The Ottoman Empire

303 Pages·2017·60.75 MB·English

Topic Subtopic
History Ancient History
The Ottoman
Empire
Course Guidebook
Professor Kenneth W. Harl
Tulane University
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Kenneth W. Harl, Ph.D.
Professor of Classical and Byzantine History
Tulane University
Kenneth W. Harl is Professor of Classical and Byzantine History at
Tulane University, where he has taught since 1978. He earned his
B.A. from Trinity College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
Professor Harl teaches courses in Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Viking,
and Crusader history from freshman to graduate levels. A recognized
scholar of coins and classical Anatolia, he has taken students to Turkey
i
on excursions and as assistants on excavations of Hellenistic and Roman
sites. He now regularly lectures on academic tours to Scandinavia,
Iceland, and Turkey offered by Archaeological Tours.
Professor Harl has published numerous articles on numismatics and
ancient history. He is the author of Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the
Roman East, A.D. 180–275 and Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C.
to A.D. 700. His current work includes publishing the coin discoveries
from the excavation of Gordion, Turkey; a new book on Rome and its
Iranian foes; and a revised edition of Coinage in the Roman Economy.
Professor Harl has served on the editorial board of the American Journal
of Archaeology, and he lectures nationally for the Archaeological Institute
of America. He is a fellow, trustee, and academic vice president of the
American Numismatic Society.
Professor Harl has twice received Tulane’s Sheldon Hackney Award for
Excellence in Teaching (voted on by both faculty and students) and has
received the Student Body Award for Excellence in Teaching on multiple
occasions. He was also the recipient of Baylor University’s nationwide
Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. In 2007, he was the Lewis
P. Jones Visiting Professor in History at Wofford College.
Professor Harl’s other Great Courses include Alexander the Great and
the Macedonian Empire, The Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of
Medieval Christianity, The Era of the Crusades, Origins of Great Ancient
Civilizations, The World of Byzantium, Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia
Minor, Rome and the Barbarians, The Peloponnesian War, The Vikings,
and The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes. ■
ii Professor Biography
Table of Contents
inTrODUCTiOn
Professor Biography i
Course Scope 1
LeCTUre GUiDeS
LECTURE 1
Sublime Porte: Visions of the Ottoman Empire 3
LECTURE 2
Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor 12
LECTURE 3
The Islamization of Asia Minor 19
LECTURE 4
Ottoman Sultans of Bursa 26
LECTURE 5
Defeat and Recovery, 1402–1451 32
LECTURE 6
Mehmet the Conqueror, 1451–1481 40
LECTURE 7
Selim the Grim and the Conquest of Cairo 47
iii
LECTURE 8
Suleiman the Magnificent, 1520–1566 54
LECTURE 9
Sultans in Topkapı, 1566–1648 62
LECTURE 10
The Sultan-Caliph and His Servants 70
LECTURE 11
Timariots, Peasants, and Pastoralists 76
LECTURE 12
Trade, Money, and Cities 83
LECTURE 13
Arabs under the Ottoman Caliph 91
LECTURE 14
Christians and Jews under the Porte 97
LECTURE 15
Sunni Islam and Ottoman Civilization 104
LECTURE 16
Ottoman Constantinople 110
LECTURE 17
The Sultan at War: The Ottoman Army 116
iv Table of Contents
LECTURE 18
Sultan and Shah: Challenge of Safavid Iran 124
LECTURE 19
Sultan and Emperor: War in the West 131
LECTURE 20
Sultan and Venice: War in the Mediterranean 139
LECTURE 21
Köprülü Viziers and Imperial Revival 147
LECTURE 22
The Empire at Bay, 1699–1798 154
LECTURE 23
Napoleon Invades Ottoman Egypt 163
LECTURE 24
Crisis: Muhammad Ali and Balkan Nationalists 173
LECTURE 25
Tanzimat and Modernization, 1839–1876 182
LECTURE 26
Defeat and Retreat: The Sick Man of Europe 190
LECTURE 27
The Sultan Returns: Abdül Hamid II, 1876–1908 201
The Ottoman Empire v
LECTURE 28
Constitutional Reform, 1908–1913 209
LECTURE 29
War in Libya and the Balkans, 1911–1913 217
LECTURE 30
The Road to World War I 226
LECTURE 31
The Empire at Total War, 1914–1916 235
LECTURE 32
Ottoman Collapse, 1916–1918 242
LECTURE 33
Mustafa Kemal, Atatürk 251
LECTURE 34
Casualties of War and Ethnic Cleansing 261
LECTURE 35
The Emergence of the Turkish Republic 270
LECTURE 36
Nation-States, Islam, and the Ottoman Legacy 278
SUppLemenTaL maTeriaL
Bibliography 287
Image Credits 293
vi Table of Contents
SCOPE
The Ottoman Empire
From 1520 to 1566, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent
ruled one of the greatest Muslim states, an empire that included
all the historic cities of Islam. Suleiman’s empire—the Sublime
Porte, as it was called by Westerners—was a great world power, famed
for its Janissaries, cavalry, and siege guns. Constantinople, now known as
Istanbul, emerged as Islam’s cultural capital, defining religion, aesthetics,
and letters. Suleiman’s architects redefined Islamic architecture, creating
a skyline of mosques that set the standard for cities of the Middle East.
Yet Ottoman power was hardly ordained.
This course begins with the kaleidoscopic history of the Seljuk Turks, who
built the first Muslim civilization in Asia Minor in the 11th and 12th centuries;
the destructive Mongol invasions; and the unexpected emergence of the
Ottoman sultans as heirs to Byzantium and the Abbasid caliphate under
Mehmet the Conqueror and Selim the Grim in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Stress is given to the achievements of high Ottoman civilization, imperial
institutions, and great wars waged by sultans against the Habsburgs of
Europe and the shahs of Iran. The latter wars, between Ottoman sultans
and Iranian shahs, sharpened the divide between Sunni and Shiʽite Islam,
thereby dictating allegiances across the Middle East to this day.
Just as remarkable was the rapid imperial decline starting in the
18th century. This decline resulted not just from lurid harem politics of
Topkapı, but from far more important fiscal and economic weaknesses
and a failure to keep pace with military and technological changes in the
West. In response to Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 to 1799, Sultan
Selim III launched the first of a series of modern reforms. Reformers
laid the groundwork for the future Turkish Republic, but their emphasis
on modernization ironically undermined the traditional, multinational
1
Ottoman Empire. The failure of the revolution of the Young Turks,
along with military defeats in 1911 to 1914, deeply divided Ottoman
society along ethnic, religious, and linguistic lines, leading to outbreaks
of violence among Muslims and Christians. The Ottoman Empire thus
fragmented under the impact of World War I.
In 1919 to 1925, in the aftermath of Ottoman defeat, Kemal Atatürk
created the first modern Muslim nation-state—the Turkish Republic—
which is still strategic to the Middle East today. Atatürk also abolished
the caliphate, however, and this action has ever since posed a crisis of
religious and political authority within the Islamic world. This course
concludes with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, demonstrating
how it still influences the geopolitics and religious culture of the Middle
East today.
2 Scope