The peak of Ottoman power, 1481–1566

Domination of southeastern Europe and the Middle East

During the century that followed the reign of Mehmed II, the Ottoman Empire achieved the peak of its power and wealth. New conquests extended its domain well into central Europe and throughout the Arab portion of the old Islāmic caliphate, and a new amalgam of political, religious, social, and economic organizations and traditions was institutionalized and developed into a living, working whole.

Bayezid 2

The reign of Mehmed II’s immediate successor, Bayezid II (1481–1512), was largely a period of rest. The previous conquests were consolidated, and many of the political, economic, and social problems caused by Mehmed’s internal policies were resolved, leaving a firm foundation for the conquests of the 16th-century sultans. The economic stringencies imposed to finance Mehmed II’s campaigns had led during the last year of his reign to a virtual civil war between the major factions in Istanbul, the devşirme party and the Turkish aristocracy. Bayezid was installed on the throne by the Janissaries because of their military domination of the capital, while his more militant brother Cem fled to Anatolia, where he led a revolt initially supported by the Turkish notables. Bayezid managed to conciliate the latter, however, by exposing to them his essentially pacific plans, which downgraded the devşirme, leaving Cem without major support. Cem then fled into exile in Mamlūk Syria in the summer of 1481. He returned the following year with the help of the Mamlūks and the last Turkmen ruler of Karaman, but his effort to secure the support of the Turkmen nomads failed because of their attraction to Bayezid’s heterodox religious policies. Cem remained in exile, first at the court of the crusading Knights of Rhodes and then with the pope in Rome, until his death in 1495. European efforts to use him as the spearhead of a new crusade to regain Istanbul were unsuccessful.

In the meantime, however, the threat that Cem might lead a foreign attack compelled Bayezid to concentrate on internal consolidation. Most of the property confiscated by his father for military campaigns was restored to its original owners. Equal taxes were established around the empire so that all subjects could fulfill their obligations to the government without the kind of disruption and dissatisfaction that had characterized the previous regime. Particularly important was the establishment of the avâriz-ı divaniye (“war chest”) tax, which provided for the extraordinary expenditures of war without special confiscations or heavy levies. The value of the coinage was restored, and Mehmed II’s plans for economic expansion were at last brought to fruition. To this end thousands of Jews expelled from Spain by the Inquisition during the summer of 1492 were encouraged to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire. They settled particularly in Istanbul, Salonika, and Edirne, where they joined their coreligionists in a golden age of Ottoman Jewry that lasted well into the 17th century, when Ottoman decline and the rising power of European diplomats and merchants enabled them to promote the interests of the sultan’s Christian subjects at the expense of Muslims and Jews alike. Bayezid II completed the effort begun by Mehmed II to replace the vassals with direct Ottoman administration throughout the empire. For the first time the central government regularly operated under a balanced budget. Culturally, Bayezid stimulated a strong reaction against the Christianizing trends of the previous half century. The Turkish language and Muslim traditions were emphasized. Since Bayezid himself was a mystic, he brought mystic rituals and teachings into the institutions and practices of orthodox Islām in order to counteract the increasing menace of heterodox Shīʿism among the tribes of eastern Anatolia.

Though Bayezid preferred to maintain peace—in order to have the time and resources to concentrate on internal development—he was forced into a number of campaigns by the exigencies of the period and the demands of his more militant devşirme followers. In Europe he rounded off the empire south of the Danube and Sava by taking Herzegovina (1483), leaving only Belgrade outside Ottoman control. The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus (ruled 1458–90) was interested mainly in establishing his rule over Bohemia and agreed to peace with the Ottomans (1484), and, after his death, struggles for succession left this front relatively quiet for the remainder of Bayezid’s reign. To the northeast the sultan pushed Ottoman territory north of the Danube, along the shores of the Black Sea, capturing in 1484 the ports of Kilia and Akkerman, which controlled the mouths of the Danube and Dniester. The Ottomans thus controlled the major entrepôts of northern European trade with the Black Sea and Mediterranean. Because these advances conflicted with the ambitions of Poland, in 1483–84 war ensued, until the diversion of Poland by the threat of Muscovy under Ivan III the Great left this front quiet also after 1484.

Bayezid then turned to the east, where previous conquests as far as the Euphrates had brought the Ottomans up to the Mamlūk empire. Conflict over control of the small Turkmen principality of Dulkadir (Dhū al-Qadr), which controlled much of Cilicia and the mountains south of Lake Van, and an Ottoman desire to share in control of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medinaled to an intermittent war (1485–91). This war was inconclusive, however, and Bayezid’s disinclination to commit major forces to the endeavour led to dissension and criticism on the part of his more militant followers. To counter this, Bayezid tried to use Hungarian internal dissension to take Belgrade, without success, and raiding forces sent into Transylvania, Croatia, and Carinthia were turned back. In 1495 Cem died and a new peace with Hungary left Bayezid’s objectives unfulfilled, so he turned toward Venice, his other major European enemy. Venice had been encouraging revolts against the sultan in the Morea, Dalmatia, and Albania, which it had ceded to the Ottomans in 1479. It also gained control of Cyprus (1489) and built there a major naval base, which it refused to allow Bayezid to use against the Mamlūks and instead used as a base for pirate raids against Ottoman shipping and shores, thus pointing up the island’s strategic importance to the sultan. Bayezid also hoped to conquer the last Venetian ports in the Morea to establish bases for complete Ottoman naval control of the eastern Mediterranean. All these objectives, except control of Cyprus, were achieved in the war with Venice that followed in 1499–1503. The Ottoman fleet emerged for the first time as a major Mediterranean naval power, and the Ottomans became an integral part of European diplomatic relations.

Bayezid never was able to use this situation to make new conquests in Europe, because the rise of revolts in eastern Anatolia occupied much of his attention during the last years of his reign. There the old conflict resumed between the autonomous, uncivilized nomads and the stable, settled Middle Eastern civilization of the Ottomans. The Turkmen nomads resisted the efforts of the Ottomans to expand their administrative control to all parts of the empire. In reaction to the orthodox Muslim establishment, the nomads developed a fanatical attachment to the leaders of the Ṣūfī and Shīʿite mystic orders. The most successful of these were the Ṣafavids of Ardabīl, a Turkish mystic order that had immigrated there from eastern Anatolia along with seven Turkmen tribes (called Kizilbash [“Redheads”] because of their use of red headgear to symbolize their allegiance); the Ṣafavids used a combined religious and military appeal to conquer most of Iran. Under the shah Ismāʿīl I (1501–24), the Ṣafavids sent missionaries throughout Anatolia, spreading a message of religious heresy and political revolt, not only among the tribesmen but also to cultivators and some urban elements, who began to see in this movement the answers to their own problems.

A series of revolts resulted, which Bayezid was unable or unwilling to suppress because of his involvements in Europe and because his mystic preferences inclined him to sympathize with the religious message of the rebels. Finally, at the start of the 16th century, a general Anatolian uprising forced Bayezid into a major expedition (1502–03) that pushed the Ṣafavids and many of their Turkmen followers into Iran. There the Ṣafavids turned from orthodox Ṣūfism to heterodox Shīʿism as a means of gaining the loyalty of the Persians to a Turkish dynasty. Ismāʿīl continued, however, to spread his message as Ṣūfī leader in Anatolia, leading to a second major revolt of his followers against the Ottomans (1511). All the grievances of the time coalesced into what was essentially a religious uprising against the central government, and only a major expedition led by the grand vizier Ali Paşa could suppress it. But the conditions that had caused the uprising remained a major problem for Bayezid’s successor. In the end Bayezid’s increasingly mystic and pacific nature led the Janissaries to dethrone him in favour of his militant and active son Selim.

SELIM I

Whereas Bayezid had been put on the throne by the Janissaries despite his pacific nature and carried out military activities with reluctance, Selim I (ruled 1512–20) shared their desire to return to Mehmed II’s aggressive policy of conquest. But Selim did not wish to be dependent on or controlled by those who had brought him to power, so he killed not only all his brothers but also all seven of their sons and four of his own five sons, leaving only the ablest, Süleyman, as the sole heir to the throne. This deprived potential opponents of alternative leaders around whom they could coalesce. Selim was thus able to leave thedevşirme in control of the government, but it was he who dominated. Selim’s ambitions encompassed Europe as well as Asia; Bayezid had left the European fronts relatively quiet, however, so the new sultan turned first to the East and chose the Ṣafavids of Iran as his initial victims.

Selim first launched a vigorous campaign against the Ṣafavid supporters in eastern Anatolia, massacring thousands of tribesmen and missionaries and espousing a strict defense of Islāmic orthodoxy as a means of regaining political control. In the summer of 1514 he undertook a major expedition against the Ṣafavids, hoping to add Iran to his empire and finally eliminate the threat of heterodoxy. Ismaīʿīl employed a scorched-earth policy, retiring into central Iran and hoping that winter would force the Ottomans to retire without a battle. But the militant Kizilbash followers of the Ṣafavids forced the shah to accept battle by intercepting the Ottomans before they entered Azerbaijan. The Ottomans, with superior weapons and tactics, routed the Ṣafavid army at Chāldirān, on the eastern side of the Euphrates; Selim’s cannons and gunpowder overpowered the spears and arrows of the Ṣafavids. Although Azerbaijan’s capital, Tabrīz, was occupied, the Ottoman victory did not lead to the conquest of Iran or the collapse of the Ṣafavid empire. The Ottoman army became increasingly discontented under the impact of Ṣafavid propaganda among the already heterodox Janissaries. A relative lack of booty and supplies compared with campaigns in Europe also weakened morale. Selim was compelled to retire, and the Ṣafavids regained their lost province without resistance. The major result of the Chāldirān battle was to convince Ismāʿīl and his successors to avoid open conflict with the Ottomans at all costs, a policy that continued for a century. This preserved the Ṣafavid army, but it enabled Selim to overcome the last independent Turkmen dynasties in eastern Anatolia (1515–17) and to establish a strong strategic position relative to the Mamlūk empire, which was falling into internal decay and was ripe for conquest. With Ismāʿīl occupied with the restoration of his army, Selim I was able to overwhelm the Mamlūks in a single, yearlong campaign (1516–17). The Mamlūk army fell easily to the well-organized and disciplined Ottoman infantry and cavalry supported by artillery. The conquest was aided by the support of many Mamlūk officials, who betrayed their masters in return for important positions and revenues promised by the conquerors. In addition, most of the major populated centres of Syria and Egypt turned out their Mamlūk garrisons, preferring the security and order offered by the Ottomans to the anarchy and terror of the last century of Mamlūk dominion. Thus in a single sweep Selim doubled the size of his empire, adding to it all the lands of the old Islāmic Caliphate with the exception of Iran, which remained under the Ṣafavids, and Mesopotamia, which was taken by his successor.

These acquisitions were of immense importance to the Ottomans. Under efficient administration the new conquests provided Istanbul with revenues that solved the financial problems left from the 15th century and made the empire one of the most powerful and wealthy states in the 16th century. Acquisition of the holy places of Islām cemented the position of the sultan as the most important Islāmic ruler, though he and his successors declined to claim the position of caliph, or religious leader of Islām, until the late 18th century. The Ottomans gained direct access to the intellectual, artistic, and administrative heritage of the high Islāmic civilization of the ʿAbbāsids and Seljuqs, which previously had been transmitted to them only indirectly. From the Arab world there came to Istanbul the leading Muslim intellectuals, artisans, administrators, and artists of the time, who penetrated every facet of Ottoman life and made the empire much more of a traditional Islāmic state than it ever had been before. Finally, the Ottomans replaced the Mamlūks in control of the Middle Eastern portion of the old international routes between Europe and East Asia. One of the major reasons for the Mamlūk decline had been Portuguese discoveries in India and the establishment of a sea route around southern Africa in place of the partly land-based route through the Middle East. It now remained for the Ottomans to restore the full prosperity of their Middle Eastern dominions by countering Portuguese naval activities in the Eastern seas that sought to prevent European shippers from using the old routes, a campaign that had some success well into the 16th century. The Ottoman conquests in the East, combined with the Ṣafavid survival in Iran, ended the long period of political vacuum and anarchy that had followed the collapse of the universal ʿAbbāsid empire in the 11th century. Order and security finally were reestablished throughout the area, and the stability of Middle Eastern society was restored under the guidance and protection of powerful imperial orders. But the Islāmic world was left permanently divided, with Iran and Transoxania, once centres of the Islāmic caliphates, separated from the Arab world. Anatolia and southeastern Europe were for the first time added to the Arab world as integral parts of the Middle East.

SÜLEYMAN I

Selim’s last years were spent in Istanbul solidifying the supremacy of the sultanate, exploiting the prestige and revenues that resulted from his Eastern victories. It was therefore only during the long reign of his son and successor, Süleyman I (ruled 1520–66), called “the Magnificent” in Europe and “the Lawgiver” (Kanuni) among the Ottomans, that the foundations laid by Selim were fully used to establish the classical Ottoman state and society and to make important new conquests in the East and West. As a result of his father’s policies and successes, Süleyman assumed the throne with a position unequaled by any sultan before or after. He was left without opposition and with a great deal of control over the devşirmeclass, as well as over the remnants of the Turkish notables. The conquest of the Arab world had doubled the revenues of the treasury without imposing important additional financial obligations, leaving Süleyman with wealth and power unparalleled in Ottoman history. Although Süleyman never took full advantage of the opportunities left him and, in fact, began the process of Ottoman decline, his reign still marked the peak of Ottoman grandeur and has always been regarded as the golden age of Ottoman history.

The chief battlefields of Ottoman expansion in Europe under Süleyman were Hungary and the Mediterranean. The weak southeastern European enemies of Süleyman’s predecessors had been replaced by the powerful Habsburg dynasty, which was bolstered by the appeals of the pope throughout Europe against the menace of Islām. Süleyman’s main European ally wasFrance, which sought to use Ottoman pressure in the south to lessen the pressure of the Habsburgs on its eastern frontiers. The land war with the Habsburgs was centred in Hungary and was fought in three main stages. From 1520 to 1526 the independent Hungarian kingdom bore the direct brunt of the Ottoman attack and acted as a buffer between the two great empires, but the weak king Louis II and feudal anarchy and misrule made a united defense impossible. A split among Hungarian nobles over the question of accepting Habsburg rule, combined with social and national divisions stimulated by the Reformation, further weakened the opposition to Ottoman attack. As a result Süleyman was able to take Belgrade in 1521, opening the way for a large-scale advance north of the Danube. The only real army the Hungarian nobles could muster was routed in 1526 at the Battle of Mohács, and the death of Louis II ended the last hope for Hungarian unity and independence.

The second period of Ottoman-Habsburg relations (1526–41) was characterized by Hungarian autonomy under the anti-Habsburg prince of Transylvania, John Zápolya, who accepted the suzerainty of the sultan in return for the right to continue native administration and military defense. The Habsburg prince Ferdinand, brother of the emperor Charles V, occupied the northern areas of Hungary with the support of the wealthier Hungarian nobles who desired Habsburg aid against the Turks. For all practical purposes he annexed them to Austria before undertaking to conquer the remainder of Hungary in 1527–28. In response Süleyman returned from Anatolia to drive the Habsburgs from all of Hungary and besieged Vienna in 1529, an effort that failed because of the difficulty of supplying a large force so far from the major centres of Ottoman power. Vienna thus stood as the principal European bulwark against further Muslim advance. Under the existing conditions of supply, transport, and military organization, the Ottomans had reached the limit of their possible expansion in the West; the winter base that supported this expansion had to be maintained in Istanbul because of the constant threat of military action against the Ṣafavids in the East. The siege of Vienna, however, secured Süleyman’s rule of Hungary and prevented Ferdinand from launching a new attack against the territories ruled by Zápolya until 1540. Although the siege frightened the other states of Europe sufficiently for them to agree to a Roman Catholic–Protestant truce (1532), the result was only temporary, and Ferdinand never was certain of the support of the independent German princes and the other European rulers who promised help. Even Charles V was too preoccupied with the problems of the Reformation and with France to devote much attention to the Ottomans. Thus, when Süleyman embarked on a second Austrian campaign (1532), he was unable to draw the imperial army into conflict and had to content himself with devastating large areas of the Habsburg realm. By the peace of 1533 Ferdinand abandoned his claims to central Hungary and recognized Zápolya’s rule there as Ottoman vassal, while Süleyman agreed to accept Ferdinand as ruler of northern Hungary in return for the payment of an annual tribute. This arrangement lasted until 1540, when Zápolya died and left his dominions to Ferdinand in defiance of his agreement with the sultan. When Ferdinand tried to assume his heritage by force, Süleyman occupied and annexed Hungary in 1541—under the guise of championing the cause of Zápolya’s infant son, John Sigismund Zápolya—putting it under direct Ottoman administration and occupation for the first time. Thus began the third and final period of Ottoman-Habsburg relations, characterized by continuous border conflict; diversions on both sides, however, prevented long periods of open warfare. Christian historians have accusedFrancis I of France of encouraging Ottoman expansion into central Europe to relieve Habsburg pressure on him. But the Ottoman advances should be ascribed less to French overtures than to Süleyman’s own ambitions, together with his fears of Habsburg rule in Hungary and a possible alliance among the Habsburgs, Hungarians, and Ṣafavids.

The sultan regarded the French king largely as a supplicant for commercial favours, which were granted in the Capitulations treaty of 1536, an agreement by which French subjects were given the freedom to travel and trade in the sultan’s dominions and subjects of other states wishing to do the same were required to secure French protection. French and other merchants and travelers in the Ottoman Empire were allowed to remain under French laws and courts in cases concerning themselves and were granted special privileges in cases involving Ottoman subjects. Thus was established the foundation of the French predominance in the Levant, which remained until modern times. The Capitulations served as a model for later agreements between the Ottomans and the other European powers, who subsequently used them during the centuries of Ottoman weakness as means to dominate commerce within the Ottoman dominions and to drive the native Muslims and Jews out of the marketplace in favour of their coreligionist Greek and Armenian protégés. The stalemate between the Ottomans and Habsburgs in northern Hungary was characterized by centuries-long conflicts along the land frontier. Periodic Ottoman raids into central Europe and resulting European anti-Muslim propaganda led to Christian prejudice against Muslims in general and Turks in particular; many Europeans sympathized with the Christian minority subjects of the Turks, a sentiment which lasted into modern times.

Organized military conflict shifted to the sea, with the Ottomans emerging for the first time as a major naval power. The decline of the Venetian navy led Charles V to seek complete control of the Mediterranean, enlisting as his naval commander the great Genoese seaman Andrea Doriaand thus gaining the support of the powerful Genoese fleet. Süleyman responded in 1522 by driving the Knights of Rhodes, a Christian religious and military order, out of Rhodes, but in 1530 Charles established them on Malta, from which they organized piratical raids against Ottoman ships and shores and in 1535 captured Tunis. While Süleyman was occupied in Anatolia, Doria captured a number of ports in the Morea and began to raid the Ottoman coasts, severing most sea lines of communication between Istanbul and Alexandria and preventing thousands of Muslim pilgrims from reaching Mecca and Medina. In response, Süleyman in 1533 enrolled in his service as grand admiral Khayr ad-Dīn (known to Europeans as Barbarossa), a Turkish captain who had built a major pirate fleet of “sea ghazis” in the western Mediterranean and used it to capture Algiers (1529) and other North African ports. As part of the arrangement with Barbarossa, the Ottomans annexed Algiers to the empire as a special timar province permanently assigned to the grand admiral to support the fleet. Ottoman land troops were sent to defend Algiers against Habsburg attacks, which probably was the main reason Barbarossa agreed to join the sultan. Barbarossa built a powerful Ottoman fleet able to confront the Habsburgs on equal terms. In 1537 he launched a major attack on southern Italy, expecting a promised French attack in the north, with the objective of a joint conquest of Italy. But France, fearing a hostile European reaction to its alliance with the infidel, withheld the diversion. Doria then organized and led an allied European naval force against the Ottomans, but it was routed in 1538 at the Battle of Préveza off the Albanian coast. Venice then surrendered the Morea and Dalmatia, its last possessions in the Aegean, thus assuring an Ottoman naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean that remained unbroken for three decades.

Süleyman failed to pursue his ambitions in Europe after 1541, largely because of his increasing preoccupation with problems in the East. He ruthlessly suppressed Ṣafavid propagandists and supporters in eastern Anatolia and stimulated the Uzbek empire of Transoxania to attack Iran. Iran fell into disorder following the death of Ismāʿīl and the accession of his infant sonṬahmāsp I, but Süleyman was able to take advantage of this situation only during periods of peace in Europe. He personally led three campaigns into northwestern Iran, in 1534–35, 1548–50, and 1554, and, although he captured Ṣafavid territories in the southern Caucasus and inIraq, he never was able to catch and defeat the Iranian army. Supply problems invariably compelled him to retire to Anatolia during the winter months, allowing the Persians to regain Azerbaijan with little difficulty. Süleyman finally despaired of defeating his elusive enemies and agreed in 1555 to the Peace of Amasya, by which he retained Iraq and eastern Anatolia but renounced Ottoman claims to Azerbaijan and the Caucasus and agreed to allow Shīʿite Persian pilgrims to visit Mecca and Medina as well as their own holy places in Iraq. Thus, the same geographic problems that had limited Ottoman conquests in central Europe made western Azerbaijan the practical limit of Ottoman expansion in the East, preventing the final elimination of the Ṣafavid danger.

Süleyman was somewhat more successful in restoring the old international trade routes through his Middle Eastern possessions. To counteract the Portuguese fleet, supplied by the Ṣafavids from their Persian Gulf ports, he built major naval bases at Suez (1517) and, as soon as he took Iraq, at Basra (1538), establishing garrisons and fleets that not only resisted the Portuguese naval attacks but also attacked them in the Eastern seas. As a result the old trade route regained some of its former volume in the 16th century. The Ottomans never were able to fully restore it, however, because Portugal, using a sea route, still was able to pay higher prices in the East and sell at lower prices in Europe, avoiding the duties and local charges levied on goods sent by land through Ottoman territory. It should be noted that, contrary to the myths maintained by many European historians, it was the Ottomans who fought to keep the old Middle Eastern trade route open; the route was closed only when the Cape route was taken over from the Portuguese by the much more powerful fleets of the English and Dutch.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 744