#10654 - Ottoman Empire Revision Notes - General History VIII: 1500 - 1618

Ottoman Empire Revision

Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead (ed). Suleyman the Magnificent and his Age (Longman, 1995).

Chapter One: Metin Kunt ‘State and sultan up to the age of Suleyman: frontier principality to world empire’.

• What is Suleyman’s empire?

• Not a coherent geographical region.

  • There was no word for ‘Turkey’ in the Ottoman language, this is not a Turkish Empire.

  • Muslim Ottomans call themselves ‘Rumi’.

  • Devlet-i al-i Osman: ‘the domains of the house of Osman’: the Osmanli dynasty is the state.

• Gazi ideology

  • Fighting not simply as an unprincipled raider, but for the glory of Islam.

  • Murad I secures for the Ottomans the title of the only true gazis.

    • Gaza was the greatest virtues; Ottomans the most virtuous gazis.

    • Significance

      • Bound the beys of Anatolia and Balkans to the Ottoman empire.

• Ruler’s household

  • Mamluks

    • Foreign servitors captured in battle from the infidels.

    • The Ottomans are cleverer

      • They take recruits from inside the realms.

  • Military

    • Janissaries

      • Household infantry

  • Most prestigious are the cavalry divisions

    • Sipahi, Silahdar, uleficiyan, gureba

      • Staffed by palace pages recruited through devşirme

• How do the Ottomans takeover so easily?

  • Social features

    • Anatolia Turkmen emirates are similar in character

    • Syncretic practice abounds

      • Though Islam was perfect, it was not much different from Judaism and Christianity.

    • Networks

      • Ahi organisations and guilds, of which the sultan was a member.

  • Religion

    • Sufi communities

      • These guys reinforce the teachings of the religious elite, the ulema.

      • Popular

        • Non-dogmatic, exuberant brand of Islam mean they connect well with brotherhoods.

  • Formation of dervish convents and merchant afii lodges.

  • Taxation

    • Yes

      • Peasant pay the jizye capitation tax, but they don’t have to pay any feudal obligatory money anymore.

• Mehmed

  • Establishes an Ottoman imperial tradition

    • The Ottoman sultan

      • Styled as an Islamic sultan, a great khan of Inner Asia and a Roman Caesar

  • Updates legal corpus

  • Expands sultanic power to the civil-religious sphere through taking over of vakif.

  • Does so through the creation of a prestigious and large imperial household.

• (II) Towards Suleyman’s World Empire

• Selim’s empire

  • There are people threatening the Ottoman Empire

    • The Safavid, Shah Ismail I

      • 1514,

        • Chaldiran, he obliterates the Safavid army and captures Tabriz.

      • A victory of janissary muskets and field artillery firepower.

  • Swerves south

    • 1516-17

      • Relgious

        • Seizes Mecca and Medina: makes himself defender of the holy cities and thus the most important ruler in the Islamic world.

      • Economic

        • Suez is the link to the Indian Ocean and Asian spice trade.

• Suleyman’s Empire

  • Rhodes, Belgrade, Mohacs,

  • Sea

    • Barbarossa destroys a Christian fleet in 1538 and captures Tunis.

  • 1566

    • Final campaign

      • Szigetvar.

• (III) The Ottoman State as a Dynastic Empire

• Sultan Suleyman

  • Claim to be the universal defender of Islam, the caliph.

• Sultan’s revenues

  • Generated from the havass-I humayun

    • Revenues from developed towns and lucrative mining nd forestry districts

  • A stream higher than any Vizier’s.

• Who are the ruling elite?

  • These men are Ottomans

    • Only first generation Muslims!

  • Not in an ethnic sense, but a cultural-political sense.

  • A few ethnically Turkish

    • But not given high office really.

• Institutions

• The Divan

  • Not household but ‘state’ officers

    • Viziers

      • Former district governors, governor-generals of provinces

      • Given a dirlik, a ‘living’ to live off

    • High-state judges

      • One from Rumeli, one from Anatolia

    • Jurists

      • Interpreters of sultanic kanun law and responsible for edicts, firmans and other documents.

    • Kadis

      • State judges

      • Get their money from legal fees that they hear in court.

• The umera system and payment

  • These are the governor-generals and military commanders

  • Payment

    • Timar

      • Assignation of annual revenues, in cash, from a particular village or villages to pay for his needs while he campaigns.

  • Commanders

    • Get market or urban revenues.

  • The more dirliks a commander has, the more men he is expected to field.

    • A Vizier might be so lucrative in dirliks he must field thousands of men.

• This system makes one a participant in the Ottoman state.

• Household

  • Reaches 30,000 in the reign of Suleyman.

    • Implicit of the extraordinary wealth in the havass-I humayun.

• The Ottoman State

• Thus,

  • The state has the sultan at its apex, is not dominated by one ethnic group, has no geographical barriers and most administrators come from his household itself.

• Inclusive polity

  • Sultan’s power reached his lowliest subject through his officials, umera and ulema and can provide protection and justice.

    • His kanun is sophisticated, open to all subjects and technically, all could appeal to the imperial council.

  • Justice

    • The kanun-I Osmani or ‘Ottoman law’ is administered throughout the empire

• A dynastic empire

  • Virtuous

    • Because no-one group is favoured.

  • Problematic

    • Succession

      • No principle of primogeniture or consanguinity which they talk about in France.

      • ‘May the best man win’.

    • Irritable princes

      • Selim I dethroned his father; Bayezid was rumoured to have overthrown his.

    • Suleyman himself

      • Intervenes

        • In 1553, has his own son Mustafa strangled.

Metin Kunt, Introduction

• Dirliks

  • A dirlik-holder, no matter how small, was an independent official.

    • The official uses this to maintain his household, pay his wages, officers and retinues.

• Different sorts of revenue collectors

  • District governor

    • May command the troops throughout the whole sancak, but only directly runs the villages within his hass income.

    • If his ambit comes within the hass of a provincial governor, or indeed, the havass-I humayun, than they take precedence.

• Administrative activity, regularised by the provincial kadi magistrates.

• Dirliks

  • Virtues

    • Not feudal – dirlik holders don’t own the land itself, just the revenues coming from it.

    • Non-hereditary.

    • Peasants

      • Not serfs, they own plots of arable land, of which money is given to the member of the umera.

  • Larger dirliks

    • Commercial revenues of cash

      • Thus, the sultan has a direct interest in the free flow of trade important for the realm but also for the sultan and his ruling elite.

• ‘Ottomanisation’

  • ‘core provinces’

    • Anatolian and Balkan areas.

  • Stages

    • Suzerainty Conquest (Ottomans arrive with regulations and registers) then kadi magistrates arrive dirliks appointed.

  • Not inevitable process

    • Many are just made vassals and remain like that.

  • ‘Two-tier’ arrangement

    • Geza

  • Autonomy

    • Khan of Crimea, Kurdish chiefs in the mountainous border zone between Ottoman and Safavid.

  • Pragmatism

    • The aim is to establish central authority without local intermediaries, but in practice Ottoman statesmen had to be pragmatic.

  • Saliyane system

    • An example of pragmatism to cope with increased revenue.

    • Here,

      • Provincial governors did not collect their own revenue but were paid in an annual direct cash amount out of taxes raised in that locality by other agents.

    • No provincial dirlik-holders

      • Soldiers received daily wages.

    • Only possible where a high ranking Ottoman official resided and with a high revenue stream with local agents.

• Changes

  • The ‘household’ becomes very blurred

    • No longer resting at the imperial centre

      • For instance,

        • Detachments of the household retinue would be stationed in imperial provinces (benefitting from havass revenues).

• Painful change?

  • So complex a financial bureaucracy emerges from royal household into an increasingly distinct government department.

  • Sultan’s image

    • Becomes distant because all the levels of bureaucracy

      • Takes on a more ‘imperial posture’ as opposed to his old status as ‘warrior-king’.

• Decline Thesis

• Same features (already prevalent in Suleyman’s age) are seen as ‘decline’ after Suleyman’s death!

  • Janissaries given provincial duties

  • Complex financial bureaucracy

  • Detachment of imperial household

  • Rise of the tax-farmer and Vizierate agent

  • Shift to the annual cash payment system of saliyane.

• What happens though?

  • Cash outlay outstrips cash supply

  • Leads to the debasement of the silver coinage causes a great reaction.

    • Led to serious provincial disturbances in Anatolia in 1591.

• Futility of thesis

  • The features of decline attached to Suleyman’s successors were prevalent in his lifetime.

  • ‘Times of trouble’

    • More an attempt in a millennial age to confront challenges in a changing and widening world

    • Rather,

      • An age of transition a process which achieves equilibrium in the seventeenth century.

Colin Imber, ‘Ideals and legitimation in early Ottoman history’.

• How do Ottomans justify the sultan’s rule?

• The principle of unity is extremely simple: loyalty to the sultan.

• Sultan’s justifications

• (I) Gazi

  • Presentation of Sultan and his followers as gazi warriors: Warrior of the Faith, hailing from the şeriat, holy law of Islam.

  • Finds its way into popular Turkish literature gazis played the role of the hero against the infidel Christian.

    • Warrior-saint, Sari Saltuk’s battles against the infidel.

  • Shift

    • The gazi becomes synonymous with the sultan almost entirely alone.

  • Holy War (Gaza)

    • Justifies Ottoman rule.

      • One

        • Portrays sultan fulfilling canonical obligation.

      • Two

        • Gives them a canonical right to rule the territories which they had conquered from the infidel.

    • Problem

      • Sultan has conquered Muslim land too. They say he is stopping Muslims oppressing Muslims by taking over.

• (II) Legal Inheritance

  • Anatolia

    • Sultan’s press the claim they...