Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Karpat, Kemal H. “Comments on Contributions and the Borderlands.” In Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities and Political Changes, edited by Kemal H. Karpat with Robert W. Zens. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
Kasaba, Reşat. The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: The Nineteenth Century. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. London and New York: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997.
Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Quataert, Donald, and Erik-Jan Zürcher. Workers and Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, 1840–1950. London: I. B. Tauris, 1995.
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.
Timur (1336–1405)
Timur, also known as Timur-e Lang (Timur the Lame) in Persian, Timur Lenk in Turkish, and Tamurlane in English, was the Turkic world conqueror who created an empire that at its zenith stretched from Central Asia to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. His victory over the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) at the Battle of Ankara brought the Ottoman state to the brink of extinction.
Timur was born in Kesh near Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan in 1336. He was born into the Barlas tribe, a Mongolian group that had settled in Transoxiana, the region lying between the two great rivers of Syr Darya (Greek: Jaxartes) to the north and Amu Darya (Greek: Oxus) to the south. The region was ruled at the time by the Chağatai khanate, which was named after Chağatai, the second son of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan.
The Turkic world conqueror, Timur, also known as Tamerlane, brought the Ottoman state to the verge of extinction when he defeated and captured the Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I, in July 1402. (Wellcome Library, London)
Timur began his rise to power as a leader of a small band of nomadic marauders. As a young man Timur fought in the armies of the Chağatai khanate and the ruler of Transoxiana Amir Kazgan. In 1357, after Amir Kazgan’s death, Timur and his men joined the armies of the ruler of Kashghar (present-day western China), Tughluq Temur. In 1361 Tughluq Temur invaded Transoxiana and seized the city of Samarqand. Tughluq Temur designated his son, Ilyas Khoja, as the ruler of Transoxiana. Timur was appointed as Ilyas Khoja’s minister. The ambitious Timur did not, however, remain loyal to Tughluq Temur and Ilyas Khoja. He raised the flag of rebellion and with support from his new ally, Amir Hossein, who was the grandson of Amir Kazgan, defeated Ilyas Khoja in 1364. This victory allowed Timur to emerge as the master of Transoxiana, which was fully pacified by 1366. Timur then turned against his ally, Amir Hossein, and laid siege to Balkh in present-day northern Afghanistan, where his former ally resided. After Amir Hossein was murdered, Timur proclaimed himself the unchallenged ruler of Transoxiana and the rightful heir to the Chaghatai khans.
For over a decade Timur fought the rulers of eastern Turkistan and Khwarezm, which was located on the lower reaches of the Amu Darya (Oxus). He finally captured Kashgar in eastern Turkestan in 1380. In 1382/1383 Timur embarked on a campaign to conquer Iran. In 1383 Timur seized the city of Herat in present-day northwestern Afghanistan. The conquest of Herat was the first step toward the conquest of Iran. Recognizing the vacuum left behind by the disappearance of the Il Khanids of Iran, Timur moved into eastern Iran, seizing Khorasan between 1383 and 1385. From 1386 to 1394 Timur completed his conquest of Iran, Iraq, and the Caucasus. Using Khorasan as his base of operation, he first moved into southern Iran, seizing the province of Fars. From Fars he moved into Iraq and Mesopotamia and from there to Azerbaijan in present-day northwestern Iran. From Azerbaijan he pushed north into the southern Caucasus, where he captured Armenia and Georgia.
As early as 1393/1394, Timur’s armies had approached Anatolia from the south after capturing Baghdad, Tikrit, Mosul, Kirkuk, Mardin, and Diyarbakir. However, he was distracted by events in Iran, Central Asia, and India and left the region. In 1398 Timur invaded India. After crossing the Indus River in early autumn of that year, he defeated the armies of Mahmud Tughluq, the sultan of Delhi at Panipat. The city of Delhi was reduced to ruins. Having incorporated India into his empire, Timur returned to his capital of Samarqand in 1399. Late in 1399 Timur embarked on a campaign to conquer Egypt, which was ruled by the Mamluks. He also intended to punish the Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I.
In 1399 Timur and his armies returned to Iran. The Central Asian conqueror reimposed his rule over Azerbaijan. He then moved against the Mamluks in Syria. First Aleppo was sacked, then the Mamluks were defeated, and finally Damascus was captured in 1401. Timur also seized Baghdad in 1401, massacring 20,000 of the city’s residents. Having imposed his rule over Syria and Iraq, Timur returned to Georgia. He sent a letter to the Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402), reminding him of his recently acquired power and glory and warning the Ottoman sultan against further military operations against the Turkoman principalities of Anatolia. The response from Bayezid to this insulting and condescending message was a volcanic eruption of abuse and counterthreats. In spring 1402 Timur’s army began to enter eastern Anatolia through Erzurum, capturing Sivas and Kayseri before arriving in Ankara in July 1402. The decisive battle was fought on July 28. The Ottoman army was routed, and Bayezid and all his sons were captured. Timur did not order the execution of Bayezid, treating the defeated sultan with the utmost respect and extending his magnanimity to the sultan’s sons, who pleaded for mercy. The humiliation of living as a captive came to an end for Bayezid when he died on March 8, 1403, in Akşehir (Akshehir).
Timur pushed his conquests all the way to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, capturing Smyrna (Izmir) from the Knights of Rhodes in December 1402. He also received expressions of submission from the Mamluks of Egypt and John VII, the coemperor of the Byzantine Empire. As for Anatolia, Timur’s strategy was to strengthen the Turkoman principalities of Karaman, Germiyan, and Hamid against a possible Ottoman restoration. Mehmed, the prince of Karaman was particularly favored by Timur, who viewed him as the principal obstacle to the restoration of Ottoman power and thus rewarded him with significant territory and an impressive army. As a further deterrent, Bayezid’s sons, Süleyman, Isa, Musa, and Mehmed, were all kept alive by Timur, who knew that they would have to fight among themselves before one could emerge as the successor to their father. Thus began a period of 11 years of war among Bayezid’s sons, which came to be known as the Interregnum or Fetret in Turkish.
LEGEND OF THE CURSE OF TIMUR THE LAME
On June 19, 1941, Soviet archaeologists opened the mausoleum of the Turkic world conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) in the city of Samarqand in the present-day Republic of Uzbekistan. On the night of June 22, only two days after the tomb of Timur had been opened, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The rumor quickly spread among the people of Samarqand and the rest of Central Asia that the invasion of the Soviet Union was the direct result of the opening of Timur’s tomb. Dismissing the popular belief in Timur’s curse as superstitious rubbish, the Soviet authorities went ahead and sent the remains of Timur to Moscow for further analysis.
The Nazi invasion devastated the Soviet Union and brought the Soviet communist government to the verge of extinction. The turning point in the war came at the Battle of Stalingrad, fought along the banks of the Volga River between July 17, 1942, and February 2, 1943. For nearly seven months the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad fought heroically to stop and defeat the German advance. In January 1943 Stalin ordered the remains of Timur returned to their permanent resting place in Samarqand. A month after the remains of Timur were buried in Samarqand with full honors, the Soviet forces defeated the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad. The victory at Stalingrad marked a
turning point in the history of World War II. Many in Samarqand and the rest of Central Asia could reach only one conclusion: just as the removal of his remains had caused the invasion of the Soviet Union, the return of Timur’s remains to their original tomb was undoubtedly the principal cause for the victory of the Soviet Red Army.
Timur returned to Central Asia in 1404. He began to prepare himself for the conquest of China, but fell ill at Otrar on the Syr Darya River in present-day Kazakhstan, where he died in February 1405. The coffin containing Timur’s embalmed body was sent to his capital, Samarqand, where it was buried in a tomb. Timur’s most enduring legacy is the city of Samarqand, which he strove to make the most magnificent city in Asia. Samarqand’s majestic architectural monuments include the conqueror’s mausoleum, the Gur-e Amir, which is recognized today as one of the masterpieces of Islamic art and architecture. According to the Soviet archaeologists who opened the tomb of Timur in 1941, the skeleton of the world conqueror reveals that he was lame in both right limbs, but he possessed a powerful physique and above-average height.
See also: Sultans: Bayezid I; Mehmed I
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.
Marozzi, Justin. Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2006.
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.
Uzun Hassan (1423–1478)
Hassan Beyk, also known as Uzun Hassan (Tall Hassan), was the ruler of the Turkoman Aq Qoyunlu (Ak Koyunlu) or White Sheep dynasty from 1453 to 1478. He ruled a short-lived empire, which at its zenith incorporated present-day Iran, Iraq, southern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia, and parts of Syria.
Uzun Hassan was born in Diyarbakir (ancient Amida) in present-day southeastern Turkey in 1423. When Kara Osman, the founder of the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty, died in 1435, a civil war erupted among the contenders to the throne. By 1453 Uzun Hassan had defeated all other descendants of Kara Osman. As the ruler of a principality based in southeastern Anatolia, Uzun Hassan found himself sandwiched between the Qara Qoyunlu (Kara Koyunlu) or Black Sheep Turkoman dynasty in Iran and the Ottoman state to the west. To protect the western flank of his principality against the Ottomans, Uzun Hassan entered into a series of alliances with various principalities of Anatolia. In 1458 he married Catherine, the daughter of the Greek Christian ruler of Trebizond in northeastern Anatolia. He also established close diplomatic ties with Venice, Muscovy, Poland, and the Mamluk sultanate, based in Egypt. He then shifted his focus to the east. In November 1467 he defeated Jahan Shah, the ruler of the rival Qara Qoyunlu dynasty. Two years later he routed the armies of the Timurid prince Abu Said. He also defeated Jahan Shah’s son, Hassan Ali, who committed suicide (Tehrani: 421–427, 457–464). With these impressive victories, Uzun Hassan emerged as the master of much of the territory of present-day Iran. With his newly acquired power and prestige, the tone of his letters to the Ottoman sultan, Mehmed II, changed from that of a humble ally to a proud and confident monarch who viewed himself as an equal to the conqueror of Constantinople, a change that could not have gone unnoticed by the Ottomans.
The Aq Qoyunlu leader was well aware that he needed allies in his confrontation with the Ottoman state. To the south, the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria, constituted the most powerful state in the region. Uzun Hassan maintained a close relationship with the Mamluks, as demonstrated by the correspondence between the rulers of the two states. He hoped that the Aq Qoyunlu and the Mamluks would form an alliance against the Ottomans. Between the Ottomans and the Aq Qoyunlu in Anatolia stood the last two remaining Turkoman principalities, the Dulkadir (Dulgadir) and the Karaman, the latter having been defeated and conquered by Mehmed between 1468 and 1470. Despite their defeat and loss of independence, the chiefs of Karaman had not given up on the dream of regaining their principality by using the Aq Qoyunlu as an ally against the Ottomans. Since the annexation of their principality, they had sought refuge in the Taurus Mountains, appealing to Uzun Hassan for an alliance against the Ottomans. The powers willing and committed to wage an attack on the Ottoman state were the Venetians and the Knights of Rhodes, who had sent emissaries to the Aq Qoyunlu court, forming an alliance with the Turkoman chief and providing him with financial support and weaponry. As a formidable maritime power, Venice could attack the Ottomans from the west while the Aq Qoyunlu waged a land assault from the east.
In 1472, after he had received an urgent request from the Karaman for support against a large Ottoman force led by Mehmed II, Uzun Hassan mobilized his army for a major campaign and attacked eastern Anatolia. Aq Qoyunlu forces raided the city of Tokat in the mid–Black Sea region of Anatolia and destroyed it. A joint Aq Qoyunlu and Karaman force then marched to Akşehir (Akshehir) in western Anatolia and raided the city. These attacks and the news of the Aq Qoyunlu-Venice alliance did not leave the Ottomans with any other alternative but to raise a large force and move against Uzun Hassan. An Ottoman army of 70,000 to 100,000 men was mobilized to neutralize the Aq Qoyunlu threat. The decisive battle took place near Başkent (Bashkent) in eastern Anatolia on August 11, 1473. The Ottoman forces, which included 10,000 janissaries, 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). As part of the victory celebration over Uzun Hassan, in one day alone 3,000 members of Aq Qoyunlu were executed. 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). After his humiliating defeat at the hands of the Ottomans, Uzun Hassan was forced to sue for peace and promise that he would not cross into Ottoman territory.
With the defeat of Aq Qoyunlu, the Karaman as well as Kastamonu and Trebizond were fully incorporated into the Ottoman state. Genoa and Venice, which had instigated the conflict between the Ottomans and Uzun Hassan by financing and arming the Aq Qoyunlu ruler, were now targeted by the Ottomans.
See also: Empire and Administration: Ismail I, Shah of Iran; Sultans: Mehmed II
Further Reading
Asnad va Mukatabat-e Tarikhi-ye Iran. Edited by Abdol Hossein Navai. Tehran: Tahuri Bookstore, 1992.
Har-El, Shai. Struggle for Domination in the Middle East: The Ottoman-Mamluk War. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Inalcik, Halil. “The Rise of the Ottoman Empire.” In A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730, edited by M. A. Cook, 10–53. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Tehrani, Abu Bakr. Kitab-i Diyar Bakriyya (Ak Koyunlular Tarihi). Edited by Faruk Sümer. Tehran: Tahuri Bookstore, 1977.
HISTORIANS, WRITERS,
POETS, AND SCHOLARS
Adivar, Halide Edib (also known as Halide Edib)
(1883–1964)
Turkish author, novelist, teacher, professor, journalist, and politician who played an important role in the Turkish nationalist movement that resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1922.
Halide Edib was born in Istanbul in 1883. She received her primary education through private tutors at home and at the newly founded schools for girls. She went on to attend the American College for Girls in Istanbul. In 1910 Halide Edib divorced her first husband because she opposed his decision to marry a second wife and create a polygamous household. She joined Turkish literary circles
, where she was influenced by the ideas of the Young Turk movement and Turkish nationalism. Her first articles were published in Tanin (Echo), the newspaper of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Her Yeni Turan (The New Turan, 1912) reflects her deep attachment to the ideals of Pan-Turkism, which advocated the union of all Turkish-speaking peoples. She also advocated women’s participation in the daily life of the empire.
Halide Edib joined the Türk Ocaği (Türk Ojaghi) (Turkish Hearth) clubs, which were created in 1912 with the objective of promoting social, cultural, and economic progress in the Ottoman Empire through the improvement of the Turkish educational system. Lectures and presentations were organized, and both Turkish men and women attended them. Halide Edib published her novel Handan during this period. The novel recounted the life and struggles of a highly educated Turkish woman. During World War I Halide Edib went to Syria, where she organized girls’ schools and orphanages. In 1918 she returned to Istanbul and was appointed as a teacher of western literature at Darülfünun (the House of Practical Sciences/the university), which would later be converted into Istanbul University.
Halide Edib married her second husband, the Turkish politician Adnan Adivar, in 1917. After the end of World War I she became one of the founders of the Wilson Society, which advocated self-determination and opposed the partition of the Ottoman state. After the nationalist movement began in eastern Anatolia, Halide Edib and her husband, Adnan, threw their support behind Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and the nationalist movement. Her most influential novel, Ateșen Gömlek (The shirt of flame, 1922), was based on her experiences during the war of national liberation. Though initially supportive of the nationalist government, Halide Edib began to voice her opposition to some of the radical reforms introduced by Atatürk.
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