The Ottoman Empire: a Historical Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  The revolt of Patrona Halil and the emergence of a new sultan did not end the hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The skirmishes between the two Muslim states continued in Iraq, eastern Anatolia, and the southern Caucasus. Having liberated Iran from occupation forces, the Safavid prince Tahmasp declared himself the shah. The real power, however, rested with the shah’s military commander, Nader, the hero of the hour, who enjoyed the loyalty of the Iranian army. While the Safavid monarch wished to take the credit, it was Nader’s genius and charisma as a tactician and leader that were responsible for the independence of the country. After pushing Ottoman forces out of western Iran, Nader had been forced to abandon his campaign and return to northeastern Iran to quell a rebellion. In his absence, the shah attacked southern Caucasus in 1731 but was pushed back and subsequently defeated near Hamadan by the Ottomans. The territories that Nader had regained from the Ottomans were lost, although the shah managed to retain control over Azerbaijan, Luristan, and Iranian Kurdistan. The defeat of Tahmasp by the Ottomans allowed Nader to portray the shah as weak and incompetent. He denounced the treaty that the shah had signed and sent an ultimatum to the Ottoman government demanding the restoration of the provinces Iran had lost. Having excited and prepared his army and the population for a new war with the Ottoman Empire, Nader marched to Isfahan in 1732, removed Tahmasp from the throne, and replaced him with his infant son, Abbas III. Nader then proclaimed himself the regent and led his army in another war against the Ottomans.

  Nader’s first target was Baghdad, which he surrounded in 1733. The Ottomans, realizing the power and popularity of Nader, assembled a large force in northern Iraq. The two armies clashed near Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. In his first assault on the Ottoman forces, Nader was soundly defeated by the Ottoman commander, Topal Osman Pasha, near Mosul, but to the shock and amazement of his commanders and officials, Nader managed to reorganize his troops and attack the Ottoman forces three months later, at a time when Topal Osman Pasha had fallen victim to palace intrigues in Istanbul and had not received the men, arms, and provisions he had requested (Astarabadi: 313–323; Sykes: 2:251–252). Thus, when the two armies joined battle again in northern Iraq, the resupplied Iranian force routed the Ottomans. Topal Osman Pasha was killed on the battlefield (Astarabadi: 323–43; Sykes: 2:252). In Istanbul the sultan, Mahmud I (r. 1730–1754), could not accept the loss his armies had suffered at the hands of Nader. A new army was raised and dispatched against Nader, who immediately laid siege to Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Ganja in the southern Caucasus in the hope of forcing the Ottomans into an open engagement. The Ottomans took the bait and dispatched a new army against Nader, who defeated it in battle. The Ottoman commander was captured and killed, and the southern Caucasus once again was occupied by Iran. In October 1736 the two powers finally agreed to a peace treaty, which restored Iranian control over southern Caucasus and recognized the borders as defined by the Treaty of Qasr-i Shirin (Kasr-i Șirin) in 1639. Beyond signing a peace treaty with the Ottomans, Nader tried to address the religious root causes of the conflict between Shiism and Sunni Islam, but his efforts failed.

  Nader’s victory over the Ottomans served to convince the Russians to withdraw their remaining troops from Iran’s Caspian provinces. Nader used his victory over the Ottomans to remove the powerless Safavid figurehead and ascend the throne as Nader Shah in 1736. In 1738, two years after he had proclaimed himself the shah, Nader invaded Qandehar in present-day southern Afghanistan. Before seizing Qandehar, he captured Kabul. After pacifying the Pashtun tribes of southern Afghanistan, Nader attacked India and seized Delhi in March 1740. He used his conquest of India to plunder the famed treasures of Moghul emperors, including the world-renowned, jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne and the Kooh-e Noor (Mountain of Light) and Darya-ye Noor (Sea of Light) diamonds. After riots erupted in the Moghul capital, Nader’s forces massacred nearly 30,000 residents of Delhi. In 1740 Nader ordered the execution of the deposed Safavid monarch, Tahmasp II, and his two infant sons. He then went on to attack Central Asia with a large force equipped with guns and artillery. Nader inflicted humiliating defeats on the Uzbek armies of the two khanates of Bokhara and Khiva, which had no other option but to accept his suzerainty.

  The news of Nader’s conquests in India and Central Asia rang alarm bells in Istanbul. Though both sides were exhausted by intermittent warfare, the Ottomans were determined to punish Nader and regain the territory they had lost. The Ottoman sultan, Mahmud I, ordered his armies to attack Iran in summer 1745. An Ottoman army marched from Kars in eastern Anatolia against Iranian positions near Yerevan in Armenia. After several days of fierce fighting, Nader defeated the larger Ottoman force. The Ottoman artillery was captured by Nader’s men, and thousands of Ottoman soldiers were killed. The two sides agreed to sign a peace treaty in September 1746, restoring the borders established in the Treaty of Qasr-i Shirin, which had been signed between Murad IV and the Safavids almost a century earlier. Relieved from his campaigns against the Ottomans, Nader switched his focus to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. He ordered the construction of an Iranian navy, which was used to invade and occupy Oman at the entrance to the Indian Ocean.

  Toward the end of his reign, particularly after a failed assassination attempt on his life, Nader became increasingly more erratic, capricious, and violent, exhibiting signs of mental derangement. He began to suspect his son, Reza Qoli Mirza (1719–1747), of plotting to seize the throne. Nader’s mental condition deteriorated further after he ordered his son to be blinded, only to discover that the young prince was innocent of any wrongdoing. When he recognized his mistake, Nader put the blame squarely on those nobles who had not saved Reza Qoli Mirza by interceding on his behalf. By the end even members of the Afshar could not tolerate his capricious and brutal rule. In June 1747, outside Quchan in the Khorasan province of northeastern Iran, Nader was assassinated by a group of his army commanders. Upon the assassination of Nader, his nephew, Ali Qoli, ascended the throne as Ādel Shah. The new monarch could not, however, preserve the unity and the territorial integrity of the empire his uncle had left behind. Less than a year after he had seized the throne of Iran, Ādel Shah was defeated and captured by his own brother, Ibrahim, who blinded the humiliated Ādel Shah. Ibrahim, in turn, was defeated by Shahrokh, a grandson of Nader who had ascended the throne in Mashhad in northeastern Iran. Thus, Nader’s empire disintegrated quickly after his assassination. His death threw Iran into a long period of chaos and turmoil, which continued until the consolidation of power at the hands of Karim Khan, the founder of the Zand dynasty, in 1765.

  See also: Battles and Treaties: Tulip Period; Sultans: Ahmed III; Mahmud I

  Further Reading

  Astarabadi, Mirza Mehdi Khan. Dorre-ye Nadereh: Tarikh-e Asr-e Nader Shah. Tehran: Sherkat-e Entesharat-e Elmi va Farhangi, 1988.

  Kurat, A. N., and J. S. Bromley. “The Retreat of the Turks 1683–1730.” In A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730, edited by M. A. Cook, 178–219. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

  Olson, Robert W. The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations 1718–1743. London, Rutledge, 1997.

  Roemer, H. R. “The Safavid Period.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by Peter Jackson and Lawrence Lockhart. Vol. 6. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

  Sajdi, Dana, ed. Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee, Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007.

  Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

  Sykes, Sir Percy. History of Persia. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1951.

  Nizam-i Cedid (Nizam-i Jedid)

  Nizam-i Cedid (Nizam-i Jedid), or New Order, was a reform program introduced by the Ottoman sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1807). The repeated military defeats suffered by the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century convinced Selim III of the need to introduce fundamental reforms that would restore the power of the central governme
nt while preserving the territorial integrity of the empire against internal and external threats. Internally, the greatest challenge for Selim III was to reduce the power of the local notables (āyāns). Although they accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, some āyāns acted as quasi-independent rulers, maintaining private armies and conducting their own foreign policy. Externally, Russia posed the greatest threat to the territorial integrity of the Ottoman state.

  Selim centered his reforms on the creation of a modern army or Nizam-i Cedid Ordusu (Army of the New Order), which was to restore central governmental control over the empire’s provinces. Initially the sultan believed that the existing janissary and sipāhi corps could be modernized by introducing new methods of training and administration. He soon realized, however, that the reform would ignite fierce opposition from within the corps. Thus he abandoned the plan and opted for the more radical approach of creating a new army altogether. The recruitment for the new army began in 1793–1794. By 1807, when Selim was deposed, the new army had nearly 30,000 well-armed and well-equipped men (Zürcher: 22).

  In his attempt to create a new army, Selim III recognized that he could not achieve his objective without providing the technological and organizational support that a modern military structure required. The establishment of a new army required modern weaponry, which had to be either purchased and imported from European countries or designed and manufactured in factories built by the Ottoman government. Furthermore, a new army could not be created without proper training by an educated and experienced officer corps, which in turn required the introduction of modern military schools with instructors and trainers who could only be recruited and imported from European countries. Thus, a military engineering school was created in 1795.

  The creation of the new army forced the Ottoman government to recruit European instructors and trainers, mostly from France. With the arrival of European trainers and the introduction of modern military schools, the antireform forces began to mobilize against the sultan. The new army was fiercely opposed by the janissaries, who viewed it as an open challenge to their dominant role in the Ottoman military. The introduction of European education also was opposed by the religious classes led by the şeyhülislam, who considered Selim’s reforms to be incompatible with Islam. In late May 1807 the janissary corps staged a revolt against the sultan. The janissaries were quickly joined by the ulema and their students. Selim refused to use his new army to suppress the rebels. Instead, he tried to contain the rebellion by promising the rebels that he would disband his new army. He also threw a number of his own supporters, including his grand vizier, into the crowd. The policy of appeasing his opponents only emboldened the rebels, who declared Selim’s reforms incompatible with the laws of Islam. Selim was deposed on May 29, 1807. The rebels brought a cousin of Selim, Mustafa, out of the royal harem and placed him on the throne as Mustafa IV. The new sultan was used by the opponents of Selim as a convenient tool to disband the Nizam-i Cedid.

  See also: Empire and Administration: Janissaries; Sultans: Mahmud II; Selim III; Primary Documents: Document 10

  Further Reading

  Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

  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.

  Shaw, Stanford J. Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1781–1807. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

  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.

  Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.

  Ottoman Constitution

  After the death of Āli Pasha, the last great statesman of the Tanzimat era in September 1871, several grand viziers came and went, while Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861–1876) became increasingly involved in running the everyday affairs of the empire, thus introducing an element of chaos. Then, in the early hours of May 30, 1876, a small group of officials and army commanders, led by the reform-minded statesman Midhat Pasha, carried out a peaceful military coup (Davison: 99–100). A nephew of Abdülaziz, Prince Murad was brought out of his residence to the ministry of war and declared the new sultan.

  Before the new monarch could establish himself, however, news of Abdülaziz’s sudden death was announced to a shocked populace. The body of the deposed sultan had been discovered in his private bedroom, his wrists slashed with a pair of scissors, leading many to conclude that he had been murdered. To defuse the rumors of assassination, the government called on doctors from several foreign embassies in Istanbul to examine the body and offer their medical opinion on the cause of death, which was officially declared a suicide. The events profoundly affected the new sultan, Murad, who suffered a nervous breakdown. Accordingly, Midhat and his colleagues decided to depose Murad in favor of his brother, who ascended the Ottoman throne in August as Abdülhamid II. Midhat Pasha was appointed grand vizier in December, and shortly afterward the first Ottoman constitution was introduced (McCarthy: 304).

  These momentous events in Istanbul took place in the context of major developments in European power politics and another crisis in the Balkans that erupted when Serbia and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman Empire in July 1876. With chaos and uncertainty reigning in Istanbul and revolt and instability spreading to the rural communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia had pushed for military intervention by Serbia and Montenegro. This Pan-Slavic project designed by Russia failed when Ottoman troops struck back, defeating the Serbs and forcing them to sue for peace. Russia then instigated a nationalist uprising in Bulgaria, which was crushed by Ottoman forces with heavy casualties and massacres of the civilian population. This allowed the czar to demand that the Ottoman Empire introduce reforms and grant autonomy to the Bulgarian people. Recognizing the threat of Russian intervention in the Balkans, the British government intervened and called for the convening of an international conference to meet in Istanbul, with the intention of defusing the possibility of another war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. On the first day of the conference, December 23, 1876, however, the Ottoman delegation shocked the European participants by announcing that a constitution had been promulgated and that any attempt by foreign powers to press the Ottoman state into introducing reforms in its European provinces was unnecessary because under the new political regime all Ottoman subjects would be treated as equals, with their rights protected and guaranteed by the government (Zürcher: 74).

  The Fundamental Law (Kānun-i Esāsi) of December 23, 1876, used the Belgian constitution of 1831 and the Prussian constitution of 1850 as its models. According to the first Ottoman constitution, the sultan enjoyed the right to appoint the grand vizier and the members of his cabinet. He also possessed the authority to dissolve the parliament at his discretion.

  The Ottoman constitution did not prevent another military confrontation with Russia. Continuous palace intrigues convinced Abdülhamid II to dismiss Midhat Pasha, who was sent into exile in February 1877, an event that was soon followed by a Russian declaration of war in April. The Ottoman forces delayed the Russian southward incursion for several months at Plevna (Pleven) in Bulgaria, but by December the czarist army was encamped a mere 12 kilometers outside Istanbul (Zürcher: 74). On March 3, 1878, the Treaty of San Stefano was signed between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Among other things, it called for the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian state, stretching from the Black Sea to the Aegean, which Russia would occupy for two years. Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro were also to be recognized as independent states, while Russia received Batumi in southern Caucasus, as well as the district
s of Kars and Ardahan in eastern Anatolia. In addition, the Ottoman government was obliged to introduce fundamental reforms in Thessaly and Armenia. Other European powers could not tolerate the rapid growth of Russian influence in the Balkans and the Caucasus. They agreed to meet in Berlin at a new peace conference designed to partition the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire in such a way as to prevent the emergence of Russia as the dominant power in the region.

  See also: Beys and Pashas: Āli Pasha, Mehmed Emin; Fuad Pasha; Mustafa Reșid Pasha; Sultans: Abdülmecid; Primary Documents: Document 13; Document 14

  Further Reading

  Davison, Roderic H. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876. New York: Gordian Press, 1973.

  Findley, Carter V. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.