The Ottoman Empire

World Power, Sick Man, and the Rise of Secular Turkey, 1300-1930

Period of Growth• Succeeded Seljuk Turks as great Muslim power in

Middle East.• Greatest Emperor was Suleyman (1494-1566).• Military conquests—Captured Belgrade in 1521;

turned away from Vienna in 1529.• Ordered construction of Suleiman Mosque• Relied on Janissaries, soldiers who eventually

displace Ottoman nobility.

• Ottoman counterweight—France and Ottomans allied versus Austrian Habsburgs.

Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul; built between 1550 and 1567

Decline

• Military Defeat—Lepanto in 1571; Vienna—1683

• Russian expansion to Black Sea and Austrian expansion in Balkans

• Weak Rulers: Selim (1566-1574) “The Glutton”; Ibrahim (1640-1648) drowned 280 concubines in the Bosphorus.

• Internal disruptions—Janissaries revolt

Continued Decline

• Revolts in the Balkans (Serbia in 1804; Greece in 1821

• Failed Reforms—Selim III (1789-1807)—attempts to introduce European style military opposed by clerics and Janissaries.

• 1850s—Tanzimat reforms of bureaucracy fail due to military losses (Crimea) and continued Balkan revolts.

Why the Decline

• Doctrine of Closed Revelation

• European incursions (British Land Bridge to India; Russian and Habsburg expansionism; European devotion to Holy Land)

Pre-WWI Reform Movements

• Prime Minister Midhat Pasha and the Constitution of 1876—unitary state, free press, freedom of conscience, equality before the law; and equitable taxation.

• Sultan fired Midhat in 1877.• Russia defeats Ottomans in 1876-1877 war.• Young Turks emerge calling for Constitution of

1876.• Struggle between Young Turks and Sultan over

constitution interrupted by WWI.

Midhat Pasha, as PMSought to makeOttoman State more modernThrough the Constitution Of 1876.

Ottoman Dismemberment

• Ottomans support Central Powers in WWI.

• Treaty of Sevres/Lausanne break up Ottoman Empire.

• France and Britain get Syria and Palestine; Truncated country of Turkey is created.

• Turkey under Mustafa Kemal [1881-1938] (Ataturk) becomes secular Muslim State.

Ataturk’s Six Arrows

• Republicanism

• Populism

• Secularism

• Reformism

• Nationalism

• Statism

WESTERNIZATION OF ISLAM

• The State, a lay institution, religion a private matter

• “Disestablishment” of Islam, Islamic piety to take the form of Reform Jewish piety

• From Arabic to Turkish call to prayer• Islam, the test case for the whole traditional

heritage• Sufism banned, Madrasa college suppressed

TURKISH INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION, ISLAM

• “The Golden Age” of Islam, common among non-Turks, limited to early history, in the remote past

• Islam proper ended with 1258 CE?• For Turks Islamic history both recent and

continuing• Their reading of history is not fundamentally

apologetics.• Turks engage in “self-criticism”• History un-terminated process with Turks as

active participants

Ataturk—Father of Modern Turkey