Further Reading
Ahmad, Feroz. The Young Turks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Hanioglu, Şükrü. Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Hurewitz, J. C. Diplomacy in the Near and the Middle East. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1956.
Kansu, Aykut. The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey. Leiden: E. J. Brill 1997.
Kushner, David. The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876–1908. London: Frank Cass, 1977.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. “The Young Turks: Children of the Borderlands?” http://edoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/HALCoRe_derivate_00003227/youngturks_borderlands.pdf.
SULTANS OF THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Abdülaziz (1830–1876)
A sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ruled from 1861 to 1876. He was born on February 8, 1830. His father, Mahmud II, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 to 1839. His mother was Pertevniyal Valide Sultan. Abdülaziz ascended the Ottoman throne after his brother, Abdülmecid (Abdülmejid), died in 1861. A highly educated sultan, Abdülaziz had studied Arabic, Persian, and French in addition to music, poetry, and calligraphy. In 1867 Abdülaziz became the first Ottoman sultan to travel to Europe. He first visited France after receiving an invitation from Napoleon III to attend the Paris Exhibition. He then visited England, where he was received by Queen Victoria and Edward, Prince of Wales. On his visit to Belgium he was welcomed by King Leopold II. He was subsequently received by the king and queen of Prussia in Koblenz on the banks of the Rhine and by the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Vienna.
The reforms known as Tanzimat (reorganization), initiated by Sultan Abdülmecid, continued for another decade during the reign of Abdülaziz. The most powerful statesmen of the Tanzimat period, Fuad Pasha and Āli Pasha, who had risen to power and prominence during the reign of Abdülmecid, continued to play a central role in implementing new reform measures during the first decade of Abdülaziz’s reign. These reforms focused primarily on the introduction of a provincial law code and the creation of a state council, as well as a ministry of justice. While the statesmen of Tanzimat were modernizing (i.e., Europeanizing) the Ottoman Empire’s legal and administrative structure, Abdülaziz focused his energy on the construction of a modern Ottoman flotilla and the expansion of railroads in Anatolia.
During Abdülaziz’s reign the Ottoman Empire continued to face new nationalist uprisings, which had begun during the reigns of Selim III (r. 1789–1807) and Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) with revolutions in Serbia and Greece. In May 1866 a revolt erupted on the island of Crete. While the Muslim community on the island remained loyal to the sultan, the much larger Greek community favored union of the island with mainland Greece. Greek nationalists began to recruit volunteers to join the battle against Ottoman forces stationed on the island. The Russian government used the revolt on the island as a pretext to call upon the European powers to intervene and secure the separation of Crete from the Ottoman Empire and ensure its union with Greece. The European powers, however, refused to intervene. The failure of the Greek nationalists to mobilize European support allowed the Ottoman government to restore order by 1868.
Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861–1876), ca. 1870. (Henry Guttmann/Getty Images)
It was not the uprising on the island of Crete, but rather the revolt of the Slavic subjects of the sultan backed by Russia, that ultimately ended Ottoman rule in the Balkans. Acting as the centers of Pan-Slavic agitation, Serbia and Montenegro provided support and inspiration to the protests against Ottoman administrative mismanagement and corruption in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, directing them toward a more nationalistic and Pan-Slavist agenda. Their hope was to overthrow Ottoman rule and cleanse the area of Muslim presence and influence, thus creating a greater Serbian state (Zürcher: 56). The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina erupted in 1874 and 1875, allowing Serbia and Montenegro to intervene and declare war on the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government failed to suppress the revolts in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1875 and in Bulgaria in 1876. Facing bankruptcy and humiliation on the battlefields of southeastern Europe, a group of statesmen took matters into their own hands and began to plan a coup.
The era of Tanzimat had been dominated by government officials who had received their education and training at the Translation Office followed by service at Ottoman embassies in European capitals. Under the leadership of Mustafa Reșid (Reshid) Pasha and his protégés, Fuad Pasha and Āli Pasha, the center of power had shifted from the palace to the Porte, particularly the ministry of foreign affairs. After the death of Āli Pasha in September 1871, Sultan Abdülaziz 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: 335–338). The coup leaders brought a nephew of Abdülaziz, Prince Murad, out of his residence to the ministry of war and declared him the new sultan. The legality of the putsch was provided by the şeyhülislam, Hayrullah Effendi, whose fetva of deposition justified the coup on the grounds of Abdülaziz’s “mental derangement, ignorance of political affairs, diversion of public revenues to private expenditure, and conduct generally injurious to state and community” (Davison: 336).
On June 4, five days after the accession of Murad V to the throne, the news of Abdülaziz’s sudden death was announced to a shocked populace. The body of the former sultan was discovered in his private bedroom, his wrists slashed with a pair of scissors. A rumor spread that the deposed sultan had been murdered. To defuse the rumors of assassination, the government called on physicians from several European embassies in Istanbul to examine the body and offer their medical opinions on the cause of death, which was officially declared a suicide. These events profoundly affected the new sultan, Murad V, who suffered a nervous breakdown. This development forced Midhat Pasha and his colleagues to depose Murad in favor of his brother, who ascended the Ottoman throne as Abdülhamid II.
Abdülaziz had 13 children. One of his children, Abdülmecid (Abdülmejid), served as the last caliph of the Ottoman Empire, between 1922 and 1924. In 1924 Abdülmecid and the remaining members of the Ottoman dynasty were exiled from Turkey.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Āli Pasha, Mehmed Emin; Fuad Pasha; Midhat Pasha; Mustafa Reşid Pasha; Sultans: Abdülmecid; Mahmud II; Murad V
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.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Mardin, Şerif. The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923. London: Wesley Longman Limited, 1997.
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.
Abdülhamid I (1725–1789)
A sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ruled from 1774 to 1789. Born in 1725, Abdülhamid was the son of the Ottoman sultan Ahmed III, who ruled the empire from 1703 to 1730. Abdülhamid I ascended the throne upon the death of his brother, Mustafa III (r. 1757–1774), in January 1774. Prior
to his ascent to the Ottoman throne, Abdülhamid I had lived in palace confinement (kafes, literally meaning the cage) for 49 years. During his reign Abdülhamid, who was appalled by the performance of Ottoman armies, tried to introduce reforms in both the Ottoman army and navy. These reforms, however, were confined to the introduction of new weapons and advisers. The sultan recruited European military trainers and advisers without requiring them to convert to Islam. Resistance from the conservative ulema and the janissary corps prevented him from introducing a new military based on modern training and organization.
Abdülhamid I inherited an empire in chaos and decline. Internal rebellions in Syria, Egypt, and Morea (Peloponnese Peninsula in southern Greece) were challenging the authority of the Ottoman central government. The weakness of the Ottoman state emboldened Russia and the Habsburgs, but also rejuvenated Iran. Iran, which had undergone its own civil war after the assassination of Nader Shah (r. 1736–1747), challenged Ottoman rule in eastern Anatolia and southern Iraq. The new ruler of Iran, Karim Khan Zand (r. 1760–1779), was anxious to expand Iran’s commercial ties with European states, in particular with the British in India. In his search for a port city that could serve as Iran’s gateway to the Persian Gulf, Karim Khan dispatched his troops under the command of his brother, Sadeq Khan, against Basra in present-day southern Iraq. After a siege of 13 months, the town surrendered in April 1776. Karim Khan’s army remained in control of Basra until his death and the beginning of another civil war, which forced the Iranian garrison to evacuate the port in 1779.
In Europe the Ottoman armies were defeated and humiliated by czarist Russia. The Russo-Ottoman War of 1768–1774 demonstrated the superiority of Russian armies, which by 1774 had reached Varna in present-day eastern Bulgaria on the Black Sea coast. Successful suppression of the Pugachev rebellion allowed the empress of Russia, Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796), to unleash her armies against the Ottoman Empire. By summer 1774 the Ottomans had no choice but to sue for peace. According to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (Kuchuk Kaynarja), signed between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in July 1774, the Crimea gained its independence. The Russians intended to install their puppet, Șahin (Shahin) Giray, as the new khan of Crimea, but the Ottomans tried to overthrow him by sending the pro-Ottoman Tatar leader Selim Giray and his army back to Crimea. In response, the Russians attacked and destroyed the Ottoman-backed Tatar army in March 1778, forcing Abdülhamid I to accept Crimean independence under Șahin Giray in January 1779 (Aksan: 174–176).
The Tatar khan was a weak leader who only could rule with the support of his Russian master. In July 1783 Russia annexed Crimea. The Ottoman government, which could no longer mount an effective offensive against European powers, agreed to the Russian conquest of Crimea in January 1784 (Aksan: 184). With the establishment of direct Russian rule, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars, who refused to live under Russian rule, fled their homeland, seeking refuge in the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman grand vizier Halil Hamid Pasha (1782–1785) tried to use the internal rebellions in provinces, as well as the humiliating losses to Russia, as the impetus for introducing reforms. His attempts were rebuffed, however, by a coalition of powerful forces that included the ulema and the janissaries, who viewed his reforms as a direct threat to their privileges. His reforms were denounced as an attempt to abandon traditional Ottoman institutions in favor of newly imported innovations from Christian Europe. In addition, the grand vizier was accused of plotting against the sultan. Halil Hamid Pasha believed that the only way to withstand the European onslaught was to strengthen the power and the authority of the central government by implementing reforms, including the creation of a new engineering school and a new fortification school as well as the modernization and expansion of the rapid-fire artillery corps, which had been trained originally by French military advisers. Despite his best efforts, the grand vizier fell victim to court intrigues and was subsequently executed in March 1785 (Shaw: 1:257).
A new war with Russia and the Habsburgs, which began in 1788, resulted in a series of military defeats, but the empire was saved from further losses by the rivalries among the European powers, as well as by the French Revolution that erupted in 1789. The Habsburgs captured Bosnia, parts of Moldavia, and eventually Belgrade in October 1789, while the Russians occupied Akkerman and entered Bucharest (present-day capital of Romania) in November. The Ottomans could neither organize a counteroffensive nor maintain their defenses. Sultan Abdülhamid I died in April 1789. He was succeeded by Selim III (r. 1789 to 1807).
See also: Battles and Treaties: Küçük Kaynarca, Treaty of; Sultans: Mustafa III; Selim III
Further Reading
Aksan, Virginia H. An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, 1700–1783. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Davies, Brian L. The Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774: Catherine II and the Ottoman Empire. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Fisher, Alan W. Between Russians, Ottomans and Turks: Crimea and Crimean Tatars. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1998.
Perry, John R. Karim Khan Zand: A History of Iran 1747–1779. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979.
Perry, John R. “The Zand Dynasty.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, edited by Peter Avery, G. R. G. Hambly, and C. P. Melville, 7:63–126. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Sugar, Peter. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354–1805. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Abdülhamid II (1842–1918)
A sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ruled from 1876 to 1909. Born in 1842, he was the son of Abdülmecid (Abdülmejid), who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1839 to 1861. He ascended the throne after his brother, Murad V, was deposed. Abdülhamid II began his reign by supporting the first Ottoman constitution, which had been introduced by the reform-minded statesman Midhat Pasha. Soon, however, the sultan disbanded the parliament and dismissed Midhat, sending him into exile in February 1877, an event that was soon followed by a Russian declaration of war, on April 24.
Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) was the last autocratic sultan to rule the Ottoman Empire. (Library of Congress)
The Ottoman armies under the command of Gāzi Osman Pasha fought heroically and delayed the Russian forces for several months at Plevna in Bulgaria, but by December the czarist army was encamped a mere 12 kilometers outside the Ottoman capital, Istanbul (Zürcher: 74). On March 3, 1878, the Ottoman Empire was forced to sign the Treaty of San Stefano with Russia. The treaty called for the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian state, stretching from the Black Sea to the Aegean. Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro also were recognized as independent states, while Russia received the districts of Batumi, Kars, and Ardahan in eastern Anatolia. In addition, the Ottoman government promised to introduce fundamental reforms in Thessaly and Armenia. Such rapid expansion of Russian power in the Balkans and the Caucasus convinced the European powers to intervene and insist on a peace conference, which would partition the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire in such a way as to prevent the emergence of Russia as the dominant power in the region.
The Congress of Berlin, which began in June 1878, was a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire. When the Congress ended its work a month later, the Ottoman Empire was no longer a political and military power in southeastern Europe. The Ottomans lost 8 percent of their territory and 4.5 million of their population (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 at the Treaty of San Stefano was divided into t
hree separate entities (Shaw: 2:190–191). The region north of the Balkan Mountains and the area around Sofia were combined into a new autonomous Bulgarian principality that would recognize the suzerainty of the sultan, but for all practical purposes acted as a Russian satellite. The region lying between the Rhodope and Balkan Mountains was established as a semiautonomous region under its own Christian governor, who was to be appointed by the sultan and supervised by European powers. The third area, corresponding with Thrace and Macedonia, remained under Ottoman rule (Jelavich: 360). The Congress of Berlin did not provide Greece with any new territory. Instead, the European powers asked that Greece and the Ottoman Empire enter into negotiations to establish their future boundaries. 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). Although the new territorial entities nominally remained part of the Ottoman Empire, all participants in the congress, including the Ottoman delegation, were fully aware that they had been permanently lost (Jelavich: 361).
The Congress of Berlin recognized Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro as independent states. The Romanian government was forced to hand over southern Bessarabia to Russia and in return received Dobrudja and the Danube Delta (Jelavich: 360). 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 eastern Anatolia. The British received the island of Cyprus, which contained a Greek majority and a Muslim Turkish minority population.
Despite the defeat at the hands of the Russians and the territorial losses imposed by the Congress of Berlin, Abdülhamid II began his reign as a highly energetic and intelligent monarch committed to the reforms introduced during the Tanzimat period. Indeed, it was during the reign of Abdülhamid that a new and Western-educated officer corps emerged. Ironically, the same officers would play a decisive role in deposing the sultan in April 1909. In addition to military training, the reform-minded sultan expanded elementary and secondary education (including the opening of a new school for girls in 1884), introduced a modern medical school, and established the University of Istanbul. To create a modern communication system for the empire, he developed telegraph services and the Ottoman railway system, connecting Istanbul to the heartland of the Arab world as far south as the city of Medina in Hijaz (present-day western Saudi Arabia) (Zürcher: 77; Shaw: 226–230). The Hijaz railroad allowed the Ottoman government to send its troops to the Arab provinces of the empire in case of a revolt against the authority of the sultan.
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