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Citation for Ottoman Empire

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MLA
Shaw, Stanford J. and Gkhan etinsaya. "Ottoman Empire." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Islamic World. Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Aug 20, 2017.
<http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0611>.

Chicago
Shaw, Stanford J. and Gkhan etinsaya. "Ottoman Empire." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Islamic World. Oxford Islamic Studies Online,
http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0611 (accessed Aug 20, 2017).

Ottoman Empire
Called by the Turks Osmanls, after the name of the founder of the dynasty Osman I (Ar., Uthmn),
the Ottomans were Oghuz (Tk., Ouz) Turks who came out of Central Asia and created a vast state
that ultimately encompassed all of southeastern Europe up to the northern frontiers of Hungary,
Anatolia, and the Middle East up to the borders of Iran as well as the Mediterranean coast of North
Africa almost to the Atlantic Ocean. As a multiethnic, multireligious, and multicultural entity, the
Ottoman Empire was the last of the great Islamic empires, which emerged in the later Middle Ages
and continued its existence until the early twentieth century.

Conquest, 13001600.
The Ottoman Empire was created by a series of conquests carried out between the early fourteenth
and late sixteenth centuries by ten successive capable rulers of the Ottoman Turkish dynasty.
Starting as nomadic gazis (Ar., ghz, raider), fighting for the faith of Islam against the decadent
Byzantine Empire on behalf of the Seljuk Empire of Konya (Seljuks of Rum), Osman I and his
successors in the fourteenth century expanded primarily into Christian lands of southeastern Europe
as far as the Danube, while avoiding conflict with the Muslim Turkoman principalities that had
dominated Anatolia after they defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. These
conquests were facilitated by policies that left the defeated Christian princes in control of their states
as long as they accepted vassalage and provided tribute and warriors to assist further Ottoman
conquests and that allowed Christian officials and soldiers to join the Ottoman government and army

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as mercenaries without being required to convert to Islam. This first Ottoman Empire incorporated
territories that encompassed the modern states of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia-
Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia; it bypassed the Byzantine capital Constantinople, which, despite
the depop- ulation and despoilage inflicted by the Latin Crusaders early in the thirteenth century,
held out as a result of its massive defense walls as well as the services provided by soldiers from
Christian Europe, though its emperors for the most part accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman
leaders. Efforts by the Byzantine emperors to reunite the Orthodox church with Rome in order to
stimulate the creation of a new crusade to rescue their empire led to new internal divisions that
prevented any sort of unified resistance to the Ottomans.

This initial period of Ottoman expansion came to an end during the reign of Bayezid I (r. 13891402)
who, influenced by the Christian princesses and their advisers at the Ottoman court, replaced the
gazi tradition of conquering Christian territories with seizure of the Turkoman Muslim principalities in
Anatolia; at the same time he substituted Byzantine for Muslim practices in his court and
administration. The Muslim Turkomans who had led the conquests into Europe as gazis refused to
participate in attacks on their Muslim coreligionists, however, particularly since the spoils available
was far less than in Europe, so the conquests to the East were accomplished largely with
contingents furnished by Christian vassals. Many of the displaced Anatolian Turkoman princes took
refuge with the Mamlk sultans who since 1250 had displaced the Ayybids in Egypt and Syria, or
with the rising Tatar conqueror of Iran and Central Asia, Tamerlane, where they sought assistance in
regaining their territories. The Mamlk Empire was then attempting to expand its influence north
from Syria into Cilicia and the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, but it was by this time too
weak to provide substantial military assistance to the Turkomans. Tamerlane also preferred to move
through Iran into India, but fearing that Ottoman expansion eastward past the Euphrates might
threaten his western provinces, he mounted a massive invasion of Anatolia that culminated in his
rout of the Ottoman army and capture of Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara (1402). To ensure that no
single power would rise up to dominate Anatolia and threaten his domains, he went on to ravage the
peninsula and restore the surviving Turkoman princes before resuming his invasion of India.

Bayezid I died in captivity, but enough of his sons survived to contest for power during the Ottoman
Interregnum (14021413) that followed. Initially Prince Sleyman, based at Edirne, managed to
retain Ottoman power in Europe with the assistance of the Christian vassal princes of southeastern
Europe. Ultimately, however, his efforts to restore Ottoman rule in Anatolia were defeated by his
brother Mehmed, supported by the Turkoman gazis who had remained along the Danube fighting
against the Hungarians, and who had opposed Bayezid's expansion into the Muslim East as well as
the Christian vassals influence in his court. As Mehmed I (r. 14131421), he restored Ottoman rule
between the Danube and the Euphrates, driving out Christian influences in the court and
inaugurating a policy, continued by Murad II (r. 14211444, 14461451) and Mehmed II (r. 1444
1446, 14511481) the Conqueror (Ftih); this policy instituted direct Ottoman administration in
both Europe and Anatolia in place of the indirect rule through vassals which had characterized the
previous century.

This restoration was accompanied in 1453 by Mehmed II's conquest and long siege of Byzantine
Constantinople. The city had been ravaged and largely depopulated since its occupation by Latin
Crusaders in 1204. But Mehmed intended to restore it to its old splendor and prosperity so it could
serve as the capital of the restored Roman Empire that he wished to create. Therefore, instead of

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following the Muslim tradition of sacking cities that resisted conquest, he used his army to rebuild it
and then carried out a policy of forced immigration (srgn) of peoples from all parts of his empire to
repopulate it and restore its economic life as quickly as possible. Mehmed repopulated the new
capital with Christians and Jews, in addition to Muslims.

The rapid expansion of the Ottoman dominions created severe financial, economic, and social
strains. These were, however, successfully resolved during the long and relatively peaceful reign of
Sultan Bayezid II (r. 14811512), thus making possible substantial expansion in the first half of the
sixteenth century beyond the boundaries of the first empire, across the Danube through Hungary to
the gates of Vienna and eastward into the territories of the classical Islamic empires of the
Umayyads and Abbsids. Sultan Selim I (r. 15121520) the Grim (Yavuz), in response to the rise
of the afavid empire in Iran starting about 1500 and its threat to Anatolia and to the regional
balance of power, first defeated the afavids at Chaldiran (1514) in eastern Anatolia, and then went
on to conquer the Mamlk dominions during a rapid campaign through Syria and Egypt in 1516
1517, soon afterward adding the Arabian peninsula to his domains. With the confrontation of the
Safavids and the conquest of Arab world complete, the Ottoman Empire's strategic and ideological
focus shifted. The sultans became guardians of the hajj and the holy places of Islam, and claimed
primacy in the Islamic world as the Great Caliphs. The Ottoman Empire became the most powerful
state in the Islamic world.

Sultan Sleyman, The Lawgiver (Kanuni; called The Magnificent in Europe), who ruled from 1520
to 1566, supported by an alliance with France against their common Habsburg enemy, went on to
conquer Hungary (1526) and to put Vienna under a siege (1529), which though unsuccessful was
followed by the creation of a system of border gazi warriors who carried out guerrilla warfare with
raids well into central Europe during the next two centuries. With the stalemate in land warfare, the
struggle between the Ottomans and Habsburgs was transferred to the Mediterranean Sea.
Sleyman created a powerful navy under the leadership of the pirate governor of Algeria, Grand
Admiral Hayruddin Barbarossa; the commander not only brought Algeria into the empire as a
province whose revenues were set aside in perpetuity for support of the Ottoman navy, but also
made the entire Mediterranean into an Ottoman lake. Sleyman also expanded Ottoman power in
the East; after conquering Iraq and the southern Caucasus from the afavids (1534), he built an
eastern fleet that from bases in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea conquered the Yemen and broke
European naval efforts to blockade the old international shipping routes through the Middle East and
then went on to assist Muslim rulers in western India and Indonesia against the Portuguese and
others. Under Sleyman, the Ottoman Empire became a world power.

Government and Society.

The reign of Sultan Sleyman marked the peak of Ottoman power and prosperity as well as the
highest development of its governmental, social, and economic systems. The Ottoman sultans
preserved the traditional Middle Eastern social division between a small ruling class (askeri or
military) at the top, whose functions were limited largely to keeping order and securing sufficient
financial resources to maintain itself and carry out its role, and a large subject class of rayas (rey,
or protected flock), organized into autonomous communities according to religion (millets) or

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economic pursuit (esnaf, or guilds) that cared for all aspects of life not controlled by the ruling
class.

Ruling class.

Membership in the ruling class was open to all who declared and manifested loyalty to the sultan,
his dynasty, and his empire; who accepted the religion of Islam; who knew and practiced the
Ottoman Way, a highly complex system of behavior including use of the Ottoman language, a
variant derived from Turkish, Arabic, and Persian; and who knew and carried out the particular
practices used by one or another of the groups into which the ruling class was divided. Those who
failed to meet these requirements were considered members of the subject class regardless of their
origins or religion. Thus ruling class members could be the children of existing members, but only if
they acquired and practiced all the required characteristics. Members could also come from the
devirme system of recruitment among Christian youths, which was carried out on a large scale in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the recruits were converted to Islam and educated in the
Ottoman Way in the palace school established by Mehmed II and continued by his successors.
Other members entered the ruling class as slaves or captives of existing members, or as
renegades who came to the Ottoman Empire from all the nations of Europe, seeking their fortunes
under the banner of the sultans. In general, all ruling class members who came from a Turkish or
Muslim heritage, including the former members of the ruling classes of the Seljuk and Mamlk
empires and their descendants, formed a Turko-Islamic aristocracy; converts from Christianity
formed a separate devirme class. The two groups struggled for power and prestige, with the ruler
seeking to balance them with equal positions and revenues in order to control and use both.

Members of the ruling class were divided into institutions according to function. The Palace or
Imperial Institution in the Topkap Palace consisted of two branches: the Inner Service (endern),
including the Harem, was charged with producing, maintaining, training, and entertaining sultans,
and as such comprised the sultans themselves, their wives, concubines, children, and slaves; the
Outer Service (birn) included servants of the sultan who were involved in affairs outside of as well
as within the palace, in fact exercising the sultan's function of directing the army and administering
the empire. The Scribal Institution (kalemiye), constituting the treasury of the sultan and including all
the men of the pen (ehl-i kalem), carried out the administrative duties of the ruling class, in
particular assessing and collecting taxes, making expenditures, and writing imperial decrees and
most other administrative documents. It included the grand vizier (sadr- azam) and other officials
holding the rank of vizier and the title pasha (paa) who met as the imperial council (divan) in the
kubbealt section of the second courtyard of the palace and were in charge of supervising and
leading the Ottoman system on behalf of the sultan. The Military Institution (seyfiye) included the
men of the sword (ehl-i seyf) charged with expanding and defending the empire and keeping order
and security: the sipahi cavalry, commanded for the most part by members of the Turko-Islamic
aristocracy; the Janissary (yenieri) infantry, military arm of the devirme, which comprised the most
important part of the Ottoman army starting in the sixteenth century and constituted the principal
garrisons and police of major cities and towns of the empire; the Ottoman navy, long commanded by
grand admirals who were given the governorship of Algeria as well as control of the customs duties
of most of the ports of the Mediterranean to provide them with necessary revenues; the artillery
(topiyan); and various other corps. Finally there was the Religious or Cultural Institution (ilmiye), led
by the eyhlislam (Ar., shaykh al-Islm) and composed of men of knowledge (ehl-i ilm, lem; Ar.

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ulam), constituting not only the leaders of prayer (imms) and others serving in the mosques, but
also the judges (qadi) and jurisconsults (mfti), and all others in the realm of culture; to these
persons the title efendi was given, as it was to members of the scribal class, who also had to
undergo religious training. The Islam maintained by the Ottoman lema was orthodox Sunn.

Within the institutions of the Ottoman ruling class, organization was maintained largely in
accordance with financial functions. Each position had certain sources of revenue, either taxes of
varied sorts, fees levied in return for the performance of official duties or salaries paid by the
treasury. In general, all revenues in the empire were considered to constitute the imperial wealth
(havss hmayn) of the sultan, who alienated it on occasion in perpetuity as private property
(mlk) or for religious foundations (vakf, evkf; Ar., waqf, awqf) or maintained it in
financial/administrative units (muqatat) intended to produce revenues for the sultan and his ruling
class. Out of the revenues that were left as muqatat, some were assigned as emanets to
collectors (emins) who were paid salaries for carrying out their duties, for the most part consisting of
collecting taxes or fees without additional functions; some were assigned to officials of the state or
army who used the revenues entirely as their own salary (timars) in return for performing functions in
addition to collecting the revenues, as viziers in the imperial council or as officers of the sipahi
cavalry or the artillery corps; and some were assigned as tax-farms (iltizam) to tax-farmers
(mltezims) as the result of bids won by those who promised to pay the treasure the largest share of
their annual revenues, since unlike the timar holders they performed no other function than the
collection of revenues. Regardless of the source of revenues, the holders of the muqatat were
given only enough authority to make certain that taxable revenues were produced; the producers of
the revenue, whether cultivators, artisans or merchants, maintained property rights to pursue their
own occupations as long as they delivered the required taxes.

Subject class.

All functions of society as well as of government and administration not dealt with by the ruling class
were relegated to the rey (protected flock) or rayas, who constituted the subject class. For this
purpose the rey were organized into religiously based communities called at different times
cemat, tife and, finally millet, as well as into guilds (esnf), mystic orders of dervishes (tariqt)
and other groupings that formed a substratum of Ottoman society. Most important were the
religiously based communities, most often called millets, of which three were established by
Mehmed the Conqueror soon after he made Istanbul his capital in 1453. The Greek Orthodox and
Armenian Gregorian millets were led by their patriarchs and staffed by the clerics organized in
hierarchies under their authority. The former included, in addition to ethnic Greeks, all the Slavs and
Romanians living in southeastern Europe; the latter included not only Armenians, but also gypsies,
Nestorians, Copts, and other Eastern Christians. Mehmed II and his successor Bayezid II attempted
to organize the Jewish millet like those of the Christians, appointing Moses Capsali, grand rabbi of
Istanbul under the last Byzantines, as chief of all the rabbis and all Jews throughout the empire.

In the countryside, villages were for the most part constituted entirely of members of one millet or
another. In the larger towns and cities, quarters (sg., mahalle; pl., mahallt), surrounded by walls
and guarded by gates, were set aside for each millet. There was no municipal government as such
in traditional Ottoman society. Whether rabbis or bishops or imams, the religious leaders of each
quarter or village carried out all the secular functions not performed by the ruling class, basing these

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duties on their own religious laws as interpreted in their religious councils and courts, and
conducting their affairs in their own languages and in accordance with their own customs and
traditions. Thus they organized and operated schools, old-age homes, and kitchens for the poor.
Leaders of the different urban millets came together on occasion for specific functions that required
general cooperation, such as the celebration of certain festivals or organization against attacks,
plagues or fires; but for the most part each lived independently with little input either by members of
the ruling class or by members of the other millets.

Decline.
The classical system of empire reached its peak under Sultan Sleyman in the sixteenth century, but
signs of weakness signaled the beginning of a slow but steady decline. In the second half of the
sixteenth century, there emerged a series of external and internal challenges to the classical
Ottoman system, and this led to a series of crises and subsequent transformations of the empire in
military, political, social, and financial institutions. The long and exhausting wars in the second half of
the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, often on two fronts, with the Habsburgs and
Persians, both increased the financial burden and spoiled the classical military structure. And both of
these gave way to corruption of the classical land system and the tax system. This in turn led to
transformation in political, administrative, social, and financial structures of the empire, throughout
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. New developments in European warfare demanded more
soldiers with firearms. This brought about the elimination of timar holding sipahi cavalry which used
traditional weapons, and the increase of the number of standing janissary army and mercenaries
with firearms. This substantial increase put strains on the financial system and treasury. This huge
financial strain turned into a profound financial crisis as a result of inflation caused by the influx of
silver from the New World. The measures to remedy this financial crisis led to the gradual
replacement of timar system with the direct taxation (tax-farming) system, transforming the Ottoman
classical land and tax system. This transformation, coupled with the population growth in the
sixteenth century, led to social and political unrest, and rebellions both in the center and in the
provinces. Thus the economic and military changes in Europe, and subsequent crises and
responses to these crises radically transformed the empire and its political, administrative and
socioeconomic structure. These transformations from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth
centuries tended towards a decentralization of Ottoman authority and administration. In the center,
the structure of political elites and political culture changed; weakening of sultanic power resulted in
the formation and rise of households within the ruling class. In the provinces, weakening of state
power and tax-farming of state lands led to emergence of a class of provincial notables (yn) who
in time acquired administrative and military functions.

Reform and Modernization.

In face of military defeats against the European powers and chronic internal political crises, the
ruling elites attempted several reform initiatives in order to forestall the military decline of the empire,
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Under the leadership of Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623
1640) and the dynasty of Kprl grand viziers placed in power during the later years of the
seventeenth century by Sultan Mehmed IV (r. 16481687), efforts were made to reform the system
in order to save the empire. This reform, however, was undertaken on the basis of the prevailing

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belief that Ottoman institutions and practices were superior to anything developed in Christian
Europe; that therefore Ottoman weakness was due less to any inferiority of its institutions than to a
failure to apply them as had been in the centuries of Ottoman greatness. Traditional reform at this
time therefore consisted of efforts to restore the old ways, executing corrupt and incompetent
officials and soldiers. As soon as the government and army had been restored sufficiently to beat
back the European attacks, however, the corruption returned and continued until the next crisis
forced similar efforts. Increasing losses to Russia and Austria during the eighteenth century,
however, forced the sultans to modify this traditional reform, at least to the extent of acknowledging
that European weapons and tactics were superior, and to accept at least partial reforms of the
Ottoman military, which were introduced by a series of European renegades who entered Ottoman
service. Inevitably, however, the Janissary corps refused to accept this sort of change, because their
status in the ruling class depended on their monopoly of the traditional techniques and practices.
This compelled the sultans to create a separate modern infantry and artillery corps, which, however,
could not for the most part be used because of opposition by the Janissary corps, supported by
members of the ruling class who also feared that the new forces would be used to eliminate them.

From the late eighteenth century onward the Ottoman Empire faced three prominent challenges,
and responses to these challenges once more transformed the empire in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, thus paving the way for the Tanzimat period. The first was a strategic
threat posed by the Russian Empire. In the eighteenth century, the emergence of Russia as a great
power brought about a shift in the balance of power, at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The
Empire was in decline militarily, and Russia was eager to fill the vacuum that Ottoman weakness
had created in the region. There were a series of Russo-Ottoman wars, resulting in the Russian
invasion of Ottoman territory in the Balkans, southeastern Europe, and the Caucasus. The
Ottomans were persistently defeated by the Russians (with the exception of the Crimean War of
18531856), and the very heart of the Ottoman Empire, the capital Istanbul, was often threatened by
the Russian army. At the same time, the decline of the empire and the prospect of its disintegration
created a power struggle among European Great Powers. This struggle, known as the Eastern
Question, over the fate of the empire to safeguard the strategic, territorial, and commercial interests
of the European Great Powers in the Ottoman domains, lasted until the end of the empire.

The second challenge was the emergence and spread of nationalist ideas and movements in the
Ottoman Empire after the French Revolution, first among non-Muslim elements, and then among
non-Turkish Muslim elements. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of the First
World War, the empire faced a series of nationalist and separatist uprisings, from different ethnic
groups, seeking to break up the empire in order to secure their independence. The uprisings of the
Christian minorities, supported by Russia and other European Great Powers, who sought to use
these movements as vehicles to extend their influence within the Ottoman body politic and,
ultimately, to replace Ottoman rule with their own. It started with the Greek revolution early in the
century and continued in Serbia and Bulgaria; later in the century, it spread to Macedonia and to the
Armenians in Anatolia. The resulting loss of territories and large-scale massacres of Muslim (and in
some cases Jewish) subjects by the rebels as well as by the newly independent Christian states of
southeastern Europe, aimed at securing homogenous national populations for the new nation-
states, led to massacres and countermassacres that characterized the empire, with little break,
during the last half century of its existence.

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The third challenge was the empire's incremental financial dependence on the West and the
peaceful penetration of the major European powers. In the nineteenth century, European powers
had succeeded in penetrating the Ottoman Empire to a considerable degree, interfering in its
internal affairs, and recruiting networks of clients among the Sultan's own subjects. A number of
factors facilitated this penetration. The European powers acquired certain legal rights of interference
in Ottoman internal affairs, through the reform provisions of the treaties of Paris (1856) and Berlin
(1878), through the capitulations, which gave their subjects legal and fiscal privileges within the
Ottoman Empire, and through the religious protectorates that particular European powers asserted
over particular groups of Ottoman Christians. In addition, the considerable expansion of the Ottoman
Empire's trade with the European powers, and the various economic concessions, including ports,
railways, mines, and river navigation, which had been awarded by the Ottoman government to
European enterprises, enabled the European powers to build up local commercial clienteles,
particularly in the major ports and trading centers. This commercial influence was accompanied by
cultural influences, promoted by missionaries and educational institutions. Finally, the omnipresence
of European political influence was assured through chains of consuls that were established in
almost every important provincial center throughout the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman statesmen developed a number of responses to these challenges. First, all these
challenges pushed the Ottomans into a new series of reforms directed towards centralization and
Westernization. To save the empire, the foremost need was better military; better military required
more revenue; more revenue required centralized administration and finance, and this required the
abandonment of decentralization and elimination of yns. Therefore, an administrative
centralization process began along with military modernization. Military modernization in turn gave
way to bureaucratic, administrative, and legal modernization, and the state underwent a period of
Westernization in political, social, economic, and cultural fields throughout the nineteenth century.

These reforms occurred during the Tanzimat period planned under Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808
1839), were carried out under his sons Abdlmecid (r. 18391861) and Abdlaziz (r. 18611876),
and were brought to successful culmination under Sultan Abdlhamid II (r. 18761909). As
proclaimed in 1839, the Tanzimat reforms promised an overall reorganization in every institution of
state and society, from a more orderly tax collection to a fair and regular system of military
conscription, and from a reform in education to a radical reorganization of the justice system. The
proposed reforms were partially based upon European models, and initiated an unprecedented,
though slow, process of institutional and cultural Westernization. In another respect, too, the Islamic
and Ottoman tradition was partially severed, with the promise of civil equality for the Empire's non-
Muslim subjects. The reformers of the Tanzimat believed that the Ottoman Empire could be saved
only by being integrated into the Western political and economic system. They argued that it would
be wiser for the Empire to join, rather than resist, Europe and would also benefit from joining the
world economic system. In order to recruit assistance in the struggle against Russia, the Porte
offered the British certain financial incentives in order to create a stronger bond.

The traditional decentralized Ottoman system became increasingly centralized; the central
government extended its authority and activity to all areas of Ottoman life, undermining, though not
entirely replacing, the millets and guilds. Since functions were expanding, moreover, the traditional
Ottoman governmental system in which the ruling class acted through the imperial council was
replaced with an increasingly complex system of government, divided into executive, legislative, and

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judicial branches. The executive was organized into ministries headed by ministers who came
together in a cabinet led by the grand vizier. The legislative function was given to deliberative
bodies, culminating in a partly representative council of state in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century and in the democratically elected parliament introduced initially in 18771878 and then
again in the Young Turk constitutional period (19081918). Administration was turned over to a new
hierarchy of well-educated bureaucrats (memurs) who dominated Ottoman governmental life until
the end of the empire. The reforms introduced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
transformed the Ottoman Empire into a relatively well-governed and modern state. Emphasis was
laid, however, on institutional and physical reforms, with the centralized bureaucracy exercising far
more control over the lives of the subjects than was the case in the traditional decentralized
Ottoman system. As a result, liberal political movements, led by the Young Ottomans during the
years of the Tanzimat and by the Young Turks during the reign of Abdlhamid II, demanded political
and social reforms as well. For all the difficulties and deficiencies in the implementation of
government-sponsored reforms, it is clear that the Tanzimat era initiated a process of social and
economic change, the development of modern communications, including telegraph lines, and
steam navigation.

Additionally, in the age of nationalism and imperialism, the most vital issue for the Ottoman elites
was the effort to keep the independence and territorial integrity of the empire, which consisted of
very different ethnic and religious elements. From the 1830s until the end of the empire, all the
political discussions and struggles occurring among the political and military elites consisted of
different, and often opposing, solutions for the prevention of nationalist and separatist tendencies
among the non-Muslims who constituted about 40 percent of the population at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. To forestall the nationalist challenge, Ottoman statesmen developed the policy of
Ottomanism to promote the notion of one Ottoman nation, consisting of individuals with equal rights
based on law, sharing the same mother country, and loyal to the state and the sultan. Ottomanism
underwent several phases: First, the state acknowledged basic rights to its citizens, Muslim and
non-Muslim alike, as reflected in the Imperial Rescript of Gulhane of 1839; second, the state tried to
create socio-economic development together with a joint education system, especially in the
Christian provinces of the Balkans, after the Imperial Rescript of Reform of 1856; and third, as a last
hope to curb separatist tendencies among the Christians, the state gave its citizens political rights,
turning the empire into a constitutional monarchy, with a constitution and a parliament in 1876.

Furthermore, since the Empire was militarily too weak to tackle the external threats, effective
diplomacy was therefore regarded as an essential guarantee of the Empire's survival. The Ottoman
statesmen attempted to exploit the balance of power between the European powers and to exploit
their rivalries, especially those between Britain and Russia. During the Tanzimat period, Britain (and
France and Austria at times) emerged as the main supporter of the Empire against Russia. Although
the Ottoman Empire was weak in comparison with the European Great Powers, it remained a
significant international actor whose independent decisions could materially influence the interests
and behavior of more powerful states. After 1856, the Ottoman Empire was formally admitted by
treaty into the European state system, and her status as a great European power was recognized.

From 1875 onward, the Tanzimat regime entered a period of profound crisis, marked by the
bankruptcy of the state treasury, a series of Christian rebellions in the Balkan provinces, a
constitutionalist coup detat, a major diplomatic confrontation with the European Great Powers, and

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a protracted and disastrous war with Russia which ended in 1878 with the Empire's territorial
truncation by the treaties of San Stefano and Berlin. After the period of crisis ended, Sultan
Abdlhamid II charted a new course in domestic, and in foreign policy to defend the Empire's
independence and territorial integrity. Abdlhamid did not reject the Tanzimat reforms, most of which
he preserved, and some of which he developed further; but he was deeply critical of those aspects
of his predecessors policies which, he believed, had provoked the crisis of the mid-1870s: their
financial recklessness, their tolerance of the spread of European influence within the Empire, their
inability to restrain nationalist and separatist tendencies among their Christian subjects, and their
failure to protect their Muslim subjects, upon whose solidarity and welfare, Abdlhamid believed, the
Ottoman Empire's survival depended.

Sultan Abdlhamid was a staunch authoritarian. He dissolved the parliament in 1878, establishing
his own absolute control over the executive organs of government. He was determined to control in
detail the initiation and implementation of policy. He ignored the rules of bureaucratic hierarchy,
exerting personal authority over provincial as well as central officials. He was a strong centralizer,
determined to curb all tendencies toward provincial autonomy. Abdlhamid saw Islam and Muslim
solidarity, expressed in a common loyalty to the caliphate, as crucial to the empire's efforts to resist
European penetration and the separatist aspirations of his non-Turkish Muslim subjects. This policy
was expressed in much official deference to Islam and to religious leaders and in an officially
sponsored religious propaganda that at times assumed a pan-Islamic form by appealing to Muslim
solidarity outside the Ottoman Empire. Abdlhamid emphasized Islam domestically in order to
invoke the loyalty of his Muslim subjectsin particular non-Turkish Muslims like the Albanians and
the Arabs. The reign of Abdlhamid was one of considerable achievements in the fields of social
and economic reform. He continued the beneficial aspects of the Tanzimat reforms and encouraged
construction of schools, railways, harbors, irrigation works, telegraph lines, and other infrastructure
projects. He also encouraged improvement in finance, trade, mining, and agricultural export, as well
as in education, civil administration, security, and military affairs. However, his financial caution
significantly limited the extent of his civil and economic reforms. Unlike the Tanzimat statesmen,
Abdlhamid avoided peace-time alliances with the Great Powers, maintaining an overall diplomatic
stance of neutrality or non-commitment. Abdlhamid distanced the empire from its former
protector, Great Britain, and harmonized relations with the empire's traditional enemy, Russia,
initiating the longest period of peace in Russo-Ottoman relations for more than a century. He also
inaugurated a close relationship with Germany in order to restrain Britain and Russia.

Opposition to Abdlhamid's regime was led by the Young Turks, a group consisting of intellectuals,
students, and both civilian and military officers. Their chief organization, the Committee of Union and
Progress (CUP), consisted mainly of young officers of the general staff who were serving in
Macedonian provinces, demanded the restoration of the parliament as a means to curb autocracy
and preserve the integrity of the empire. The CUP staged an uprising in Macedonia in the summer
of 1908. Fearing internal chaos, the sultan proclaimed the restoration of the parliament on July 24,
1908. A counter-revolution broke out in Istanbul in April 1909 against the policies of the CUP. The
CUP crushed this rebellion and also dethroned Abdlhamid on April 27, 1909, falsely accusing him
of having instigated the rebellion.

During the second constitutional period (19081918), the Ottoman Empire experienced the most
democratic era of its history, with a myriad of political parties electing deputies to the Ottoman

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parliament, which enacted major secular and liberal reforms. An initial period in which members of
all the different nationalities worked to strengthen and preserve the empire was brought to an end by
Austria's annexation of Bosnia, Bulgaria's annexation of East Rumelia, and Greece's annexation of
Crete. Unrest in Macedonia and in other provinces resumed, with the forceful Ottoman military
responses to restore order compounding the violence. Ottoman territorial losses continued, with
Italy's invasion of the provinces of Libya in the Tripolitanian War (19111912) and the victory of the
newly independent states of southeastern Europe during the First Balkan War (1912), which pushed
the Ottomans out of all their remaining European provinces and threatened their control of Istanbul
itself. As thousands of refugees flooded into Istanbul, and as the remaining parts of the Empire fell
into increasing despair and chaos, the CUP leaders Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, and Cemal Pasha
were in January 1913 able to end the internal political turmoil by a coup, and establish a Triumvirate
that successfully defended Istanbul and took advantage of disputes among the Balkan states during
the Second Balkan War (1913) to regain Edirne and eastern Thrace, and introduced major military,
social and economic legislation.

The CUP's primary aim was a defensive foreign policy and rapprochement with the Entente Powers
(Britain, France, and Russia). In order to save the territorial integrity of the Empire, the CUP,
especially after the traumatic effect of the Balkan Wars on Ottoman public opinion, was convinced
that only an alliance with Britain (and the Entente) could guarantee the survival of what remained of
the Empire, and tried to seek support from London and Paris, but this proved impossible for the
politics of the European powers of the time, and by the start of the First World War the Ottoman
government had failed to fulfil its objectives. The CUP leaders were convinced that neutrality would
be disastrous for the Ottoman Empire since it would leave it isolated and at the mercy of the
belligerent states. In the end, the Triumvirate formed an alliance with Germany and entered the war,
despite the wishes of certain sections of military and political elites and intellectuals to stay out of the
war.

During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire faced hostilities in eastern Anatolia against the
Russians and in Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Palestine against the British and their allies. Although
they successfully resisted an armada of BritishFrench naval and land forces in the Dardanelles in
1915, they were less successful in other areas: the Russians penetrated deep into eastern Anatolia
and the British captured Baghdad, Palestine, and Syria. Throughout the war, the Allies signed a
number of agreements for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the Anglo-Franco-
Russian agreements of MarchApril 1915 (known as the Constantinople Agreement), Britain and
France agreed that the question of Constantinople and the Straits would finally be solved by
annexing the area into the Russian Empire. Under the Sykes-Picot agreement of AprilOctober
1916, Russia was also given most of eastern Anatolia (including Erzurum, Trabzon, Van, and Bitlis),
with France to receive Syria and Cilicia and Britain to gain control of Palestine and Mesopotamia in
exchange. By 1917, Russian forces occupied territories east of the TrabzonVan line; the Ottoman
army was only able to regain eastern Anatolia after Russian forces had evacuated as a result of the
outbreak of revolution at home. As a consequence of Russia's withdrawal from the war,
arrangements with Russia, including the Constantinople Agreement, were annulled.

After the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918, however, Britain, France, and Italy submitted
their respective demands, based on previous agreements, to the Paris Peace Conference and
began to occupy several parts of Anatolia. The peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, known as the

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Treaty of Sevres, dated August 10, 1920, was extremely severe; not only did it strip the Empire of all
its Arab provinces, it also deprived the Ottomans control of the Straits, and also created an
independent Armenian state and envisaged future Greek control of western Anatolia. The Turkish
nationalists, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatrk), organized an armed resistance
movement against the Allies occupation and successfully fought the Greeks, French, and Italians in
western and southern Anatolia, thus leading to the establishment of the Turkish Republic in Anatolia
and eastern Thrace. During the Turkish War for Independence (19191922), two rival governments
appeared: in Ankara under Mustafa Kemal, and in Allied occupied Istanbul under Sultan Mehmed VI
who defended a policy of compromise and collaboration with the Allies. Accordingly, after the final
victory of Mustafa Kemal over Greek forces in western Anatolia, and in the wake of peace
negotiations at Lausanne, the Ankara Government abolished the Ottoman sultanate on November 1,
1922, thus officially ending the Ottoman Empire.

See also ABDLHAMID II; ATATRK, MUSTAFA KEMAL; EN- VER PASHA; TANZIMAT; TURKEY;
YOUNG OTTOMANS; YOUNG TURKS.]

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