History Online - Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans are one of the greatest and most powerful civilizations of the modern period. Their moment of glory in the sixteenth century represents one of the heights of human creativity, optimism, and artistry. The empire they built was the largest and most influential of the Muslim empires of the modern period, and their culture and military expansion crossed over into Europe. Not since the expansion of Islam into Spain in the eighth century had Islam seemed poised to establish a European presence as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like that earlier expansion, the Ottomans established an empire over European territory and established Islamic traditions and culture that last to the current day (the Muslims in Bosnia are the last descendants of the Ottoman presence in Europe).

The Ottoman empire lasted until the twentieth century. While historians like to talk about empires in terms of growth and decline, the Ottomans were a force to be reckoned with, militarily and culturally, right up until the break-up of the empire in the first decades of this century. The real end to the Ottoman culture came with the secularization of Turkey after World War II along European models of government. The transition to a secular state was not an easy one and its repercussions are still being felt in Turkish society today; nevertheless, secularization represents the real break with the Ottoman tradition and heritage.

We will start with the greatest figure of Ottoman history, the Sultan Suleyman, who built from the conquests of his father a great city, military machine, empire, and culture. No culture seems to invite such a total association of the entire history and greatness of the culture in a single individual as Ottoman culture does. This is not just a European prejudice; Muslims themselves can hardly resist the temptation of summing up the whole of Ottoman culture and history in this brilliant and dignified human being. For very few figures in history encompassed so much of their culture, and very few near-mythical figures have left so much of their humanity to posterity. For Islam produces an odd relationship between individuals and history. The inherent dignity and perfectibility of humanity in Islam tends to produce mythical figures like Suleyman who seem to master every human art; but the spiritual egalitarianism of the religion also leads to a surprising humanisation of these mythical figures. Sit back and prepare yourself for a tour of one of the great flowerings of human genius, dignity, and cultural creativity.

The Ottomans arose from the obscure reaches of Anatolia in the west of Turkey; these Western Turks were called the Oghuz. They had come primarily as settlers during the reign of the Seljuks in Turkey (1098-1308); the Anatolian frontier was largely hostile to Islam Some of them were warriors to the Islamic faith carrying out jihad, or "holy struggle," to spread the faith among hostile unbelievers. It was a tough life in Anatolia; the Seljuks had been the first to maintain power over the area.

The Ottomans soon ruled a small military state in western Anatolia by 1300, about the time the Seljuk state was crumbling apart. This small state was in conflict with several other small Muslim states, each preying on the other for territory. By 1400, however, the Ottomans had managed to extend their influence over much of Anatolia and even into Byzantine territory in eastern Europe: Macedonia and Bulgaria. In 1402, the Ottomans moved their capital to Edirne in Europe where they threatened the last great bastion of the Byzantine Empire, its capital, Constantinople. The city seemed to defy the great expansion of Islam. No matter how much territory fell to the Muslims, Constantinople resisted every siege and every invasion. The Ottomans, however, wanted to break this cycle. Not only would the seizure of Constantinople represent a powerful symbol of Ottoman power, but it would make the Ottomans master of east-west trade. In 1453, Sultan Mehmed (1451-1481), who was called "The Conqueror," finally took this one last remnant of Byzantium and renamed it, Istanbul. From that point onwards, the capital of the Ottoman Europe would remain fixed in Istanbul and, under the patronage of the Ottoman sultans, become one of the wealthiest and most cultured cities of the early modern world.

The Ottoman Empire had been started. It expanded greatly under Sultan Selim I (1512-1520), but it was under his son, Sultan Suleyman (1520-1566), called "The Lawmaker" in Islamic history and "The Magnificent" in Europe, that the empire would reach its greatest expansion over Asia and Europe.

The Ottomans inherited a rich mixture of political traditions from vastly disparate ethnic groups: Turks, Persians, Mongols, Mesopotamian and, of course, Islam. The Ottoman state, like the Turkish, Mongol, and Mesopotamian states rested on a principle of absolute authority in the monarch. The nature of Ottoman autocracy, however, is greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted in the West, particularly in world history textbooks.

The central function of the ruler or Sultan in Ottoman political theory was to guarantee justice ('adala in Arabic) in the land. All authority hinges on the ruler's personal commitment to justice. This idea has both Turco-Persian and Islamic aspects. In Islamic political theory, the model of the just ruler was Solomon in the Hebrew histories (Suleyman is named after Solomon). The justice represented by the Solomonic ruler is a distributive justice; this is a justice of fairness and equity that comes closer to the Western notion of justice. In addition, however, 'adale has Turco-Persian coordinates; in this tradition, 'adale, or justice, is the protection of the helpless from the rapacity of corrupt and predatory government. In this sense, justice involves protecting the lowest members of society, the peasantry, from unfair taxation, corrupt magistracy, and inequitable courts. This, in Ottoman political theory, was the primary task of the Sultan. He personally protected his people from the excesses of government, such as predatory taxation and the corruption of local officials. For the Ottomans, the ruler could only guarantee this justice if he had absolute power. For if he was not an absolute ruler, that meant that he would be dependent on others and so subject to corruption. Absolute authority, then, was at the service of building a just government and laws rather than elevating the ruler above the law as Europeans have interpreted the Sultanate.

In order to ensure 'adala , the Ottomans set up a number of practices and institutions in the central government surrounding the Sultan. The first was the establishment of a bureaucracy drawn from the Sultan's inner circle. This bureaucracy in turn controlled local governments; this would become the model of European absolutism in the seventeenth century. Other institutions and political practices were:

Observance of government : The Sultan's job was primarily to keep a watch on all the officials. In some cases, this observance of government involved the personal involvement of the Sultan. He would sometimes observe in secret the proceedings of the Diwan, which was the central advisory group to the sultan, and sometimes observe proceedings of ulama courts. For instance, at about the same time that Martin Luther was condemned to death by the Diet of Worms, Sultan Suleyman secretly observed the trial of Molla Kabiz who asserted the spiritual superiority of Jesus Christ over Muhammad. After questioning by the ulama court and refusing to recant, Molla was sentenced to death. Suleyman, however, overturned the verdict because the arguments the courts made had not disproven Molla's arguments (eventually, Molla's arguments were overcome in a later trial). Periodically, the Sultan was required to tour local governments in disguise to ensure that magistrates and justices were operating justly. If the Sultan believed that an injustice was being committed against the people, he would interfere directly and overturn the decision. Islamic historians argue that the Ottoman Empire decline primarily because later Sultans took less and less interest in maintaining justice in their Empire. For the most part, however, the Sultan monitored local officials through a vast, complex, and elaborate system of spies who would report back to the central bureaucracy. The intelligence gathering system in the Ottoman Empire was the best in the world until the twentieth century!

Siyasa : Rooting out corruption meant nothing if nothing was done about it. Public agents and officials that abused their power and the peasantry were subjected to a special jurisdiction called the siyasa. The siyasa were a set of severe punishments imposed by the Sultan on corrupt officials; there was no way out, no cash compensation could take the place of the corporeal or, more often, capital punishments swiftly and severely meted out to corrupt officials. In the siyasa system, the most severe crimes involved illegal taxation or forced labor of the peasantry, staying in their homes without permission or billetting troops without permission, and requiring peasants against their will to provide food for them or for soldiers. Such crimes almost certainly meant the death penalty.

Public declaration of laws and taxes : In order to prevent fraudulent taxes and arbitrary laws by public officials, the Sultanic "orders" (firman ) and taxes were declared and posted in public. There was, then, always direct dissemination of central government to the people directly.

Accessibility : Perhaps the most important aspect of Ottoman centralized government was universal access to centralized authority. The highest reaches of power-with the exception of the person of the Sultan-was available to each and every citizen of the Empire. Every single member of Ottoman society could approach the Imperial Council with grievances against government officials; these official petitions were called ard-i mahdar and were always treated with the utmost seriousness. If the Imperial Council ruled against the officials, they would often be subjected to the siyasa .

Public opinion : The most common misconception about Islamic rulers in general and Ottoman rulers in particular was that they were removed, aloof, and uninterested in their people. While this may be physically true, it was not ideologically true. In fact, in the Ottoman state, public opinion was regarded as the only true foundation on which state authority rested. If the people ceased to support their rulers, it was argued, then the rulers would soon fall from power. The Sultanic government, then, assiduously cultivated public opinion, for it was recognized that the enemies of the Sultan were also cultivating adverse public opinion. The government did this not only through propaganda, but through policy as well. In addition to prosecuting corrupt government officials and publicly declaring taxes and laws, the Ottoman government also cultivated public opinion in its wars of conquests. Soldiers were not allowed to mistreat peasants nor take anything from them without their permission or reimbursement. All the Ottoman wars of the conquest in the sixteenth century were assiduously planned years in advance. The government would lay up stores of supplies all along the campaign route so that the armies could feed themselves without taking anything from the general population. The Ottoman conquerors believed that no conquest could stand without the goodwill of the general population of the conquered, so military campaigns were remarkably fair and easy on the average person.

The Ottomans also paid attention to an early form of public opinion polling and were probably the first government to actively monitor public opinion through quantifiable means. The "opinion poll" that they used was the Friday prayers. In most Islamic states, one of the aspects of Friday prayer is to pray for the welfare and life of the ruler. This is an optional part of the Friday prayer, so its inclusion generally means that the members of the mosque think well of the ruler. Its omission frequently means the opposite. The Ottomans paid very strict attention to Friday prayers throughout the Empire in order to precisely guage public sentiments.

Officially, the Sultan was the government. He enjoyed absolute power and, in theory at least, was personally involved in every governmental decision. In the Ottoman experience of government, everything representing the state government issued from the hands of the Sultan himself.

The Sultan also assumed the title of Caliph, or supreme temporal leader, of Islam. The Ottomans claimed this title for several reaons: the two major holy sites, Mecca and Medina, were part of the Empire, and the primary goal of the government was the security of Muslims around the world, particularly the security of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. As Caliph, the Sultan was responsible for Islamic orthodoxy. Almost all of the military conquests and annexations of other countries were done for one of two reasons: to guarantee the safe passage of Muslims to Mecca (the justification for invading non-Muslim territories) and the rooting out of heterodox or heretical Islamic practices and beliefs (the justification for invading or annexing Muslim territories).

Historians simply can't agree on how the Sultanate was passed from generation to generation among the Ottomans. In the early history of the Empire, the Sultanate clearly passes from father to eldest son; in 1603, at the death of Ahmed I (1603-1617), the Sultanate passed to the brother of the Sultan. Still, the Ottomans did not seem to have a hereditary system based on primogeniture (crown passes to the eldest son) or seniority (crown passes to the next oldest brother). In both Turkish and Mongol monarchical systems, the passing of the crown is a haphazard affair. Both the Turkish and Mongol peoples believed that the crown fell to the most worthy inheritor. Each individual in the hereditary line, brothers and sons, were equally entitled to the crown. This meant that successions were almost always major struggles among contending parties. The Ottomans seem to have operated in a similar system. When a Sultan passed away, the crown, it was believed, fell to the most worthy successor (almost always the eldest son). Selim I had to fight for the Sultanate, but Suleyman was the only son of Selim and so inherited the crown without a struggle. Once a Sultan had assumed the throne, all his brothers were executed as well as all their sons-had Selim I lost his bid for the crown, Suleyman would have been killed. These executions guaranteed that there would be no future wars or struggles between claimants to the throne since all the contenders but one were out of the picture.

In the seventeenth century, Ottoman Sultans began to revise this practice and simply imprisoned their brothers-this is what permitted Ahmed I to be succeeded by his brother. Western historians point to this practice as one of the central reasons why the Sultanic government failed. Since the crown was falling to individuals that had been imprisoned much if not most of their lives, the Ottoman state saw a succession of mad Sultans and the corresponding increase in power of a corrupt bureaucracy.

The fundamental qualification for the Sultanate was the individual's worthiness to fill the position. The Ottomans believed that simple succession proved that the Sultan was worthy of the crown; however, the Sultan may grow old, feeble, or corrupt and thus lose his worthiness to serve as Sultan. Selim I came to the throne by deposing his old father, Bayezid II (1481-1512), who was too old to lead the army against external threats. When Suleyman had become an old man, his two sons, Bayezid and Mustafa, his favorite son, plotted to overthrow him. Faced with this treason, the old Suleyman had to execute them both and this seems to have broken his spirit completely.

The Ottomans followed the old Turkish and Mongol tradition of considering the Sultan's lands to be a joint possession of the Sultan's family. Accordingly, the Ottoman lands were parcelled out to members of the royal family when each Sultan came to power. Conquered lands were considered the private property of the Sultan.

Although the Sultan was regarded as personally responsible for every government decision, in reality the government was run by a large bureaucracy. This bureaucracy was controlled by a rigid and complex set of rules, and the Sultan himself was constrained by these rules. At the top of the bureaucracy was the Diwan ("couch"), which served as a cabinet to the Sultan for making decisions. The most powerful member of the Sultan's government was the Grand Vizier who largely oversaw all the executive functions of the government. Appointments to these positions were not arbitrary but followed strict rules.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire was still the most powerful state in the world both in wealth and military capability. The personal style of government, however, cultivated among the earlier Sultans had gone away completely. In place of Sultanic government, the bureaucracy pretty much ran the show. Power struggles among the various elements of the bureaucracy: the grand vizier, the Diwan , or supreme court, and especially the military, the Janissaries, led to a constant shifting of government power. Islamic historians point out that the growth of bureaucratic power and the disinterest of the Sultans led to corrupt and predatory local government which eroded popular support. Western historians point to internal decline in the bureaucracy along with increased military efficiency of European powers as the principle reason for the decline of the Empire. However it may be, the decline of the Ottomans was a staggered affair lasting over two centuries. The Empire itself would exist until World War I, at which point it was finally erased from the maps by European powers.

Perhaps the most significant innovation in Sultanic government was the preservation of the brothers of the Sultan. While Sultanic succession is hotly disputed among both Islamic and Western historians, it seems clear that the Ottomans believed that the Sultan was selected primarily through divine kut , which in Turkish means "favor." All the members of the ruling family, according to some historians, had an equal claim to the throne. This explains the Ottoman practice of killing the brothers of the Sultan and their sons; the purpose of this practice was to obviate rebellion or rival claims to the throne. In the late sixteenth century, the Ottoman Sultans abandoned this practice, yet still distrusted filial loyalty. So the brothers of the Sultan were locked away in the harem in the palace. While they lived in luxury, they were still forced to live in small rooms and often in isolated conditions. Many of them went mad, but most simply became fat and lazy, addicted to alcohol and food and lying about. All of them made bad Sultans, completely disengaged from the government. In addition, the Sultans abandoned the practice of training their sons to assume the Sultanate by having them serve in the government and the military. In both Islamic and Western histories of the Ottomans, this decline in the Sultanate is regarded as one of the prime causes of its decline.