An Ottoman army of 100,000 was mobilized to face the Aq Qoyunlu. The decisive battle took place near the village of Başkent (Bashkent) in northeastern Anatolia on August 11, 1473 (Roemer: 6:179). The Ottoman forces, which included 10,000 janissaries and a superior artillery, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Aq Qoyunlu army, killing one of Uzun Hassan’s sons and forcing the Turkoman chief to flee the battlefield (Tehrani: 570–584). Uzun Hassan retreated to his capital of Tabriz in present-day northwestern Iran. Mehmed II did not pursue the Aq Qoyunlu armies and refused to invade Azerbaijan.
At each stop on their way back to Istanbul, the Ottomans beheaded 400 Aq Qoyunlu men, leaving their bodies on the road as a warning to those who were contemplating a revolt against the authority of the sultan (Tehrani: 583). In one day alone, 3,000 Aq Qoyunlu soldiers and officers were executed. With the defeat of Aq Qoyunlu, the Karaman as well as Kastamonu and Trebizond were fully incorporated into the Ottoman state.
See also: Empire and Administration: Uzun Hassan; Sultans: Mehmed II
Further Reading
Har-El, Shai. Struggle for Domination in the Middle East: The Ottoman-Mamluk War. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Navai, Abdol Hossein, ed. Asnad va Mukatabat-i Tarikhi-yi. Tehran: Tahuri Bookstore, 1992.
Roemer, H. R. “The Türkmen Dynasties.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by Peter Jackson and Lawrence Lockhart, 6:173–174. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Sykes, Sir Percy. History of Persia. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1951.
Tehrani, Abu Bakr. Kitab-i Diyar Bakriyya (Ak Koyunlular Tarihi). Edited by Faruk Sümer. Tehran: Tahuri Bookstore, 1977.
Tursun Beg. The History of Mehmed the Conqueror. Translated by Halil Inalcik and Murphey Rhoads. Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1978.
Chaldiran, Battle of (1514)
Military engagement between the armies of the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran, which took place near Khoi, north of Lake Urumiyyeh in present-day northwestern Iran, on August 22–23, 1514. At the Battle of Chaldiran (Chalduran), Ottoman armies under the command of Ottoman sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520) defeated the armies of Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), the shah of Iran and the founder of the Safavid dynasty.
The Iranian monarch and founder of the Safavid dynasty, Shah Ismail I (r. 1501–1524), at the Battle of Chaldiran fighting the Ottoman armies under the command of Sultan Selim I. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
Selim ascended the Ottoman throne in 1512, with the goal of reviving the expansionist policies of his grandfather, Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481), who aimed at the creation of a world empire. At the time two Islamic empires blocked the expansion of Ottoman power. The first was the Safavid dynasty, based in Iran, and the second was the Mamluks, based in Egypt.
Since 1501 the Safavid dynasty, under the charismatic leadership of Shah Ismail, had reunified the Iranian state. The Safavids claimed to be the direct descendants of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, through the seventh Shia imam, Musa al-Kazim. The ancestor of the Safavid family was the scholar and Sufi leader, Sheikh Safi al-Din Ardabili (1252–1334), who enjoyed enormous power and popularity among the Turkoman and Kurdish tribes of northern Syria and eastern Anatolia. Having converted to Shia Islam, these tribal groups emerged as the military backbone of the Safavid movement. Because they wore distinctive red headgear, which comprised 12 triangles representing the 12 imams of Shia Islam, they came to be known as the Qizilbash (Kizilbaş) or Red Heads. With the support and participation of the Qizilbash tribesmen, who considered him a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and their religious and spiritual leader, Shah Ismail embarked on an ambitious campaign to re-create the Persian Empire of pre-Islamic Iran.
For Selim, the Ottoman invasion of eastern Anatolia had a twofold objective. The first goal was to destroy Shah Ismail’s army. The second was to cleanse Anatolia of any supporters of the Safavid shah. Thus, as the Ottoman army pushed into central and eastern Anatolia, tens of thousands of men and women who were suspected of sympathizing with the Safavid cause were massacred and their bodies displayed on the roads as a reminder to those who dreamed of joining the Shia Iranians.
The decisive battle between the Ottoman and Safavid armies took place on the plain of Chaldiran, near Khoi, on August 22–23, 1514. The Iranians were defeated and forced to retreat after the Ottoman artillery and muskets destroyed the Safavid cavalry, which was armed with swords, spears, and bows. The Ottoman forces pushed into Azerbaijan, capturing the city of Tabriz.
In the end, however, the arrival of an early and harsh winter; incessant surprise attacks by Safavid irregulars, who harassed and cut off the Ottoman army’s limited food supplies; and increasing pressure from the janissary units on the sultan to return forced Selim to withdraw his army back to eastern Anatolia. The two powers did not negotiate a peace treaty, and frontier raids and skirmishes continued for the next four decades. Although the Ottomans withdrew their forces from Azerbaijan, the victory at Chaldiran neutralized the immediate threat posed by the Safavid Empire, allowing Selim to impose Ottoman rule over eastern Anatolia and much of Kurdistan.
See also: Empire and Administration: Ismail I, Shah of Iran; Sultans: Selim I; Primary Documents: Document 5
Further Reading
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Roemer, H. R. “The Safavid Period.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by Peter Jackson and Lawrence Lockhart, 6:189–350. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Savory, Roger. Iran under the Safavids. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Streusand, Douglas E. Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010.
Sykes, Sir Percy. History of Persia. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1951.
Uğur, Ahmed. The Reign of Sultan Selim I in the Light of the Selim-name Literature. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985.
Congress of Berlin (1878)
The Congress of Berlin, officially organized by the Austrian government and dominated by the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was a gathering of European powers that took place from June 13 to July 13, 1878. The major European powers gathered in Berlin to revoke the Treaty of San Stefano, which had been signed by Russia and the Ottoman Empire on March 3, 1878, at the conclusion of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878.
The Congress of Berlin, held between June 13 and July 13, 1878, was organized to revise the Treaty of San Stefano, which Russia and the Ottoman Empire had signed at the conclusion of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878. (Singer, Isadore, ed. The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901)
The Congress of Berlin was a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans. When the Congress ended, the Ottoman Empire was no longer a political and military power in the Balkans (Hurewitz: 1:189–191). The Ottomans lost 8 percent of their territory and four and a half million of their population (Karpat: 28; Finkel: 491; Shaw: 2:191). The majority of those who left the empire were Christians, while tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from the Balkans and the Caucasus fled into the interior of the empire. The large Bulgarian state that had been created three months earlier at the Treaty of San Stefano was divided into three separate entities (Shaw: 2:190–191). The region north of the Balkan Mountains and the area around Sofia w
ere combined into a new autonomous Bulgarian principality that would recognize the suzerainty of the sultan but for all practical purposes would act as a Russian satellite. The region lying between the Rhodope and Balkan Mountains, which corresponded with Eastern Rumelia, was established as a semiautonomous region under its own Christian governor, who was to be appointed by the sultan and supervised by European powers (Shaw: 2:191). The third area, Thrace and Macedonia, remained under Ottoman rule (Jelavich: 360).
The Berlin Congress did not provide Greece with any new territory. Instead, the powers asked that Greece and the Ottoman Empire enter into negotiations on establishing the future of their boundaries, including the status of Thessaly and Epirus. Austria was granted the right to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as the sancāk (sanjāk) of Novi Pazar, a strip of land that separated Serbia from Montenegro (Jelavich: 360). Further, while the Congress recognized Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro as independent states, the Romanian state was forced to hand southern Bessarabia to Russia and in return received Dobrudja and the Danube Delta (Jelavich: 360; Zürcher: 75). Russia also received the districts of Batumi, Kars, and Ardahan, thereby establishing military control over the eastern shores of the Black Sea and an important strategic land bridge to Anatolia (Hurewitz: 1:190).
The British received the island of Cyprus, which had Greek majority and Turkish minority populations. By handing Albanian-populated areas and towns to Montenegro and Greece, the European powers ignited a new nationalist movement among a proud people, who had faithfully served the Ottoman state on many occasions in the past (Jelavich: 361–366). Thus Albania, with its emerging national movement, would replicate the model established by the Serbs, the Romanians, and the Bulgarians and demand independence.
Although Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, and Bulgaria gained their independence or autonomy in 1878, the Congress of Berlin left the newly independent states dissatisfied and hungry for more territory. The Romanians were angry because they were forced to cede the rich and productive Bessarabia in return for the poor and less productive Dobrudja. The Bulgarians were outraged because they lost the greater Bulgarian state, which had been created by the Treaty of San Stefano. Serbia gained limited territory, but that did not satisfy the voracious appetite of Serbian nationalists, who dreamed of a greater Serbia with access to the sea. Montenegro received a port on the Adriatic, but as in the case of Serbia, it did not acquire the towns and the districts it had demanded. Of all the participants in the Congress, Russia was perhaps the most frustrated. In return for its massive investment in the war against the Ottoman Empire, it had received only southern Bessarabia in the Balkans, while the Austrians, who had opportunistically sat on the sidelines, had been awarded Bosnia-Herzegovina.
These frustrated dreams turned the Balkans into a ticking bomb. By carving the Ottoman Empire into small and hungry independent states, the European powers laid the foundation for intense rivalries. Thirty-six years after the conclusion of the Berlin Congress, on June 28, 1914, the Balkan tinderbox exploded when a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austrian crown prince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo, setting off World War I.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Midhat Pasha; Peoples and Cultures: Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church; Sultans: Abdülhamid II
Further Reading
Carmichael, Cathie. A Concise History of Bosnia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Davison, Roderic H. Nineteenth Century Ottoman Diplomacy and Reforms. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1999.
Findley, Carter V. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Glenny, Misha. The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1804–2011. London: Penguin Books, 2012.
Hale, William. Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774–2000. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
Hurewitz, J. C. Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record, 1535–1956. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1956.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Vol 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Karpat, Kemal H. Ottoman Population 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Crimean War (1853–1856) and the Treaty of Paris (1856)
A war fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia on the one hand and Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. The decisive part of the war was fought on the Crimean peninsula.
By proclaiming itself the protector of Serbia, the Romanian-populated principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, and the sultan’s Orthodox Christian subjects, Russia intended to replace both the Ottoman Empire and Austria as the hegemonic power in the Balkans. The ultimate goal of Russian foreign policy was to create a series of satellite states that would be dependent on Russian protection and support for their political survival. Parallel to this was the debate between the Catholic and Orthodox churches over their rights to various holy sites in Jerusalem, with Russia championing the Orthodox position and France that of Rome. In 1852 the Ottoman government announced its decision on the question of Christian holy places in Palestine and sided with the French. The Russian czar, Nicholas I, responded by ordering a partial mobilization of his armies. He also claimed that Russia had a right to protect the sultan’s Christian Orthodox subjects. The czar’s insistence on acting as the protector of the Christian Orthodox population of the Ottoman Empire constituted a direct threat to the sovereignty of the Ottoman state. Nicholas I, who was determined to carve up the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire, expected that he would receive support for his expansionist policy from Austria and Britain, but he was wrong. Neither Britain nor Austria intended to allow Russia to impose its hegemony over southeastern Europe and the Turkish Straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles). Confident that it would receive support from Britain, France, and Austria, the Ottoman government refused to accept Russia’s demands. After Russian forces invaded Moldavia and Wallachia in July 1853, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, on October 4, 1853. The invasion of the two Romanian-populated principalities threatened Austria’s economic lifeline, the Danube.
As the British and French naval forces crossed the straits on their way to the Black Sea, the Ottoman fleet fought the Russian naval forces at Sinop on November 30. The Russian fleet destroyed most of the Ottoman ships that fought in the naval confrontation. In March 1854 France and Britain declared war on Russia after negotiations collapsed. Fearing an attack from Austria, Russia withdrew its forces from Wallachia and Moldavia, which were then occupied by a joint Austro-Ottoman force (Jelavich: 107). The allied forces landed on the Crimean peninsula in September 1854 and fought their way to south of Sevastopol. On October 25 the Russians waged a counterattack in a confrontation that came to be known as the Battle of Balaclava. The Russian attack was repulsed. Ottoman forces under the command of Omar Pasha also defeated a second Russian counterattack. The military campaigns that followed, particularly the siege of Sevastopol, which fell after 11 months in October 1855, forced Russia to sue for peace in February 1856.
As the representatives of European powers began to arrive at the peace conference in Paris in February 1856, the sultan, under pressure from France and Great Britain, issued a second major reform decree, the Hatt-i Hümāyun, or the Imperial Rescript, committing his government to the principle of
equality of all Ottoman subjects. The Treaty of Paris, signed on March 30, 1856, forced Russia to withdraw from Wallachia and Moldavia, which along with Serbia were to regain their autonomy under Ottoman rule. By surrendering southern Bessarabia to Moldavia, Russia’s access to the Danube was blocked. The Danube River and the Turkish Straits were declared open to ships of all countries, and the Black Sea was demilitarized. Russia was also obliged to withdraw its forces from eastern Anatolia, including the district of Kars, which it had occupied during the war. Perhaps most important, however, was that the Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris had resulted in the de facto inclusion of the Ottoman Empire in the “Concert of Europe,” which had tried to maintain the balance of power on the continent since the defeat of Napoleon and the convening of the Congress of Vienna in 1814 (Zürcher: 54; Shaw: 2:140–41). The territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was thus theoretically preserved, and Russia’s expansion into the Balkans was temporarily checked. However, the Crimean War was very costly and forced the Ottoman government to apply for high interest loans that would eventually undermine the economic independence of the state. The accumulation of significant debt to European banks and the continuous struggle to generate sufficient revenue to repay them undermined efforts to reform the Ottoman government for the remainder of the 19th century.
Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War in October 1854. (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
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