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The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

Page 37

by Alan Palmer


  Murad IV

  1623–1640

  Ibrahim

  1640–1649

  Mehmed IV

  1649–1687

  Suleiman II

  1687–1691

  Ahmed II

  1691–1695

  Mustafa II

  1695–1703

  Ahmed III

  1703–1730

  Mahmud I

  1730–1754

  Osman III

  1754–1757

  Mustafa III

  1757–1774

  Abdulhamid I

  1774–1788

  Selim III

  1788–1807

  Mustafa IV

  1807–1808

  Mahmud II

  1808–1839

  Abdulmecid I

  1839–1861

  Abdulaziz

  1861–1876

  Murad V

  1876

  Abdulhamid II

  1876–1909

  Mehmed V

  1909–1918

  Mehmed VI Vahideddin

  1918–1922

  Caliph Abdulmecid (II)

  1922–1924

  ALTERNATIVE PLACE NAMES

  Versions printed first are those generally used in the book.

  Aleppo

  Halab

  Ankara

  Angora

  Brusa

  Bursa

  Chanak

  Çanakkale

  Constantinople

  Istanbul

  Dedeagatch

  Alexandroúpolis

  Edirne

  Adrianople

  Gallipoli

  Gelibolu

  Ioánnina

  Janinà

  Iskenderun

  Alexandretta

  Jassy

  İaşi

  Karlowitz

  Sremski Karlovici

  Kuchuk Kainardji

  Kainardzhi

  Lepanto

  Návpaktos

  Monastir

  Bitola

  Mudanya

  Mudaniya (Mundanya)

  Peloponnese

  (The) Morea

  Pera/Galata

  Beyolu

  Plovdiv

  Philippopolis

  Prinkipo

  Büyükada

  Ruschuk

  Ruşe

  Salonika

  Thessaloniki

  San Stefano

  Yesilköy

  Scutari (Albania)

  Shkodra

  Smyrna

  Izmir

  Tenedos

  Bozcaada

  Trebizond

  Trabzon

  Üsküb

  Skopje

  Üsküdar

  Scutari (Turkey)

  GLOSSARY

  *:‘ş’ is sometimes transliterated ‘sh’

  aga: chief palace official; commander

  akinji: irregular horsemen in early Ottoman armies

  Bab-i li: ‘the high gate’, ‘Sublime Porte’; administrative office of the Grand Vizier

  bailo: ambassador of the Venetian republic

  başi bozuka: ‘bashibazooks’; irregular military volunteers employed in Balkans in late XIXth century

  bayrakdar: standard bearer

  bey: a vassal ruler in early Ottoman empire; later, the governor of a sanjak

  beylerbey: provincial governor (of a beylerbik)

  caliph: (Arabic, khalifa), ‘Succesor to the Prophet’

  Capitulations: system of extraterritorial jurisdiction and favoured trade tariffs established by bilateral treaties

  ceşme: fountain

  devşirme: tribute of Christian boys for conversion to Islam and service to the Sultan, raised from conquered Balkan lands mid-XVIIth century

  Divan: Sultan’s imperial council and court of law

  dragoman: interpreter to a foreign envoy

  Effendi: Turkish title of respect

  Ethnike Hetairia: Greek nationalist society in late XIXth century

  evkaf (sing., vakif): Muslim religious charitable endowments

  firman: imperial edict (later replaced by irade)

  fetva: legal opinion given by a mufti skilled in Muslim Holy Law

  Galatasaray: Imperial lycée; school opened in 1869; also known as Mekteb-i Sultani

  Ghazi: honorific title denoting a warrior hero of Islam

  Grand Vizier: Sultan’s chief minister

  haiduk (hajduk): Balkan bandit, generally a Bulgar or Serb

  hamidiye: auxiliary gendarmerie, mainly of Kurds, raised by Abdulhamid II

  hafiye: secret police

  hamam: bath

  Harbiye: Military Academy in Pera

  harem: women in the Sultan’s household; their part of a house

  hatt-i hümayun: imperial rescript (decree)

  hospodar: governor of Wallachia–Moldavia

  Hümbaraciyan: bombardier corps

  ilmiye: religious cultural institution, constituting the Muslim ‘Establishment’

  iltizam: tax farm

  imam: prayer leader in mosque

  irade: imperial order (successor of firman)

  Janissaries: Yeni Çeri; Sultan’s standing army, an élite corps until 1826

  jihad: a Holy War against the Infidel

  jurnalcis: police informers

  kafe: ‘cage’; guarded palace apartments where Ottoman princes lived as virtual prisoners

  kaimakan: deputy Grand Vizier

  kaime: paper money

  kapetanate: powerful Muslim ruling military caste in Bosnia

  Kapudan Pasha: Grand Admiral

  Khedive: Ottoman vassal ruler in Egypt, 1867–1914

  kiliç kuşanmaci: sword-girding ceremony, equivalent to a sultan’s coronation

  klephts: Greek bandits

  Lale Devri: ‘Tulip Era’ (1718–30)

  madresse: Muslim college of higher education

  Mamelukes: originally slaves, became ruling caste in Egypt

  Mecelle: Ottoman code of civil law, issued 1869–78

  Meclis-i Ayan: Chamber of Notables; Senate (upper house of Ottoman parliament)

  Meclis-i Mebusan: Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Ottoman parliament)

  ‘Mehmedchik’: nickname given to Ottoman private soldiery (cf. ‘Tommy Atkins’, ‘poilu’ etc.)

  millet: legal status given to a recognized religious sect (Orthodox Christians; Jews, etc.); later signifies a nation

  mufti: an expounder of Muslim Holy Law

  Mulkiye: Ottoman civil service school (Mekteb-i Mulkiye)

  mullah: high ranking Muslim judge and member of the ulema

  namaz: the offering of prayers

  Nizam-i Cedid: ‘New Order’ of Sultan Selim III, especially his reformed army

  orta: battalion of Janissaries

  Pasha: courtesy title for a senior official

  Philike Hetairia: Society of Friends, a Greek nationalist movement

  Porte: short for ‘Sublime Porte; see Bab-i li

  redif: military reservists

  rusdiye: secondary schools

  sancaci şerif: Holy banner of Islam

  sanjak: local administrative unit, a county

  sarayi (sarai): palace

  segban-i cedit: military bodyguard; ‘keepers of the hounds’

  şelamlik: the gathering of men at the ceremony of midday Friday prayers

  serdengeçi: crack Janissary infantry assault force

  şeriat: Islamic Holy Law, regulating the Muslim code of behaviour

  şeyhülislâm: Grand Mufti; head of Muslim hierarchy in Ottoman Empire

  Shi’ites: fundamentalist Islamic believers; practitioners of Shi’a

  silahtar: Imperial bodyguard of Janissary dragoons

  sipahi: cavalryman, originally the holder of a timar or a horseman in the Sultan’s lifeguards

  Sublime Porte: see Bab-i li

  Sunni (Sunnites): orthodox Muslim worshippers

  Tanzimat: re-structuring of government: XIXth century
reform era

  timar: grant of revenue received from a particular area of land (but not the freehold of the land)

  turbe: mausoleum

  ulema: Muslim hierarchy

  Valide Sultana: reigning Sultan’s mother

  vladika: Montenegrin Prince-Bishop

  vilayet: province

  yamak: young Janissary mercenaries

  NOTES

  ABREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

  Add. MSS: Additional Manuscripts in the British Library

  Ahmad: Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks

  Alderson: A.D. Alderson, The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty

  Anderson: M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question

  Barker: T.M. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent

  BDD: G.P. Gooch and H. Temperley, British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914

  Cemal: Djemal Pasha, Memoirs of a Turkish Statesman

  Corr. Nap.: Correspondence de Napoléon I

  Davison, Essays: R. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History.

  Davison, Reform: R. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876

  DBF: Documents of British Foreign Policy, Series I

  DDF: Documents Diplomatiques Françaises, série 2 or 3

  DDI: I Documenti Diplomatici italiani

  EI i: The Encyclopaedia of Islam, first ed., 1913–1938

  EI ii: The Encyclopedia of Islam, second ed., 1954–

  FO: Foreign Office Papers in the Public Record Office.

  Gibb and Bowen: Sir Hamilton Gibb and H. Bowen, Islamic Society and the West

  GP: J. Lepsius, A. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, F. Thimme, Die Grosse Politik der europäischen Kabinette

  HJ: Historical Journal (Cambridge)

  Hinsley: F.H. Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey

  Hurewitz: J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, A Documentary Record

  IJMES: International Journal of Middle East Studies

  JMH: Journal of Modern History

  Kedourie: E. Kedourie, England and the Middle East

  Kemal Sp.: M.K. Atatürk, Speech delivered by Ghazi Mustapha Kemal, October 1927

  Kent: Marian Kent (ed.), The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire

  Langer: W.L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism (rev. single volume edition)

  Lewis: Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey

  L-P: Stanley Lane-Poole, Life . . . of Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe

  PRO: Public Record Office, Kew

  SEER: Slavic and East European Review

  Shaw Between: S.J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III

  Shaw, Gazis: S.J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 1, Empire of the Gazis

  Shaws: S.J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2, The Rise of Modern Turkey

  Sumner: B.H. Sumner, Russia and the Balkans

  Temp.: H.W.V. Temperley, Britain and the Near East; The Crimea

  Trump.: Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918

  Prologue: Ottomans Triumphant

  1. ‘Dreadful happening’, cited from Agarathos monastery codex by Steven Runciman in The Fall of Constantinople 1453, p. 160. Runciman’s account remains the finest study of the event and makes an interesting contrast to chapter 68 of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. See also Halil Inalcik, ‘The Policy of Mehmed II towards the Greek Population of Istanbul and the Byzantine Buildings of the City’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, no. 23, pp. 213–49; and, in general, his The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1600.

  2. Lewis, pp. 317–18; Shaw, Gazis, p. 78.

  3. N. Machiavelli, The Prince, fourth paragraph of Chapter IV.

  4. Lewis, pp. 89–92; Shaw, Gazis, pp. 159–63; see also the entries in EI i on timar and wakf (Arabic spelling of vakif).

  5. Shaw, Gazis, pp. 132–49.

  6. Alderson, pp. 74–6.

  7. Davison, Essays, pp. 16–17. Halil Inalcik, ‘The Heyday and Decline of the Ottoman Empire’ in Cambridge History of Islam, I, pp. 324–53. M.A. Cooke (ed.), A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 is a useful selection of relevant chapters from the Cambridge histories. Andrina Stiles, The Ottoman Empire 1450–1700, is an excellent and stimulating introduction, a model of compression.

  Chapter 1: Floodtide of Islam

  1. Barker, pp. 244–5. Thomas M. Barker’s book is less well-known than John Stoye’s dramatic narrative The Siege of Vienna, but with great clarity he puts the whole campaign and its aftermath in a general historical perspective.

  2. Ibid., pp. 68–71. The eminent German scholar Franz Babinger contributed a detailed biographical entry on Kara Mustafa to EI i.

  3. Count Frosaco’s letters, originally printed in Revue de Hongrie, III, are cited by Barker, with this extract on p. 257.

  4. Stoye, op. cit., and cf. E. Crankshaw, Maria Theresa, pp. 121–3.

  5. The finest modern account of the battle of the Kahlenberg is in Barker, pp. 321–34.

  6. For the diplomat (Benetti) and his report, see N. Barber, Lords of the Golden Horn, p. 105.

  7. Richard Kreutel, Kara Mustafa vor Wien, pp. 121–4 and 184, an annotated translation of a diary kept by an anonymous Ottoman official. Kreutel’s work is critically examined by Barker, p. 403 (and cf. p. 364).

  Chapter 2: Challenge from the West

  1. Barker, pp. 369–70; Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 349.

  2. M.A. Cooke (ed.), Ottoman Empire to 1730, p. 190; N. Cheetham, Mediaeval Greece, pp.300–1.

  3. Shaw, Gazis, p. 219; Alderson, pp. 65–6.

  4. Ibid., pp. 32–6.

  5. Selim II biography in EI i; Barber, p. 108.

  6. Gibb and Bowen I, pp. 314–28; Nahsom Weissmann, Les Janissaries, pp. 30–48.

  7. Gibb and Bowen II, pp. 191–2.

  8. Shaw, Gazis, p. 223; Kinross, op. cit., p. 353; Cooke, op. cit., p. 193.

  9. Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History, p. 259.

  10. Rifat Abou El-Haj, ‘Ottoman Diplomacy at Karlowitz’, Journal of American Oriental Society, vol. 87 (1967), pp. 498–512; Barker, pp. 373–4; Davison, Essays, p. 20; Shaw, Gazis, pp. 223–5; Kinross, op. cit., pp. 356–7, 373–6.

  11. Alderson, p. 66; Shaw, Gazis, p. 228. See also the biographical entry by Bowen on Ahmed III in EI ii.

  12. Gibb and Bowen II, p. 216 and pp. 233–4; C.A. Frazee, Christians and Sultans, pp. 6–7; G.G. Arnakis, ‘The Greek church of Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire’, JMH, vol. 24, September 1952, especially pp. 242–50.

  13. A. de la Moutraye, Travels, vol. 1, p. 333.

  14. Davison, Essays, p. 20; Kinross, op. cit., pp. 376 and 383. The saying about the turban seems to have originated with the Byzantine historian Michael Ducas.

  Chapter 3: Tulip Time and After

  1. Lewis, p. 437; for Koçi Bey, see C.H. Imber’s entry on him in EI ii, vol. 5.

  2. M.L. Shay, Ottoman Empire from 1720 to 1734, pp. 17–27; Kinross, Ottoman Centuries, p. 378, pp. 380–2.

  3. Lewis, pp. 45–6; Shaw, Gazis, p. 235.

  4. Shay, op. cit., p. 19.

  5. Letter to Lady Bristol, 10 April 1718, E. Halsband, Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol. 1, p. 397.

  6. L. Cassels, The Struggle for the Ottoman Empire, p. 52; L.A. Vandal, Une ambassade française en Orient sous Louis XV, p. 88.

  7. Ibid., p. 85.

  8. Shay, op. cit., p. 22.

  9. Kinross, Ottoman Centuries, p. 380; Shaw, Gazis, pp. 234, 293–4.

  10. Ibid., pp. 236–7; N. Berkes, The Development of Secularization in Turkey, pp. 42–5; M. Daley, The Turkish Legacy, pp. 17–24; Lewis, pp. 50–1.

  11. Jean-Claude Flachat, Observations sur le Commerce et sur les arts . . . même des Indes Orientales, p. 111.

  12. Shay, op. cit. (14 January 1724), p. 22.

  13. Ibid., p. 23.

  14. Ibid., pp. 27–8; Vandal, op. cit., pp. 27–8.

  15. Le
wis, p. 47.

  16. Vandal, op. cit., pp. 116–46. The following paragraphs are based on H. Benedikt, Der Pascha-Graf Alexander von Bonneval, especially pp. 82–160.

  17. Shaws, Gazis, pp. 246–7.

  18. Anderson, p. xv; P.M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, p. 111; A. Hourani, ‘The Changing Face of the Fertile Crescent in the Eighteenth Century’, Studia Islamica, 8 (1953), pp. 89–122.

  19. For the fullest modern account of the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, see Davison, Essays, pp. 29–44. English text, Hurewitz, I, pp. 54–61. For Franz Thugut’s report to Vienna of 17 August 1774 see Davison, Essays, p. 32, with comments on pp. 43–4.

  20. The various forms of the treaty are further discussed by Professor Davison in his paper on ‘The Dosografa church in the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji’, (Essays, pp. 51–9), from which I have drawn for the final paragraphs of this chapter. See also his article, ‘The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, A Note on the Italian text’, International History Review, vol. 10, no. 4 (1988), pp. 611–21.

  Chapter 4: Western Approaches

  1. L. Cassels, Struggle for the Ottoman Empire, p. 110; Vandal, Une ambassade française, pp. 197 and 291; Kinross, Ottoman Centuries, p. 396.

  2. W.R. Polk, The Opening of South Lebanon, pp. 10–18; P. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, pp. 120–3.

  3. On Ali Pasha in general see: D.N. Skiotis’s article, ‘From Bandit to Pasha’ in IJMES, vol. 2 (1971), pp. 219–44; William Plomer’s biography, Ali the Lion; and G. Remerland’s more scholarly study, Ali de Tekelen, Pasha de Janina, largely based on French diplomatic archives; Shaw, pp. 253–4.

  4. Kinross, op. cit., pp. 410–13; G.S. Thomson, Catherine the Great and the Expansion of Russia, pp. 170–93.

  5. Anderson, p. 20; Shaw, Between, pp. 64–8.

  6. Ibid., pp. 14–17, with Louis XVI’s letter in full (pp. 16–17).

  7. B. Lewis ‘The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey’, Journal of World History, vol. 1 (1953), pp. 105–25, summarized Lewis, p. 63.

 

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