
HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The Ottoman state was born as a small principality in western Anatolia during the last two decades of the 13th century. Like other Turkish chieftains who had settled in the region, the family of Osman (r. 1290–1326), the founder of the Ottoman Empire, arrived as nomadic tribesmen from Central Asia. Turkoman tribes had been settling in Anatolia since 1071, when the Seljuk Turks defeated the Greek Byzantine Empire at the battle of Manzikert (Malazgird). The victory at Manzikert destroyed Byzantine defenses and allowed Turkoman tribesmen from Central Asia and Iran to push westward and settle in Anatolia. In 1087 a branch of the Seljuk dynasty established itself in central Anatolia. The Turkoman chiefs, who settled in the region, swore their allegiance and paid annual tribute to the Anatolian (Rum) Seljuks, who ruled from their capital in Konya in present-day central Turkey. When the Mongols defeated the Seljuks at the battle of Köse Dagh in 1243, Turkoman principalities such as Menteşe (Menteshe), Aydin, Saruhan, and Ottoman emerged as autonomous fiefdoms that paid tribute to a new master, the Il Khanid dynasty of Iran. Toward the end of the 13th century, as Mongol power began to decline, the Turkoman chiefs assumed greater independence.
The early Ottoman state was founded on the concept of holy war (gazā), which viewed the world as divided between the domain of Islam (darülislam; Arabic: dar al-Islam) and the domain of war (darülharb; Arabic: dar al-harb). The principal responsibility of a Muslim ruler was to defend and expand the domain of Islam by waging war on the land and territories ruled by non-Muslims. He did not conquer to massacre and destroy towns and villages, but to increase the revenue of the state by encouraging peasants, artisans, and merchants to settle and work in his principality. If people submitted to invasion without any resistance, they were allowed to practice their religion and maintain their traditional system of self-rule. If a town or a city resisted, it could be subjected to massacre and enslavement. The Ottomans did not force the conquered population “to choose between conversion and death.” They “generally did not proselytize,” allowing “the conquered non-Muslim populations to continue practicing their religions and handling their own community affairs so long as they remained obedient to the Ottoman state and paid a poll tax” (Hathaway, Arab Lands: 46). Those who converted to Islam were treated as equals, but those who retained their religion were viewed as inferior to Muslims.
FOUNDERS OF THE OTTOMAN STATE
The founder of the Ottoman state, Osman, began his career as a gāzi, or a warrior for Islam, who waged holy war on the Byzantine state from his small principality in the district of Sögüt in western Anatolia. Osman’s son and successor, Orhan (r. 1326–1362), attacked and conquered the important urban center of Bursa in 1326, proclaiming it as the Ottoman capital. He used his newly acquired territory to capture the towns of Nicaea (Iznik) in 1331 and Nicomedia (Izmit) in 1337. In 1354 the Ottomans crossed into Europe and established a foothold on the Gallipoli Peninsula while at the same time pushing east and taking Ankara on the dry Anatolian plain.
Ottoman expansion was greatly assisted by the weakness of the Christian states of the Balkans and the rivalries among the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, Serbia, Venice, and Genoa. The conflict and war among these powers was exacerbated by the religious rivalry between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. In 1355 Stefan Dušan (Dushan), the ruler of Serbia, died and his empire disintegrated, allowing the Ottomans to push farther into the Balkans and capture the important town of Adrianople (Edirne) in 1361. Shortly after ascending the throne, the third Ottoman sultan, Murad I (r. 1362–1389), moved against Thrace and southern Bulgaria. In response the pope declared a crusade. The Serbs also called for a united front of all Orthodox Christian rulers. Despite growing resistance against the Ottomans, Murad’s armies scored an impressive victory at Chernomen on the Maritsa River in 1371, seizing significant territory in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and southern Serbia. To neutralize the threat posed by rival Turkoman principalities in Anatolia, Murad also attacked and annexed Germiyan and Hamidili. The Ottomans pushed farther into Bulgaria and t
ook Sofia in 1385. In the same year they captured Nish in modern-day southern Serbia, and in 1387 they seized Thessaloniki (Salonika) in present-day northern Greece.
The Christian powers of southeast Europe tried again to set aside their rivalries and organize an anti-Ottoman coalition. A joint force of Serbs, Bosnians, and Albanians defeated the Ottomans at Ploshnik in 1388 south of Nish, but the defeat did not slow down the pace of Ottoman expansion. After occupying northern Bulgaria, Murad moved against the Balkan states that had unified under the leadership of the Serbian prince Lazar (r. 1371–1389). On June 28, 1389, the Ottoman forces defeated the Christian coalition at Kosovo-Polje (Field of the Blackbirds). Both Murad and Lazar died on the battlefield.
The victory at Kosovo-Polje allowed the new Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402), to continue with the conquest of the Balkans. Skopje, in Macedonia, was captured in 1391. In 1394 Ottoman forces seized Thessaly in northern Greece south of Macedonia, lying between upland Epirus and the Aegean Sea. With the conquest of northern Bulgaria, the ruler of the Romanian populated principality of Wallachia, Mircea the Old (r. 1386–1418), was forced to accept Ottoman sovereignty in 1395. Bayezid’s forces were now in a position to raid Hungary and Albania. In the east the sultan annexed Karaman in southwestern Anatolia in 1396–1397.
The emergence of an Ottoman-dominated Balkans posed a direct threat to the Kingdom of Hungary, which viewed Serbia as a buffer. Thus, when Pope Boniface IX (1389–1404) called for a Christian crusade against the Ottomans, the Hungarian monarch Sigismund (r. 1387–1437) assumed leadership of the Christian army. Bayezid rushed back from Anatolia to confront the large crusader force that was approaching the shores of the Danube. The two armies clashed at Nicopolis on September 25, 1396, where the Ottomans scored an impressive victory. Thousands of Christian knights died, either on the battlefield or as they tried to cross the Danube. Bayezid built on this victory by annexing Vidin on the southern bank of the Danube in northwestern Bulgaria in 1398. Confident of his power in the west, the sultan shifted his focus to Anatolia and the threat posed by the Mamluk state, which ruled Egypt and parts of the Arab Middle East from its capital in Cairo. In 1399 he captured the towns of Malatya and Elbistan in the Euphrates Valley.
Bayezid’s drive to expand Ottoman territories in the Arab world coincided with the rise of the world conqueror Timur, who had created a vast empire extending from Central Asia to India and Iran. In 1402 Timur and his armies entered Anatolia, sacking Sivas and challenging the Ottoman sultan to a confrontation. Enraged by Timur’s condescending attitude and insulting language, and confident of his ability to defeat the Central Asian khan, Bayezid moved his forces into central Anatolia. The decisive battle took place at Ankara on July 20, 1402, where Timur’s army routed the Ottoman forces and captured Bayezid and his sons. The defeat at Ankara brought the Ottoman state to the brink of extinction. Timur pushed his conquests to Smyrna (Izmir) on the eastern shores of the Aegean Sea and restored the independence of the Turkoman principalities conquered by the Ottomans. He also granted Bayezid’s sons small principalities in Anatolia and the Balkans so that they would fight among themselves for control of what was left of their father’s empire. Thus began the period known as Fetret, or Interregnum, which lasted from 1402 to 1413. After a series of campaigns against his brothers, Mehmed, who ruled Amasya in northern Anatolia, emerged as the new ruler of the Ottoman state.
Mehmed I (r. 1413–1421) and his successor, Murad II (r. 1421–1444, 1446–1451), spent much of their reigns suppressing internal revolts staged by members of the Ottoman dynasty and restoring the power of the central government by subduing the Turkoman principalities, which had regained their independence under Timur. The Ottoman rulers also resumed their westward march into the heartland of the Balkans. Once again a crusade was organized, this time under the leadership of Vladislav (r. 1434–1444), the ruler of Poland and Hungary. Serbia, led by George Branković, also joined, but the true leader of the anti-Ottoman coalition was the governor of Transylvania, John Hunyadi (János Hunyadi), who fought for the Hungarian king. Initially Hunyadi was successful in his campaigns against the Ottoman forces and pushed them out of Bulgaria. When the Ottomans struck back, however, the Christian forces suffered a devastating defeat at Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast in 1444. King Vladislav died on the battlefield, and the Christian effort to halt Ottoman conquest of the Balkans came to a sudden end.
ZENITH OF OTTOMAN POWER
Building on the victory at Varna in eastern Bulgaria, Murad’s son and successor, Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481), embarked on an ambitious campaign to complete the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. The first target of the new sultan was, however, the city of Constantinople, which fell after a two-month siege on May 29, 1453. The fall of Constantinople was an event of great significance. The conquest of the capital of eastern Christianity allowed the Ottomans to establish their control over maritime trade routes that connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, one of the most important avenues of international commerce in the world.
Mehmed’s ambitious campaign to impose Ottoman rule over the entire territory of southeastern Europe began in 1458 with the capture of Morea (Peloponnese Peninsula) in southern Greece. In 1463 the Ottoman sultan conquered Bosnia. In sharp contrast to other Christian-populated regions of the Balkans, there was a large-scale conversion to Islam in Bosnia. As the local landowning nobility converted, many urban and rural communities followed suit. The conquest of Greece and Bosnia set the stage for an invasion of Albania. To the northeast the Tatars of Crimea accepted the suzerainty of the sultan in 1475, allowing the Ottomans to extend their authority to the northern shores of the Black Sea. In 1480 Herzegovina was conquered. Despite his best efforts, however, Mehmed could not capture the strategic fortress of Belgrade, which would have paved the path to the conquest of Hungary. He also faced fierce resistance in Albania, where a local hero, George Kastrioti (Gjergi Kastrioti), also known as Iskender Beg (Skanderbeg), fought heroically against Ottoman forces from 1443 until his death in 1468.
To the east the Ottomans scored a decisive victory over the Aq Qoyunlu (Ak Koyunlu) Turkomans and their chief, Uzun Hassan, who ruled Iran and southern Caucasus, at the battle of Başkent (Bashkent) in 1473. When the Venetian allies of Aq Qoyunlu attacked the Aegean coast and the island of Lesbos, the Ottomans struck back and laid siege to Venetian fortresses in northwestern Albania, including Shkodër (Scutari), which was captured in 1479. By 1481, when Mehmed died, the Ottoman forces had landed at Otranto in anticipation of a full-fledged invasion of Italy.
After defeating his brother Cem (Jem), who was the favorite of their father, Prince Bayezid ascended the Ottoman throne as Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512) and embarked on a campaign to extend Ottoman rule to the western and northern shores of the Black Sea by attacking Moldavia and conquering the fortresses of Kilia (Kiliya) in the Danube Delta and Akkerman on the right bank of the Dniester Liman in present-day Odessa Oblast of southwestern Ukraine in 1484. The invasion brought the Poles into confrontation with the Ottomans. The wars with Hungary and Venice also continued until the end of Bayezid’s reign. In the east the conflict between the Ottomans and the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria, was concluded in 1491 when the two powers agreed to sign a peace treaty.
A new and far more threatening menace was emerging in the east. The rise of the Shia Safavid dynasty in Iran forced the Ottomans to shift their focus to eastern Anatolia, where the power and popularity of the Iranian dynast, Shah Ismail (r. 1501–1524), posed a direct threat to the authority of the sultan. Under the charismatic leadership of their shah, who claimed to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and who dreamed of re-establishing the pre-Islamic Persian Empire, the Safavids occupied Baghdad in 1504 and pushed into southeastern Anatolia. The failure of the aging and ailing Bayezid to organize an effective response to the threat posed by the Safavids allowed one of his sons, Selim, to seize power in 1512.
It was during the reign of Selim I (r. 1512–1520) that
the Ottoman Empire emerged as the most powerful state in the Middle East and North Africa. First, Selim defeated the Safavids at the battle of Chaldiran (Chalduran) near Khoi north of Lake Urumiyyeh, in present-day northwestern Iran, on August 22–23, 1514. The victory at Chaldiran allowed the Ottomans to occupy Tabriz, the capital of the strategically important province of Azerbaijan. Selim then attacked and defeated the Mamluk armies, first at Marj Dabiq (Mercidabik) in Syria on August 24, 1516, and then at the battle of Ridaniya in Egypt on January 22, 1517, thus bringing the Arab lands of the Middle East, including the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, under Ottoman rule. It was the conquest of Islam’s holiest sites that allowed Ottoman sultans to claim the title of caliph, the religious and spiritual leader of all Sunni Muslims in the world.
Egypt emerged as one of the most lucrative provinces of the Ottoman Empire, sending large amounts of taxes to the central treasury in Istanbul. The conquest of Egypt allowed the Ottomans “to participate in the traffic in African gold, which passed through Ethiopia and the Sudan, and in the spice trade with Christian countries” (Braudel: 2:668). The Ottomans also used their military and naval presence in Egypt to impose their hegemony over the greater Red Sea region and annex Abyssinia, which “extended from the southern border of Egypt all the way to the Horn of Africa, encompassing most of present-day Sudan, Djibouti on the horn of Africa, and coastal Ethiopia” (Hathaway, Beshir Agha: 17).
When Selim’s son, Süleyman (r. 1520–1566), succeeded his father, the territorial expansion of the empire continued. Using the conflict between the Habsburg king Charles V and the French monarch Francis I to his advantage, the new sultan attacked and captured Belgrade in 1521. A year later the Ottomans occupied Rhodes despite fierce resistance from the Knights of St. John, who had ruled the island since the 13th century. Using Serbia as a territorial base, Süleyman invaded and occupied Hungary after defeating King Louis II at the battle of Mohács on August 29, 1526. With the collapse of the Hungarian state, the Habsburgs emerged as the northern neighbors of the Ottoman Empire and the power most threatened by Turkish expansionism. The expected attack on the Habsburg capital, Vienna, came in September 1529, but the arrival of the rainy season made the roads impassable for the Ottomans, forcing Süleyman to abandon the siege.
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