Download The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era With the collapse of the

The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
With the collapse of the Mongol administration of the Islamic lands in the 14th and 15th centuries, a trio
of new empires began forming across Asia: the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor, the Safavid Empire in
Persia, and the Mughal Empire in India. These three empires were the result of centuries of Islamic state
building and expansion, and at their height, they covered nearly the entire Islamic world. The only Islamic
regions left outside their domain were West Africa and Southeast Asia. These three empires were also
significant because they provided the bridge between the medieval and modern periods of Islamic history.
The Ottoman Empire, which formed in the early 14th century, was the first of the three Great Islamic
Empires. The Ottoman Empire reached its peak by 1600, after which time it fell into a gradual decline, as
a result of both internal disorganization and pressure from its external foes in Europe and Asia.
Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire survived through the First World War, and it was disbanded only in
1918. Out of the core of the Empire, in Asia Minor, came the present-day country of Turkey.
The Mughal Empire in India, which formed in 1526, was the third Great Islamic Empire to form, and it
struggled for several years after that to consolidate its territory. It benefited from a succession of strong
rulers throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, many of whom were able to ensure the Empire's survival by
appeasing the majority Hindu population of the Indian subcontinent. Like the Ottoman and Safavid
Empires, however, the Mughal Empire's power eventually declined, and it was absorbed by the expansion
of the British Empire in India in the mid-19th century.
Beginnings to 1301
The Ottoman Empire grew out of the remnants of the Seljuk Turkish realm following the collapse of
Mongol rule in Asia Minor in the late 13th century. The Seljuks were the first Turks to inhabit Asia
Minor, as well as the first dynasty to unite the traditionally nomadic Turkish people into a settled
community under one leader. The Seljuks could not match the military skill of the Mongols, however,
who first invaded Seljuk territory in 1243. The Seljuks were quickly defeated by the Mongols, and they
became vassals of the expanding Il-Khanate, led by the Mongol, Hulegu. The Mongol invasion from the
east pushed much of the Seljuk population further west in Asia Minor, closer to the Byzantine Empire,
which quickly became a favorite target for raids by Turkish gazi warriors.
Gazis meant "warriors of the faith." Gazi warriors believed that it was their sacred duty to extend the
territory controlled by Islamic rulers, particularly if it was done at the expense of non-Muslims. In
addition to their religious motivation, gazi warriors were also lured by the booty available to them
following a victory. The principle strategy of gazi warriors was to conduct gaza, or raids, into nonMuslim territory. During the Mongol rule over the Seljuks in Asia Minor, the gazi warriors conducted
frequent raids into Byzantine lands. As the Seljuk administration disintegrated along with that of the
Mongols, it was the gazis who took power for the Turks. The Ottoman Empire was in fact founded by
gazis, and as a gazi state its major mission was military conquest.
As the 13th century came to a close, both the Seljuks and Mongols had essentially lost control of their
Turkish subjects. Asia Minor was not an important territory for the Mongols, and thus they did not spend
much energy and resources on its administration. Out of this gradual collapse of central authority in Asia
Minor rose a number of Turkish principalities, or emirates, many of which were led by gazi warriors. One
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
such warrior, Osman Gazi, proved particularly successful at defeating the Byzantine Empire or other
smaller states in his raids.
Empire Building, 1301-1402
According to custom in the Turkish emirates, Osman's followers took his name,
and became known as the Osmanlis, or Ottomans. In 1301, with the victory of
the Ottomans over the Byzantines at Nicaea, the Ottoman emirate established
itself as a powerful military force. Until 1354, however, the Ottomans remained
just one of several Turkish emirates in Asia Minor, albeit the strongest one.
That year, the Ottomans received some help from Mother Nature when an
earthquake destroyed the walls of the city of Gallipoli, on the southern tip of
the Italian peninsula. The Ottomans took advantage of the destruction and
chaos to occupy the strategic city. This event finally established Ottoman
superiority over the other Turkish realms in Asia Minor, and they were soon
absorbed into a unified Turkish state under the Ottomans.
Osman died in 1336, twenty years before the capture of
Gallipoli, and was succeeded by his son, Orhan, who ruled from
1326 to 1362. Orhan is also generally credited with initiating the
formation of the Janissaries, the first standing army in Europe.
The word, Janissary, is an English derivative of the Turkish yeni
cheri, or "new troops," which is what the Ottomans called this
elite military corps. Following the 1361 capture of the Byzantine
city of Adrianople by the Ottomans - who renamed it Edirne and
made it their capital in 1366 - Orhan formed the Janissaries out
of his prisoners of war. The Ottomans later began adding other
Orhan
new recruits to the corps, by conscripting Christian boys from
conquered territories. One estimate claims they took one in five
male children from Greek homes to serve in the Janissary corps,
for example. By the 14th and 15th centuries, they became one of the most formidable military forces in
the world. By the 16th century they had become so powerful that they were able to influence the
succession of the Sultanate, which they did on several occasions. The Janissaries were given military
training and introduced to Islam, and were given the task of protecting the life of the Sultan. Some of the
recruits were able to ascend to the Ottoman administration as well, and a handful even became Grand
Vizier, the most important official of the Ottoman Empire after the Sultan.
Orhan was succeeded by his son, Murad I (1362-89), who ushered in the first major period of expansion
for the Ottomans. The most important of these conquests was that of the Balkans, including present-day
Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia, which gave the Ottomans a foothold in Europe.
The Ottomans were able to move into the Balkans fairly easily, because of the political disorganization of
the region. Fighting among minor princes had reduced the region to virtual anarchy, and it was unable to
gather a unified defense force against the Ottomans. The victory was also made easier for the Ottomans
with the help of the local population. Many sectors of the population welcomed the Ottomans, because of
their relatively tolerant policies regarding the religions of their subject peoples. Despite their origins as
gazi warriors bent on the conquest of non-Muslim lands, the Ottomans were remarkably lenient towards
their Christian subjects. The Ottomans officially recognized the Orthodox Christian Church, for example,
to which much of the Balkan population adhered, and the Ottomans also were very protective of the
Balkan peasantry from exploitation by their rulers.
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
Because of these factors, it was mainly the Balkan aristocracy and high priests, not the general
population, who resisted the Ottoman invasion. In the 1360s, Albania and Macedonia accepted Ottoman
rule, and in 1372, the King of Bulgaria became an Ottoman vassal. Ottoman rule in the Balkans was
firmly established in 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo, in which the Ottomans defeated the Kingdom of
Serbia. The Ottoman sultan, Murad I, was killed in battle at Kosovo, and he was succeeded by his son,
Bayazid I, who continued to advance Ottoman rule in the Balkans. In 1395, the Ottomans killed King
Shishman of Bulgaria, as part of their plan to replace local rulers with loyal Ottoman rulers. By 1400, the
Ottoman Empire had earned a prestigious reputation throughout the Islamic world, for its continuous
conquests of European lands.
After a short period of decline, in which the Ottomans were attacked by a stronger Muslim group, they
came back with a vengeance due to a series of strong rulers, combined with the traditional Turkish gazi
thirst for conquest. Although Asia Minor was divided among all of Bayazid's sons after the invasion, the
youngest son, Mehmed, soon asserted authority over the others, and by 1416, he had reunited Asia Minor
under his rule. In order to subdue his brothers, Mehmed even concluded a peace treaty with the
neighboring Byzantine Empire, which agreed to imprison Mehmed's brothers while he focused on
reconquering the Balkans. Despite Mehmed's leadership, however, the first decades of the 15th century
essentially featured a series of small civil wars within the Ottoman lands. During the wars of reconquest
in the Balkans under Mehmed's son, Murad II, the Ottomans were introduced to new weapons from
Europe, including cannons and muskets, which they then improved upon and used to their great
advantage in battle. While their use of firearms increased, so did their naval capabilities. A war with
Venice, a naval power, in the 1440s led to the development of an Ottoman navy, and by 1442 the
Ottoman Empire had 60 ships at Gallipoli and 100 river vessels on the Danube. The rapid growth of the
Ottoman navy in fact forced the Venetians to strengthen their
own fleet.
The Ottoman Empire reached its full recovery under Murad II's
son, Mehmed II, known as Fatih, or "the Conqueror." He was
determined not only to restore the Ottoman Empire to its preinvasion glory, but to build on it as well. After centuries of
Muslim raids on Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, Mehmed
decided it was time for the Muslims to take the city once and for
all. After a 54-day siege, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans,
who promptly renamed the city, Istanbul.
The siege of Constantinople began on April 6, 1453, with 50,000
Ottoman troops facing off against only 8,500 Byzantine troops.
Since their introduction to firearms 30 years earlier, the Ottomans
Mehmed II
had drastically improved their artillery, and now possessed
among the strongest weapons in the world at the time. The
Ottomans used the largest cannons yet seen in Europe, and
Constantinople's city walls, although the strongest of the Middle Ages, were no match for the Ottomans'
modern weaponry.
On May 29, 1453, after 54 days of battle, Sultan Mehmed II entered Constantinople and prayed at Hagia
Sophia, which was built by the Emperor Constantine, and was the oldest Byzantine church in the city. He
then ordered it turned into a mosque, and renamed the city Islambol - "Islam abounds" - or Istanbul. With
the capital firmly in Ottoman hands, the rest of the Byzantine Empire quickly crumbled. The Ottomans
absorbed the territory, and the Empire of Orthodox Christianity, after ruling for over a millennium, was
gone.
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
Mehmed realized the strategic value of controlling a city that represented the junction between Europe
and Asia, and he therefore spent much time transforming Istanbul into his empire's capital. He guided its
repopulation, for example, and the city grew from 30,000 people before the conquest to 100,000 by the
1478 census. By 1600, there were 700,000 people living in Istanbul, making it the most populous city in
Europe at that time. Mehmed also had a number of mosques, baths, public buildings, inns, and
marketplaces constructed in Istanbul, many of which remain today.
One of the most important buildings Mehmed ordered to be constructed following the conquest of
Istanbul was Topkapi Palace. Built over 12 years, from 1466 to 1478, it became the home of the Ottoman
sultans for nearly 400 years.
Mehmed II was known as the Conqueror for more reasons that just his conquest of Constantinople. In
1454 he demanded that all territories surrounding the Black Sea recognize Ottoman rule, including
several Genoese colonies, and the Kingdom of Moldavia. In 1463, Mehmed gained control of the
Dardanelles, a strategic waterway separating Asia Minor from Europe, by building a fortress on either
side of it. Also in 1463, after years of struggle in the Balkans, Mehmed succeeded in annexing Bosnia to
the Ottoman Empire, a move that led to the Islamicisation of Bosnia, and which has had repercussions for
the entire Balkan region to this day.
Although the entire Balkan region came under Ottoman control at some point during that Empire's
existence, Islam spread throughout the region unevenly. Part of the reason behind the conflict in the
former Yugoslavia in the 1990s was the religious differences between the Orthodox Christian Serbs, the
Catholic Croats, and the Muslim Bosnians. Why Bosnia converted en masse to Islam under the Ottoman
Empire, while the other Balkan regions - with the exception of Albania, which also became mostly
Muslim - remained Christian, was the subject of much scholarship in the wake of the Balkan war that
followed the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.
Before the Ottoman invasion, Bosnia was one of the only Balkan regions without a strong allegiance to
Christianity. An independent Bosnian Church had been established in the 11th century, outside the
jurisdiction of either the Catholic or Orthodox Churches, but even that was on shaky ground by the time
of the Ottoman invasion of the 15th century. Most scholars have rejected the old theory that Bosnia
became a Muslim state because of an influx of Muslims that came to the region following the Ottoman
invasion. Ottoman census figures show that there was in fact very little migration to Bosnia by the Turks;
the increasing number of Muslims was due to the conversion of Bosnians already living in the region. In
1468-9, just after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia, the Ottomans recorded approximately 185,000
Christians living there, as opposed to 1,700 Muslims. By 1485, the figure was 155,000 Christians and
22,000 Muslims. By 1520, there were about 98,000 Christians and 84,000 Muslims, and by 1600 the
Muslims were the majority in Bosnia. Considering that the overall population did not significantly rise
over this period, it is apparent that there was no influx of Muslims from outside the region; the Bosnians
themselves simply converted.
The weakness of the Christian Church in Bosnia was the most important factor in the mass conversion to
Islam that occurred there. There was a lack of Church organization in Bosnia, particularly when compared
to neighboring Serbia or Croatia. Many Bosnians who did adhere to Christianity did so without guidance
from any sort of higher Church authority in the region. This lack of guidance led to the development of a
sort of folk Christianity in Bosnia, in which people adapted traditional rites and practices to their own
needs. It was not difficult to transfer one's allegiance to a similarly popular form of folk Islam after the
Ottoman invasion, particularly since many of the Bosnians' traditional holidays and festivals remained the
same.
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
It was also beneficial for Bosnians to convert to Islam, because
they could then avoid paying the tax paid by all non-Muslims in
Islamic empires. In Orthodox Serbia, on the other hand, the desire
to change religions for such financial reasons was not as strong,
because the Ottomans looked quite favorably on Orthodox
Christianity. It was the Catholic Church which suffered most under
the Ottomans, since it was the Church of most of the Ottomans'
European enemies, and thus the Serbian Orthodox Church was
treated fairly well. That toleration of the Orthodox Church explains
why Serbia did not convert to Islam to the same degree as Bosnia.
The Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque
in Sarajevo, built in 1531
Meanwhile, in the east, Mehmed faced a challenge in the 1470s from Uzun Hasan, ruler of the Turkish
Aq-Qoyunlu confederation in eastern Asia Minor and northern Persia, who had allied with Venice and
Cyprus against the Ottomans. Mehmed defeated Uzun Hasan at the Battle of Baskent on the Euphrates,
then turned against Venice. In 1478, Mehmed cut Venice's communication lines to the sea, and forced it
to cede some of its Albanian territories to the Ottomans. Mehmed was en route to invade Italy and the
Papacy in 1480 when he died. The Pope was even preparing to flee Rome for France out of fear of the
impending Ottoman invasion.
Most Ottoman historians agree that Mehmed II was the true founder of the Ottoman Empire, not only for
his military conquests, but for his work on the internal structure of the empire as well. He took for himself
the title, "Sovereign of the Two Lands and of the Two Seas," for his establishment of the empire in both
Europe and Asia, and both the Mediterranean and Black Seas. By Mehmed's time, the Ottoman Empire
had developed into an absolute monarchy, with the sultan assuming all powers over the realm. The
Ottomans rationalized their absolutism by arguing that the sultan needed sweeping powers over the
empire and state in order to protect his people from the corruption of government. In the first centuries of
the Ottoman Empire, the sultans were indeed very intolerant of corrupt officials, believing that corruption
weakened their power in the eyes of the people, and the Ottoman Empire had an interest in positive public
opinion of them. For this reason, they forbade soldiers to pillage conquered villages, and they even
conducted a sort of opinion poll: by monitoring mosques to see which ones included the sultan's name in
their Friday prayers - which was optional - authorities could discern which regions supported the sultan
and which did not.
Relations with the Islamic World, 1480-1520
Mehmed's son and successor, Bayazid II, shifted the Empire's military focus from Christian Europe to the
fellow Islamic empires in Egypt and Persia, thus eroding much of the gazi warrior foundations of waging
war only on non-Muslims, on which the Ottoman Empire was built. The most significant development in
the Islamic world during Bayazid's rule came in 1501, with the establishment of the Safavid Empire in
Persia by Shah Ismail I. As a Shi'ite empire, the Safavids immediately declared their hostility towards the
Sunni Ottomans, who retaliated just as vigorously. Bayazid's refusal to directly challenge the Safavids,
however, in part led to his forced abdication by his son, Selim, in 1512.
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
Selim embarked on a fierce campaign against the Safavids, and
he soon extended his animosity to the Mamluks as well. His mind
for conquest earned him the name, Selim the Grim. Selim felt he
needed to wage war with the Safavids not only because of their
religious differences, but also because of the constant military
threat of having an expansionist state on the Ottoman Empire's
eastern frontier. The fact that both empires adhered to Islam, in
one form or another, does not appear to have deterred either side
from fighting each other. A parallel situation existed in Europe,
where Christian states, despite sharing a religion, did not hesitate
to go to war against each other for political reasons. Similarly, for
as long as the Safavid state existed, which was a shorter period of
time than the Ottoman, the two empires were often at war, for
both political and religious reasons - since each believed that the
Selim II receives the Safavid
other adhered to a heretical form of Islam. As they prepared for
ambassador in 1567
their first confrontation, Selim began a campaign against the
Shi'ites in the Ottoman Empire, killing as many as 40,000 people
by 1514. Later that year, Ottoman forces met the Safavids at the
Battle of Chaldiran in eastern Asia Minor, where superior Ottoman artillery led them to victory over the
Safavids. Selim even continued east to Tabriz, the Safavid capital, but the weary Janissaries forced him to
return to Istanbul before winter set in. During his rule, Selim also captured key cities in the Levant
(Damascus and Jerusalem), and eventually conquered Egypt & the Arabian Peninsula as well. The Sherif
of Mecca, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, gave Selim the keys to the city for both Mecca and
Medina. After he gained control of the holy cities, Selim added the title of caliph, or supreme leader of
Islam, to the title carried by all Ottoman sultans. The Ottoman Empire became the most powerful of the
Islamic empires. Not only did it gain control of some of the wealthiest overland trade routes, through
Cairo and Damascus, but its control of Mecca and Medina gave it special status as protectors of the entire
Islamic world.
Suleyman I, 1520-66
Selim died in 1520, soon after the defeat of Egypt, and his son, Suleyman I, succeeded him. Known as
"the Magnificent" in Europe and "the Lawgiver" in the Islamic world, Suleyman's reign (1520-66)
represented the height of the Ottoman Empire. He was named after Solomon in Hebrew history, who
Muslims hold up as an example of a just ruler. They expected - and received - no less of a just ruler in
Suleyman. In 1521, one of his first moves as sultan was to invade and capture the Serbian city of
Belgrade, which was considered to be the gateway to Central Europe. From Belgrade, Suleyman faced an
open road to Hungary and, beyond that, Austria. A 1526 Ottoman victory at the Battle of Mohacs in
Hungary further advanced Ottoman interests in the region, and by 1529, Suleyman had led the Ottoman
army to the gates of Vienna. His drive into Central Europe was done partly for territorial gain, and partly
for political reasons. The Habsburgs, rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, controlled much of Central
Europe, and the Ottomans' increasing involvement in European politics in the 1520s led them to enter into
an alliance with France against the Habsburgs.
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
The issue began with a war between Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V and Francis I of France, in 1521. Francis sought
Ottoman assistance in the war when it became clear that he was
losing. He appealed to the Ottomans to help prevent Charles from
establishing hegemony over all of Europe, resulting in one
dominant power over the continent. The Ottomans agreed to help
France prevent the Holy Roman Empire from dominating
Europe, and a formal Franco-Ottoman alliance was concluded in
1536. That alliance was the cornerstone of European diplomacy
for much of the 16th century, and it countered the alliance the
Holy Roman Empire made first with Italy, and later with the
Safavid Empire in Persia. Because of the threat of a two-front
war based on the Holy Roman Empire-Safavid alliance, the
Ottomans ensured peace on one side before waging war against
the other.
Suleyman I
By 1533, renewed hostilities with the Safavids on the eastern
frontier led Suleyman to conclude a peace treaty with Archduke
Ferdinand of Hungary in order to focus Ottoman military might on the Safavids. Their eastern campaign
that year proved to be enormously successful for the Ottomans, as they took the major cities of Baghdad
and Tabriz from the Safavids, and annexed the Safavid provinces of Azerbaijan and Iraq. By 1538 the
Ottomans controlled the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, thus giving them control of all trade routes, by
land and sea, from western Asia to India. The Ottomans were not able to maintain all of what they took
from the Safavids, however, and the Persian city of Tabriz was one which changed hands several times
before the Ottomans concluded a peace treaty with the Safavids in 1555. That treaty returned Tabriz to the
Safavids and left the border between the two empires peaceful for the next 25 years.
Meanwhile, Suleyman faced a new and unexpected threat from the Russian Empire. The Ottomans had
witnessed the expansion of the principality of Muscovy into an empire of its own with little concern, but
by the mid-16th century, the Russian Empire began to challenge the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea
and Caucasus regions. Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible, came to the Russian throne in 1547, and
annexed the Muslim Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, which were remnants of the Golden Horde. In
1559, Suleyman successfully kept Ivan from also annexing Azov, in the northern reaches of the Ottoman
Empire. The hostilities died down in the 1560s, and Suleyman allowed Ivan to keep Kazan and
Astrakhan, in return for Ottoman control of the Khanate of the Crimea. This feud with the Russian
Empire demonstrated to Suleyman that his Empire had not two but three fronts to defend, when the new
threat posed by the Russian Empire to the northeast was added to those of the Safavids to the southeast
and the Europeans to the west.
Despite Suleyman's problems with the Safavids and
Russians, he never ceased his involvement in European
politics. He maintained his alliance with France, usually
against Venice and the Holy Roman Empire, and he also
allied the Ottoman Empire with dissident forces within the
lands of his enemies. One notable example of such an
alliance was Suleyman's outward support of Lutherans
fighting the Pope in the Holy Roman Empire. Suleyman
considered the Protestant rejection of icons and papal
authority to be closer to Muslim belief than either Catholic
or Orthodox Christianity, and his support of Protestantism was one of his key policies in Europe. By
The Muslim World in the Early Modern Era
encouraging the disunity of Christianity, the Ottomans hoped to decrease the chances of Christian Europe
uniting in a Crusade against the Muslim Ottomans. It has been suggested that Ottoman pressure played a
decisive role in persuading the Habsburgs to grant several concessions to the Protestants. The Ottoman
Empire was thus vital to maintaining the European balance of power in the 16th century.
The reign of Suleyman I truly represented the height of the Ottoman Empire, in terms of foreign as well
as domestic policy. He was called "the Lawgiver" at home, even though he did not necessarily pass
significant laws - only more of them than his predecessors. His new legislation essentially sought to
harmonise the Shari'a, or Islamic code of law, with daily reality for his subjects. His laws were therefore
mostly concerned with property ownership, taxation, and pricing regulations. Suleyman also
distinguished himself from his predecessors by becoming the first Ottoman sultan to get married. His
wife, Roxelana, one of the more famous female figures in Islamic history, elevated her status from one of
the sultan's concubines to his only wife, and in the process she secured her sons as Suleyman's heirs.
After Suleyman's death in 1566, the Ottoman Empire fell into decline. Militarily, the empire's strength
began to wane. A loss to the Europeans in Malta in 1565, Suleyman's
last campaign, in fact marked the beginning of the decline of Ottoman
military power. The conquest of Cyprus in 1570-71 was the last
significant Ottoman victory. In 1571, the Ottomans suffered a
crushing defeat to an allied European force at the Battle of Lepanto on
the Mediterranean. The Ottomans lost 200 of their 230 ships in the
battle, and the defeat incited Spain, Venice, and the Papacy to
consider launching an invasion of Istanbul in its wake. That never
materialised, but it was clear by 1600 that the Ottoman Empire had
lost much of its power. Suleyman and Roxelana's son, Selim II, was
known as "the Drunkard," and he was the first in a long line of
incompetent sultans who assisted in the Empire's decline. It must be
remembered, however, that the Ottoman Empire did survive another
350 years after Suleyman's death, and did not collapse completely until the end of the First World War in
1918. The highlight of Ottoman history, however, was its first 300 years, from 1300-1600, when it truly
earned its place in history as one of the three Great Islamic Empires.