The History of the Ottoman Empire

Robert Colomb rcolomb@me.com

The Ottomans were a Turkish dynasty that supplanted the Byzantine Empire, capturing Constantinople in 1453. This course examines the Ottomans, from the entry of the Turkish people into history in the First Century BCE, to the proclamation of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the First World War. Besides the rulers and battles, the story includes the political, military and economic environment of the Ottoman state during its rise and decline, together with the internal organisation which supported its rise, and its corruption that accompanied the fall of the Empire. The four parts are:

1. The origin of the Turks, and the rise of the Ottoman state up to the siege of Constantinople in 1453.

2. The capture of Constantinople, and the military and economic environment of the nascent empire, in which we can see the origins of contemporary Eastern Europe.

3. The zenith of the Empire in the 15th and 16th Centuries.

4. The decline and eventual collapse of the Empire from the 17th Century to the early 20th Century.

Principal sources include: • Turkey, a Short History, Norman Stone, Thames and

Hudson, 2010 • Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition, Norman

Itzkowitz, University of Chicago Press, 1972. • Wikipedia

The Turkish People People speaking Turkic languages are wide-spread in western and central Asia, including Turkey, Turkestan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, where the majority are Turkic-speaking, but also the Uyghur region of China, and substantial minorities in Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere. They number in total about 150 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages#/media/File:Carte_peuples_turcs.png

Present-Day Turkic-Speaking People

Turkic peoples entered history through encounters with the Chinese, as nomadic herdsmen along with the Mongols and others in Central Asia, in the first millennium BCE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_peoples#/media/File:East-Hem_500bc.jpg

The World about 500 BCE

By the time of the Arab conquests, about 650 CE, Turkic-speaking peoples had migrated west and south, and had appeared on the borders of the Byzantine and Persian empires. The Bulgars, Khazars, Sabirs, and the Gokturks spoke Turkic languages, the latter Turkish. (The Avars are not well-understood, but are thought to have been a mixture of mostly non-Turkic peoples.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_migration#/media/File:Pontic_steppe_region_around_650_AD.png

Middle Eastern Region about 650 C.E.

By the 9th Century CE, the Abbasid Caliphate had begun to disintegrate. The Abbasids and the breakaway states made increasing use of Turkic slaves and mercenaries in their armies. In particular, Persianised Turks set up an independent empire in Khorashan (centred on present-day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Balouchistan), the Ghaznavid, from 877. The main body of Turkish people remained in Central Asia, just to the north of the old Abbasid empire. At this time they were organised in a tribal confederation known as the Oghuz. In about 950, a man named Seljuk became leader of one of the clans, broke with the confederation, and adopted Islam. By the early 11th Century, the Seljuks had established an empire, largely at the expense of the Ghaznavids, and in 1054 captured Baghdad and the rest of the West Asian fragments of the Abbasid Caliphate, with the exception of Egypt. They also raided the Byzantine territory in Anatolia, to the point that Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes led an army against the Seljuks led by Alp Arslan. The Byzantine army was defeated and Romanos captured in the Battle of Manzikert, near present-day Ankara, in 1071. Under Alp Arslan’s successor, Malik Shah, the Seljuk Empire expanded into Armenia, Georgia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran, and Khoroshan, and to the east to about the boundaries of the Sasanian Persian Empire before the Muslim conquest. Following Malik Shah’s death in 1092, the empire split among his sons, and rapidly fragmented. Palestine, in particular, was lost first to Fatimid Egypt, then to the First Crusade in 1099.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuq_dynasty#/media/File:Seljuk_Empire_locator_map.svg

Seljuk Empire in 1092

One of the longest-surviving successor Seljuk states was the Sultanate of Rum, in Anatolia. Successfully fending off the Crusades, the Sultanate expanded further into Anatolia, and also to the east, until succumbing to the Mongols in 1243. Under the overlordship of the Mongols, the Sultanate was fragmented, and a number of small emirates were established. These became increasingly independent both of the Sultanate and of the Mongols, as the Mongol Empire itself began to fragment. One of these emirates was founded in the mid 13th Century by a Turkish adventurer, Ertuğrul. In 1299 his son, Osman, declared the emirate independent of the Sultanate. Osman’s emirate ultimately became the Ottoman Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_beyliks#/media/File:Anatolian_Beyliks_in_1300.png

Anatolian Beyliks in 1300

The Ottoman State Ertuğrul was the chief of a Seljuk clan living at Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan, at that time part of the Seljuk Empire. He became the leader about 1230, shortly after Genghis Khan had obliterated the neighbouring Khwarezmian Empire, and the Mongolian forces were rampaging in the area. The Seljuk empire had fragmented, so that the events in the eastern part of the old Persian and Abbasid empires were far away from the Sultanate of Rum in eastern and central Anatolia. The Seljuks in the Sultanate were nibbling away at the Byzantine Empire, which had been badly weakened by the loss of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The remnant bordering the Sultanate was based in Nicaea. The empire was not re-united until 1261. Ertuğrul decided his prospects were better in Rum, so led his 400 fighters there to aid the Seljuks. Ertuğrul’s forces were allowed a small territory at the western margin of the Sultanate, with a mandate to rule as much Byzantine territory as they could conquer.

Beginning of the Ottoman Empire

In 1243, the Sultanate of Rum was defeated by the Mongols, and was forced to swear allegiance to them. Under their control, the Sultanate was divided and weakened. In the late 13th Century the Mongol empire had fragmented and the control of the Sultanate and the Khanate had sufficiently weakened that Ertuğrul’s son, Osman, who had succeeded in 1280, was emboldened in 1299 to declare independence. Osman continued his father’s expansion. His army was swelled both by adventurers from all over the Muslim world who hoped to gain wealth by pillaging Byzantine territory, and also by refugees from the wars with and among the Mongols. Some of these refugees were also warriors motivated partly by the opportunity to spread Islam, and partly by the opportunities to pillage. These forces, ably led by Osman, were able to greatly increase

Osman’s territory, at the expense of the Byzantines. Osman is the founder of what became known in the West as the Ottoman dynasty, and the Ottoman Empire. Osman’s son, Orhan succeeded in 1327, just as the Ottoman forces captured the city of Bursa, although by negotiation rather than battle. The Byzantine governor decided that the Byzantine cause was lost, surrendered, converted to Islam, and became commander of an Ottoman force in later conquests. The important city of Nicaea fell in 1331. Orhan also took over the neighbouring Turkish principalities of the Karasids and Ankara, contrary to the idea that the Turks would conquer only the Byzantines, and moved across the Dardanelles during yet another Byzantine civil war.

One of Orhan’s innovations was the formation of a professional standing army, where previously each battle force was assembled from the men loyal to various vassals and from volunteers, and disbanded after the campaign. Murad I, who succeeded Orhan in 1361, considered that the professional army was potentially unreliable, and a

source of instability. On the advice of his Grand Vizier, the Janissary Corps was established. The Janissaries were recruited from boys aged from 8 to 14 of the Christian subjects of the growing empire, taken more or less by force. These boys were converted to Islam and sent to Turkish families to assimilate Turkish culture. They were considered a kind of slave, subject to

strong discipline and not allowed to marry, but were well paid and had many privileges. As a result of their training they developed a strong esprit de corps and were intensely loyal to the Sultan, forming an elite military force, initially only about 10 percent of the field army.

Under Murad’s reign, from 1361 to 1389, the Ottomans expanded into the Balkans, at the expense of the Serbians and Bulgarians, and also absorbed other Turkish principalities in Anatolia. Murad was killed shortly after the Ottoman victory over the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo.

Murad’s son, Bayezid, consolidated and extended his father’s conquests in the Balkans. By 1390 he had

conquered most of the Turkish principalities in Anatolia. This last was problematic in that his Turkish troops objected to conquering fellow Muslims, especially fellow Turks. Bayezid accomplished this partly by having his religious authorities declare fatwas against the other Turkish principalities, and partly by relying on his

Serbian and Byzantine vassals. He then turned his attention to Constantinople, by that time little more than the city itself. He began a siege in 1394, which continued until 1402.In that year the forces of Tamerlane invaded Anatolia, defeating the Ottomans at the battle of Ankara, and capturing Bayezid. The remnants of Bayezid’s defeated army were ferried across the Bosporus by the Genoese, and in any case, a substantial fraction of the empire was out of reach of Tamerlane on the European side, so the empire was severely damaged but not destroyed. Tamerlane appointed one of Bayezid’s sons as sultan, but after Tamerlane’s death in 1405, his empire fragmented and descended into internal warfare. So also did the Ottoman sultanate. In 1413 one of the sons, Mehmet, defeated the others and became Sultan. He was able to begin to stabilize the empire before his

death in 1421. The process was continued by his successor, Murad II, who died in 1451.

Murad II resumed his grandfather’s siege of Constantinople in 1422. The siege was unsuccessful partly because the Byzantines had come into possession of a new weapon, the bombard, an early form of gunpowder artillery. They had first used it in the siege of 1396. Both sides had artillery in 1422, but the Ottomans

did not have superiority, and a rebellion in Anatolia forced Murad to withdraw.

Bombard from mid-15th Century

It weighs around 8 tons and has a length of more than 2.5 meters. It was produced in the early 15th century and could fire, according to modern calculations, an 80 cm stone ball weighing 690 kg to a distance of roughly 600 m after being loaded with 15 kg of gunpowder and set at an elevation of 10°.

After Murad II’s death in 1451, the Sultanate passed to his son Mehmed II. Mehmed focused his attention on the conquest of

Constantinople, which by this time had become militarily insignificant, but its conquest had been a dream in the Islamic world ever since the time of Mohammed. Mehmet assembled an army of more than 100,000 men and a fleet of more than 100 ships, with more than 60 bombards of various kinds. Constantinople was defended by a force of about 7000.

The Dardanelles Gun was cast in bronze in 1464 by Munir Ali with a weight of 16.8 t and a length of 518 cm, being capable of firing stone balls of up to 63 cm diameter (over 25 inches).[1] The powder chamber and the barrel are connected by the way of a screw mechanism, allowing easier transport of the unwieldy device.

Even though Mehmet had an overwhelmingly superior force, the siege of Constantinople was no easy matter. The city was walled. One wall faced the Sea of Marmara, and another the Golden Horn, making it impossible for land-based armies to get a purchase. The third wall, the 5.7 kilometre Theodosian wall, faced the landward side. It was built in the 5th Century by the Emperor Theodisius II, and was 4.5 to 6 metres thick, at least 12 metres high, and surrounded by a ditch 20 metres wide and up to 10 metres deep. It was the strongest fortress ever built, and had been taken only once in 1100 years, in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade. It had discouraged even Attila the Hun.

One potential weakness in the Byzantine defence was the Golden Horn, an inlet which formed the main port of Constantinople. This was defended by a large chain extending to the tower of Galata on the eastern shore. This chain had been breached during the Fourth Crusade by the Venetian navy, and had been bypassed by the Kievian Rus in the 10th Century when the Rus dragged their longships across the peninsula behind Galata. In that case, the Byzantine navy destroyed the Rus navy by the use of Greek fire. At the time of the Ottoman siege, Galata was held by the nominally neutral Genoans.

The Ottomans had numerical superiority, and also great superiority in artillery, so attacked the Theodesian wall with a combination of frontal assault, mining and bombardment over seven weeks. After unsuccessfully trying to break the chain, and being unwilling to provoke the Genoans, Mehmed followed the Rus example and moved some of his ships across the peninsula on log rollers. The Ottoman navy then foiled an attempt by the Byzantines to attack with Greek fire.

Finally, on 29 May 1453, after seven weeks, the 21 year old Mehmed ordered an all-out assault, which overwhelmed the defenders and the city fell. Most of the Venetians managed to escape, along with a few others. The remaining population was engulfed in the sack of the city. After the fall of Constantinople, Mehmed II declared himself Kayser-i Rum, literally "Caesar of Rome", seeing the Eastern Roman Empire living on as his empire.