Transcript The Ottoman Empire - Adams State University

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 PM
Sought to make
Ottoman State more modern
Through 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 • Reformism
• Nationalism
• Populism
•
Statism
• Secularism
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 nonTurks, 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