Turkey (country)

A

The Persian and Byzantine Periods

From the mid-6th century to 333 bc most of Asia Minor, including Anatolia, belonged to the Persian Empire, although the Greek cities frequently enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy. In the 4th century bc Persian power declined, and after 333 bc it was supplanted by the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great. In the 2nd and 1st centuries bc, Asia Minor was gradually conquered by the Romans.

After the division of the Roman Empire in the 4th century ad, Asia Minor became part of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, the capital of which was Constantinople or Byzantium (now İstanbul), located on the European side of the Bosporus, just across from the west coast of Anatolia. During the 11th century Asia Minor was invaded by the Seljuk Turks. In 1071 they routed the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert; during the 12th century they ravaged much of eastern and central Anatolia. Although at this time the primary objective of the Seljuks was not to attack the Byzantines but to eliminate the threat of heterodox Shiite Islam posed by the Fatimids of Egypt, some members of the Seljuk dynasty followed the nomads to take advantage of their success. They established the sultanate of Rum (with its capital at Konya), which ruled central Anatolia in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Most of the nomads who had made the initial Seljuk victories possible were soon pushed to the west of Anatolia, where frontier colonies were maintained against the last Byzantine defences. Although the sultanate of Rum imitated the Seljuk Empire of Baghdad, the presence within its boundaries of large numbers of Christians and its superimposition of Islam on top of a living Christian tradition produced a milieu considerably different to that of other Islamic states. It provided the basis for the unique Ottoman systems of government and society that began to emerge in the 14th century.

The Seljuks of Baghdad and Konya were soon overwhelmed by the invasion of the Mongols under Genghis Khan, culminating in the capture and sack of Baghdad in 1258. In Anatolia, the Turkoman nomads used the resulting anarchy to form a series of principalities, nominally under the suzerainty of Rum, which in turn was dominated by the Mongols. These principalities maintained themselves through their raids against one another and against the last Byzantine nobles, who held out in western Anatolia.

B

Rise of the Ottomans

The Ottomans emerged in history as leaders of those Turkomans who fought the Byzantines in north-western Anatolia. The location enabled Osman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty, to take the fullest advantage of Byzantine weakness and secure booty by raids into Christian territory. This situation lured into his service thousands of Turkoman nomads and also many Arabs and Iranians fleeing from the Mongols. Osman’s conquests in Anatolia were crowned with the capture (1326) of the provincial capital Bursa by his son Orhan, which gave the Ottomans control over the Byzantine administrative, financial, and military systems in the area. Thus began the Ottoman tradition to expand by force only at the expense of the declining Christian states to the west, but not against the Turkoman principalities to the east. The peaceful acquisition of Turkoman lands by purchase, marriage, and the sowing of dissension within the ruling dynasties was, however, acceptable, and the Ottomans thus took over large territories in western Anatolia.

B

1

European Raids

Ottoman expansion into Europe began late in Orhan’s reign. Ottoman soldiers were hired as mercenaries by leading Byzantines, including John VI Cantacuzene, who was thus able to secure himself the Byzantine throne (1347). In return, Ottoman soldiers were allowed to raid Byzantine territories in Thrace and Macedonia, and the emperor’s daughter was given to Orhan in marriage. The Ottoman raiders soon began to camp in the Gallipoli Peninsula and to mount continuous raids on the remaining Byzantine possessions in Europe.

The transformation of the Ottoman principality into a vast empire, covering south-eastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Arab world, was accomplished in three major campaigns between the 14th and 16th centuries. The early Ottoman Empire, stretching from the Danube to the Euphrates, was created by Murad I and Bayazid I. Murad concentrated mainly on Europe in a series of campaigns that extended as far as the Danube, culminating in the Battle of Kosovo (1389), in which an allied Serbian, Bosnian, and Bulgarian army was routed. Murad himself was killed, but his son Bayazid completed the victory. During the next decade Bayazid broke with tradition and conquered most of the Anatolian Turkoman principalities, thus bringing the early empire to its peak.

B

2

Defeat and Restoration

This conquest, however, greatly weakened the basic supports of the Ottoman state. The Muslim elements and the Turkish notables, who had helped the Ottomans achieve their victories in Europe, opposed this subjugation of Turks and Muslims. They refused to participate in the campaign into Anatolia, which as a consequence was carried out largely by Christians in Bayazid’s service. At the same time, the emergence of the Ottomans as a major power in Anatolia threatened the rear flanks of Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror who had recently taken over much of Iran and Central Asia. Tamerlane briefly invaded Anatolia in 1402, defeating and capturing Bayazid, who died a prisoner the following year.

Muhammad I, Bayazid’s youngest son, restored the Ottoman Empire by defeating and killing his brothers, one after another, and, from 1402 to 1413, by fighting off Christian and Turkoman vassals in Europe and Anatolia. His son, Murad II, reasserted Ottoman dominion in Europe as far as the Danube by defeating the various Christian princes of Serbia and Bulgaria and replacing them with direct Ottoman administration. This policy was continued during the reign of Muhammad II, who defeated the last remaining Christian princes south of the Danube.

His conquests culminated in the capture of Constantinople (1453) and the subjugation of Anatolia as far as the Euphrates. Bayazid II ended the policy of conquests in order to consolidate the lands that had been occupied during previous reigns. Unlike him, Selim I used the territorial and administrative base of power left to him to defeat and destroy the Mameluke Empire (1517) and to conquer Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia, which he achieved in a single campaign, thus incorporating into the Ottoman Empire the heartland of the old Islamic caliphates.

Suleiman I the Magnificent completed the Ottoman expansion by moving across the Danube to conquer Hungary and besiege Vienna (1529). In the east he conquered the remainder of Anatolia and the old Abbasid and Seljuk centre in Iraq.

C

Ottoman State and Society

With the conquest of Suleiman I, the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire reached its peak, and the social, administrative, and governmental institutions that had been evolving since the 14th century were formalized in a series of codes that remained the basis of Ottoman law until the end of the empire. As revealed in these codes, society was divided into a ruling class of Ottomans and a subject class of rayas, of the sultan’s “protected flock”.

The basic attribute of the ruler’s authority was the right to exploit the wealth of the empire. The sultan divided this wealth into administrative and financial units and assigned them to his agents, along with the authority to collect the accruing revenues. These agents were considered “slaves” of the sultan, but because slaves in Middle Eastern society acquired the social status of their master, they actually constituted the ruling class of Ottoman society. Their authority, however, was limited to functions involved with exploiting the empire’s wealth and with expanding and defending the state organized to accomplish this.

To carry out these functions, the ruling class organized itself into four basic “institutions”: the Imperial Institution, including the Inner, or Palace, Service, which cared for the sultans, and the Outer Service, which made sure that the system worked; the Military Institution, which kept order through various military corps, of which the most important were the Janissaries and the cavalry; the Scribal Institution, which supported the sultan and his ruling class by assessing and collecting taxes that exploited the wealth of the empire; and the Religious, or Cultural, Institution, which gave religious leadership to the sultan’s Muslim subjects and was in charge of education and justice. The ruling class was made up of two rival elements: Muslim Turkomans, Arabs, and Iranians, who together constituted the Turkish aristocracy that dominated the Ottoman system during the 14th and 15th centuries; and Christian prisoners and slaves, recruited, converted, and educated through the famous devshirme system. Beginning in the mid-16th century, the latter group took over and dominated the ruling class.

All other social functions were left to the subject class to carry out as they wished, primarily through religiously oriented communities called millets, and through economic and social guilds. The Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Gregorian, and Muslim millets, later joined by Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Bulgarian Orthodox millets, were allowed religious and cultural autonomy.