The Ottoman Empire: a Historical Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  Although the Ottomans withdrew their forces from Azerbaijan, the victory at Chaldiran enabled Selim to impose Ottoman rule over eastern Anatolia and much of Kurdistan. Shah Ismail died in 1524 at the age of 36, leaving the throne of Iran to his infant son, Tahmasp. In late summer 1533, during the reign of Süleyman I (r. 1520–1566), the Ottomans invaded Iran again. In response to the expansionist policies of the Ottomans, the Safavids dispatched several embassies to European courts, seeking an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. Habsburg and Venetian emissaries arrived at the Iranian court to plan a joint attack on Ottoman territory from the east and the west. Learning from their mistakes at Chaldiran, the Safavids also adopted a new strategy, which emphasized avoiding open warfare and adopting a scorched-earth policy. Thus, as the Ottoman forces under the personal command of Süleyman I entered their territory in 1534, the Safavid forces retreated, burning and destroying towns and villages and denying food, harvest, and shelter to the Ottoman invaders. The Safavids were convinced that with the arrival of the harsh Iranian winter and increasing shortages of food and supplies, the Ottoman forces would withdraw, while the shah’s army would follow the invaders in their retreat and recover the lost territory. Despite these calculations, Süleyman’s first campaign against the Safavid state proved to be a huge success. Ottoman armies captured Iraq and Azerbaijan. The city of Tabriz fell into Ottoman hands in July 1534. To outdo his father, Süleyman pushed his army farther east, to Sultaniyyeh near Zanjan in present-day northwestern Iran, before returning west, crossing the Zagros mountain range, and arriving at the gates of Baghdad, which surrendered to the Ottoman sultan after a short siege in November.

  Although the Safavids could not defeat the superior Ottoman army in a face-to-face confrontation, the Ottomans also failed to destroy the Safavid monarchy and to maintain a permanent occupation force inside Iran. For the Ottomans the invasion of Iran was difficult and costly, forcing them to travel long distances while maintaining extensive supply lines, which were under constant attack from Safavid irregular forces. For the Safavids the Ottoman invasions and occupations undermined the prestige and power of the shah among his subjects and resulted in a significant reduction of revenue sent to the central government.

  Despite the difficulties of waging war against Iran, Süleyman decided to invade Safavid territory again in 1548 after Elqas Mirza, a brother of Shah Tahmasp, fled to Ottoman territory and sought protection and support from the sultan. Convinced that the internal struggle over the Iranian throne could be used to expand Ottoman power and territory, Süleyman dispatched an army with Elqas Mirza, which took Tabriz but once again failed to establish permanent Ottoman rule. The campaign disintegrated after Elqas Mirza quarreled with his Ottoman handlers, forcing the sultan to withdraw his support from the Iranian pretender. After three long, costly, and exhausting campaigns, the Ottomans and Safavids made peace and signed the Treaty of Amasya, on May 29, 1555. Although the Safavids regained some of the territory they had lost to Süleyman, the Ottomans retained their control over Iraq. For the remaining years of Süleyman’s reign, both the Ottoman Empire and Iran avoided costly military campaigns.

  The Safavid state reached the zenith of its power during the reign of Abbas I (r. 1587–1629), known in Iranian history as Shah Abbas the Great. Beginning in 1603–1604, Abbas embarked on an ambitious campaign to regain all the territories that his predecessors, Ismail I and Tahmasp I, had lost. First, Shah Abbas attacked and defeated Ottoman forces in Azerbaijan and the south Caucasus. The Safavid forces moved at blazing speed, catching Ottoman garrisons in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus by surprise and capturing the city of Tabriz in 1603 and Nakhchivan in 1604 (Eskandar Beg Monshi: 2:178). Shortly afterward Yerevan (Erivan) and Kars were sacked. Using Armenia as his base, Shah Abbas invaded and occupied the entire eastern Caucasus as far north as Shirvan.

  The crisis caused by the campaigns of Shah Abbas coincided with the death of Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) and the accession of Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617), who mobilized a large force against Iran. When the decisive battle was fought in September 1605, however, the Iranians scored an impressive victory against the larger Ottoman force. In addition to Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, the Safavids captured southeastern Anatolia and Iraq. The defeat undermined Ottoman rule in Anatolia and the Arab world. Kurdish and Turkoman tribal chiefs defected, and a series of revolts erupted, particularly in Syria, where the Kurds staged an uprising against the Ottoman state (Shaw: 1:188).

  Despite their best efforts to counter the Iranian threat, the Ottomans could not dislodge the Safavid forces from eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. Military campaigns against Iran exhausted the Ottoman treasury and did not result in decisive victory. With no prospect of an enduring peace, the Safavids established closer diplomatic and military ties with the Christian powers of Europe. Shah Abbas began to coordinate his attacks against Ottoman borderlands in conjunction with campaigns waged against the empire by the Habsburgs and Venice.

  Safavid cavalry led by the Iranian monarch Shah Abbas I the Great fight the Ottoman Turks on the battlefield, 17th-century fresco, Chehel Sotun Palace, Isfahan, Iran. (PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)

  The Safavids were assisted in their campaigns by a series of internal revolts known as celāli (jelāli), which disrupted trade and commerce and ignited political chaos and social anarchy in Anatolia and parts of the Arab world. Iran’s successful military campaigns emboldened celāli rebels, as well as Kurdish and Arab tribal chiefs, who had never been fully incorporated into the Ottoman political system and acted as independent rulers in their respective districts. Chaos and anarchy forced the rural population to flee the land. As trade and agricultural production were disrupted, taxes collected by the central government declined significantly.

  During the reign of Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) the Ottomans tried to restore peace and order in Anatolia and remove Iranian forces from Iraq. After several long campaigns against Iran, the Ottoman army captured the city of Baghdad and re-established Ottoman control over Iraq, which lasted until the end of World War I. In May 1639, on the plain of Zohab (Zuhab) near the town of Qasr-i Shirin (Kasr-i Şirin) in present-day western Iran, the Ottoman Empire and Iran signed a peace treaty that ended nearly 140 years of hostility between the two Islamic states. The treaty established the Ottoman sultan as the master of Iraq, while the Safavids maintained their control over Azerbaijan and the southern Caucasus. The two Muslim powers avoided a major military confrontation until 1722, when the Safavid dynasty was overthrown by Ghilzai Afghans. (See the appendix for a list of rulers of the Safavid dynasty.)

  See also: Empire and Administration: Abbas I, Shah of Iran; Ismail I, Shah of Iran; Sultans: Bayezid II; Selim I; Süleyman I; Primary Documents: Document 5

  Further Reading

  Eskandar Beg Monshi. History of Shah Abbas the Great (Tarikh-e Alamara-ye Abbasi). Translated from Persian by Roger M. Savory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978.

  Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.

  Mirza Mohammad Sadeq Mousavi Nami Esfahani. Tarikh-e Giti Gosha. Tehran: Eqbal, 1990.

  Mohammad Hashem Asef. Rostam al-Tawarikh. Edited by Mohammad Moshiri. Tehran: Sepehr Publishing House, 1972.

  Molla Jalal ud-Din Monnajem. Tarikh-e Abbasi ya Rouznameh-ye Molla Jalal. Tehran, 1988.

  Morgan, David. Medieval Persia 1040–1797. London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.

  Naima, Mustafa (Mustafa Naim). Annals of the Turkish Empire from 1591 to 1659 of the Christian Era. Translated by Charles Fraser. New York: Arno Press, 1973.

  Pitcher, Donald Edgar. An Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972.

  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.

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

  Tanzimat

  To save the Ottoman Empire from decline and territorial disintegration, a small group of Ottoman officials used the death of Sultan Mahmud II in 1839 to embark on a new program of governmental reforms, which came to be known as Tanzimat (Reorganization). On November 3, 1839, the new Ottoman sultan, Abdülmecid (Abdülmejid) (r. 1839–1861), invited his ministers as well as the representatives of foreign powers to gather in the rose garden of the Topkapi Palace. Once the guests had arrived, the sultan’s foreign minister, Mustafa Reșid Pasha (Mustafa Reshid Pasha), read a decree titled Hatt-i Sherif-i Gülhane (the Noble Rescript of the Rose Garden). The document guaranteed the subjects of the sultan security of life, honor, and property. It also promised a regular system for assessing and levying taxes, as well as a just system of conscription and military service. The royal rescript also committed the Ottoman state to a number of reforms, such as establishing a new penal code, eradicating bribery, and creating a modern tax system that would eliminate inequities and special privileges, such as tax farming. Thus the noble rescript demonstrated a new commitment by the sultan and his ministers to the rule of law, the equality of all Ottoman subjects regardless of their religion and ethnicity, and the establishment of a new system of justice that protected their life and property against arbitrary attacks and confiscation.

  Using Europe as their model, the architects of Tanzimat divided the Ottoman government into several ministries with specific tasks and responsibilities. A council of ministers was created to serve as the highest advisory body to the sultan. Building new roads and railways was viewed as one of the most important priorities of the Ottoman government. Armies sent to quell internal rebellions and confront foreign invaders could reach their destinations much faster using a modern road or riding on a train. Telegraph services were introduced as a means of communicating orders from Istanbul and receiving the latest news from provinces. The improvement of the transportation and communication systems also stimulated the economy and intensified commercial ties among various regions of the empire.

  In addition to the modernization of the empire’s infrastructure, the Tanzimat period also witnessed a significant transformation in the Ottoman educational system. Mahmud II had introduced the Rușdiye (Rushdiye) (adolescent) schools, which provided a secular education for male students who had completed the mekteps (the traditional schools devoted to the study of the Quran) (Zürcher: 62). The principal objective for the creation of modern schools was to train a new educated elite capable of administering an empire. The fear of opposition from conservatives, however, slowed down educational reform and forced the reformers to attach modern schools to various governmental ministries and bureaus. Thus the first medical and engineering schools in the Ottoman Empire were introduced as academic units within a military school (McCarthy: 299). The introduction of modern educational institutions also suffered from a lack of adequate funding and the absence of well-trained teachers and instructors. Despite these difficulties, a new bureaucracy, which was four to five times larger than the imperial administration and relied heavily on graduates from the modern schools, was created. Finally, the men of Tanzimat tried to create a modern financial structure and an efficient tax collection system that would provide the central treasury with sufficient funds to support governmental reforms. The “main thrust” of their financial reforms was “to simplify the collection of revenues” by delegating “the responsibility of tax collection to the salaried agents of the government, rather than governors, holders of prebendal grants, or other intermediaries of the classical system” (Kasaba: 50).

  Despite their best efforts to focus on reform, the men of the Tanzimat faced serious challenges from both internal rebellions and foreign aggression that ultimately undermined their efforts and resulted in the disintegration of the empire. In October 1840 the Ottomans and the British began to exert military pressure on Mehmed Ali, the ruler of Egypt, forcing his troops to evacuate Palestine and Syria in February 1841. The sultan, however, issued a decree granting Mehmed Ali and his family the right to rule Egypt. The second important foreign policy crisis of the Tanzimat era was the Crimean War, which forced the Ottoman Empire to declare war on Russia in October 1853. By acting as the big brother and protector of Serbia, the Danubian Principalities, and the sultan’s Orthodox Christian subjects, Russia intended to replace both the Ottoman Empire and Austria as the dominant power in the Balkans. The ultimate goal of Russian foreign policy was to create a series of satellite states that depended on Russian protection and support for their political survival. Parallel to this was the debate between the Catholic and Orthodox churches over their right 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, siding with the French position. The Russian government was outraged, and Czar Nicholas I ordered a partial mobilization of his army to back a new series of demands, including the Russian right to protect the sultan’s Orthodox Christian subjects. Confident that it would receive support from Great Britain, France, and Austria, the Ottoman government rejected the Russian demands. When the czarist forces invaded the Danubian Principalities, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia.

  As the British and the French naval forces crossed the Turkish Straits on their way to the Black Sea, the Ottomans fought the Russian navy at Sinop, where the Ottoman fleet was destroyed and thousands of sailors were killed. After negotiations collapsed in March 1854, France and Great Britain declared war on Russia. Fearing an attack from Austria, the Russian forces withdrew from Wallachia and Moldavia. The military campaigns that followed, particularly the attack on Sevastopol, which was occupied in October 1855, forced Russia to sue for peace.

  While the representatives of European powers were arriving at the peace conference in Paris in February 1856, the sultan, under pressure from France and Great Britain, issued a second reform decree, the Hatt-i Hümayun, or the Imperial Rescript, committing his government to the principle of equality of all Ottoman subjects. The Treaty of Paris, signed in March 1856, forced Russia to withdraw from Wallachia and Moldavia, which, along with Serbia, were to regain their autonomy under Ottoman rule. Russia’s access to the Danube was blocked by its surrender of southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. That famous river and the Turkish Straits were declared open to ships of all countries, and the Black Sea was demilitarized. Russia also was obliged to withdraw its forces from eastern Anatolia, including the city of Kars, which it had occupied during the war. The Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris 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). The territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was thus theoretically preserved and Russia’s expansion into southeast Europe contained.

  With Russian aggression checked, the leaders of Tanzimat once again focused on the implementation of their reform agenda. The Crimean War had been very costly and forced the Ottoman government to apply for high-interest loans that eventually undermined the economic independence of the state. The accumulation of significant debt to European banks and the continuous struggle to generate sufficient revenue to repay it undermined efforts to reform the government for the remainder of the 19th century.

  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, who had served as governor of Nish (1861–1868) and Baghdad (1869–1872), carried out a peaceful military coup. A nephew of Abdülaziz, Prince Murad, was brought out of his residence to t
he ministry of war and declared the new sultan.

  Before the new monarch could consolidate his position, 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. These events profoundly affected the new sultan, Murad, who suffered a nervous breakdown. 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.

  See also: Beys and Pashas: Āli Pasha, Mehmed Emin; Fuad Pasha; Mustafa Reșid Pasha; Sultans: Abdülhamid II; Abdülmecid; Primary Documents: Document 12

  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.

  Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Vol 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.