Transcript Sumia, Rafah and maryam

The Last Great Islamic Empire 1500-1800
SUMIA, RAFAH AND MARYAM
OUTLINE;
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The Ottoman Empire and the Eastern
Mediterranean world.

The Safavid Empire and the West Asian World.

The Mughals.

Central Asia: Islamization in the Post-Timur Era.

Power Shifts in the Southern Oceans.
INTRODUCTION
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Between 1450 and 1650 Islamic culture, society, and statecraft
blossomed.
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The creation of three powerful empires and several strong
regional state was the culmination of long processes in the
Islamic eastern Mediterranean and West Asia.
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The simultaneous growth of the “gunpowder empires” of the
Ottoman Safavids, and Mughals marked the global apogee of
Islamic civilizational and economic strength.
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE EASTERN
MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE OTTOMAN
STATE BEFORE 1600

The Ottomans were a
Turkish dynasty that rose to
prominence in the
thirteenth century and
established hegemony with
the capture of
Constantinople in 1453.
ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE OTTOMAN
STATE BEFORE 1600
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By the 1540s, Ottoman military might was
unmatched by any state in the world with the
possible exception of China. Their empire held
sway over the homelands of Anatolia, SyriaPalestine, Egypt, most of North Africa, Yemen,
western Arabia, Mesopotamia, Iraq, Kurdistan,
Georgia and Hungary. The state was held
together by a strong, hereditary sovereign and
was organized as one vast military institution.
THE “CLASSICAL” OTTOMAN ORDER
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Mehmed II was the Ottoman ruler who started the
Ottoman political system. He replaced the chiefs
of all the tribes with men who supported him. He
started to bring in lots of laws. The ulama was the
name of a group of religious men. They told
Muslims how they should live and what they
should or should not do. They had great power.
Mehmed II reorganized this group and gave them
a new leader called the Grand Mufti.
THE “CLASSICAL” OTTOMAN ORDER

Süleyman the Lawgiver,
another Ottoman ruler,
brought together old laws
and Shari'a (religious) laws.
The Ottoman state was like a
hugemilitary organization.
THE “CLASSICAL” OTTOMAN ORDER
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In fact, all the people who worked for the state
had an army rank. The ruling class men had to
say they would totally support the Sultan.
However, some women had important roles and
were involved in government. Even though they
were never seen in public, they has some power
over who was given jobs and over how decisions
were made about economic policies.
THE “CLASSICAL” OTTOMAN ORDER
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The Ottomans organised the
ulama into a government
department. They had a system
of law courts and judges.
There was also an educational
system. They had local mosque
schools and four top schools
called madrasas in Istanbul.
AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND
CHANGE
AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE
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The most successful time for the Ottoman Empire
was during the reign of Süleyman. However,
when he died, his weak son became emperor. His
name was Selim II (1566-1574). The empire
began to have lots of problems. They were:
corruption, problems with the system of
government and problems with their ships. There
were also years when the crops didn’t grow well,
businesses didn’t make much money and there
was inflation when prices went up and up.
AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE

Nevertheless, even
though the empire went
through good times and
bad times, it changed and
improved society in the
17th and 18th centuries.
AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE
Political and Military Developments:
After Süleyman died, the Ottoman empire lost some
of its land in the east. The Persian Safavids took it
in 1603. By this time the Ottoman army was getting
weaker. It was fighting two wars at once. One was
with the Safavids and the other was with the
Hapsburgs. Also, because of technological
developments, the Europeans had better weapons
than the Ottomans.
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AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE
Economic Developments:
The Ottoman Empire began to have financial problems. By
1600, they had increased the size of the Janissary from
12,000 to 36,000 men. This cost a lot of money. The value of
silver went up and down. This caused inflation. The
Ottomans decided to encourage imports and discourage
exports. They thought that this would stop a shortage of
things to buy and that then prices would stay low. This policy
damaged the Ottoman economy. Unemployment increased
and the population doubled in the 16th century. The
government at the centre of the empire became weaker and
the ayans (nobles who lived in the countryside) became more
powerful. By the 18th century, they were almost independent.
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AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE
Culture and Society:
In the 17th and 18th centuries, there were many
developments in the arts and amongst intellectuals.
The sultan wanted to be able to say that the
Ottomans had more knowledge and power than any
other rulers in the world. He used the arts and
sciences to help him. He paid artists, scientists and
intellectuals to develop their ideas.
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AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE
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During the 18th century,
there began to be trouble
between Muslims and nonMuslims. This was partly
because non-Muslims
started to become very
successful in business and
also socially.
AFTER SULEYMAN: CHALLENGES AND CHANGE
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Another development in Ottoman society was the
coffeehouse. It became popular from the middle
of the 16th century on. It became popular very
quickly. People went to coffeehouses to meet
friends, drink coffee, play games, read and to
discuss the news of the day. Coffeehouses
became an important part of Ottoman culture in
towns especially for lower and middle class
people.
THE DECLINE OF OTTOMAN MILITARY AND
POLITICAL POWER
In 1683 the ottomans were driven out of Hungary
and Belgrade.
 In 1774 Russia took the Crimea and became the
formal Orthodox Christians.
 1700s it was increasingly dependent on
international market system.
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THE SAFAVID EMPIRE AND THE WEST
ASIAN WORLD
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Origins
The Safavids had begun in the fourteenth century
as hereditary Turkish spiritual leaders of Sunni
Sufi order in Azerbaijan, in north Iran. Many
adherents were won to the tariqa, or Sufi
brotherhood, and eventually to shi’ism from
among the Turkoman tribesmen of eastern
Anatolia, northern Syria, and northwestern Iran.
SHAH ABBAS I
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Shah Abbas I brought real leadership to Safavid
Iran. He regained provincial land for the state and
used the revenue to support new troops from his
Caucasian territories as counterweight to the
unruly Qizil bash. They like the ottoman cavalry,
were supported by land-revenue assignment.
SAFAVID DECLINE
The lack of competent leadership contributed
finally decline, the chief causes were:
 Continued two-front pressure from ottoman.
 Economic decline.
 Social unrest among the provincial elites.
 The increasing landholding power of the Shi’ite
ulama.
CULTURAL AND LEARNING
The traditional painting.
 The most developed crafts were those producing
ceramic tiles, porcelains, shawls, and carpets.
 The lasting visible legacies of Safavid rule are its
cultural artifacts, building, roads, town squares,
homes, gardens, and bridges.
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THE MUGHALS
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Origins
In the early sixteenth invaders from northwest of
the Oxus River, following an age-old of Indian.
These invaders were chaghatay turks descended
from timer (Tamerlane) and known to history as
the Mughals.
AKBAR’S REIGN
He added north India and northern Deccan to the
Mughal dominions.
 He completely reorganized and provincial
government and rationalized the tax system.
 Akbar was a religious eclectic who not only
tolerance of all faiths but also unusual interest in
different religious traditions.
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SIKHS AND MAATHAS
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries the Sikhs.
 Neither Muslim nor Hindu, they had their own
scripture, ritual, and moralistic.
 The Hindu Marathas, led the charismatic Shivaji,
rose in religious and nationalistic fervor to found
their own regional empire around 1646.
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POLITICAL DECLINE
After Awrangzeb’s death in 1707:the rise in the
Deccan of the powerful Islamic state of
Hyderabad in 1724; the Persian invasion of north
India by nadir shah in 1739; invasions (17481761) by the Afghan tribal leader Ahmad shah
durrani ‘founder of modern Afghanistan’
 British victories over Bengali forces at plassey in
Bengal 1757.
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RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
The period from (1500 to 1650) was of major
importance for Indian religious life.
 Guru Nanak , spiritual father of the Sikhs
movement, took up Kabir’s ideas and preached
faith and devotion to one loving, merciful god- a
message repeated by his successors.
 By 1500 many Sufi retreat centers had been
established in India.
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CENTRAL ASIA: ISLAMIZATION IN THE
POST-TIMUR ERA
We can trace the solid footing of Islam in central
Asia to the post-timur era og the fifteenth and the
preceding century.
 Islamization by Sunni and Shi'ite, Sufis, traders, and
tribal rulers went on apace thereafter, even as far as
western china and Mongolia.
 after 1500 the Shi'ite safavid empire was bounded
by Sunni Islamic states in India, Afghanistan,
Anatolia, Mesopotamia, transoxiana, and western
Turkistan.
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UZBEKS AND CHAGHATAYS
In fifteenth century timur’s heirs ruled
Transoxiana and most Iran.
 north of the jaxartes river and the Aral sea, new
steppe khanate had been formed by the
unification in 1428 of Turkish and Mongol clans
known as the Uzbeks
 in time, Uzbek leader descended from Genghis
khan, Muhammad shaybani, invaded transoxiana
( 1495-1500)
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Muhammad’s line continued Uzbek rule at
Bukhara into 18th century.
 in another central Asia the Islamic states after
1500 and the most important was ruled by
Chaghatay Turks.
 after 1350 timur's broke up their khanate
 from about 1514 a revived Chaghatay state
flourished in eastern Turkestan.
 Chaghatay rule lasted until 1678 in part of the
tarim basin.
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CONSEQUENCES OF THE SHI’ITE RIFT
The ottoman, Mughal, safavid, and central Asia
Islamic states had much in common such as faith
and culture, similar system of taxation and law.
 the division between Shi'ite and Sunni is proved
strong than their common bonds and the result
was geographic division that isolated central Asia
Muslims.
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the safavid Shi'ite schism changed the shared cultural
traditions of the abode of islam especially in fate of
Persian literary culture.
 as a result of its ever strong association with shi'ism
after the rise of the safavids.
 Persian made little further progress as a potential
common language alongside Arabic in Sunni lands.
 outside Iran it was destined to remain a language of
high culture, the court ,and bureaucracy where it
much like French in nineteenth century Europe was
the mark of the educated person: being a master of
oersian and Persian classic texts defined to a great
extent what it meant to be an ottoman or Mughal.

In India, Urdu became the common, shared
Muslim idiom , and in ottoman and central Asian
lands, educated Sunnis cultivated Persian letters
inspired by the Persian classics but largely
ignored safavid Persian literature.
 central Asia was ultimately the Islamic region
most decisively affected by the Shi'ite presence in
Iran.
 Political, economic, culture , and religious
interchange with other Islamic lands became
increasingly difficult after 1500.
 central Asia Islam mostly developed in isolation
on the periphery of the central Islamic lands.
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POWER SHIFTS IN THE SOUTHERN OCEANS
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in 1000-1500 th Islamic spread in the south rim of Asi
from Africa to Indonesia, in ports of java Sumatra, the
Malay peninsula, south India , Gujarat, east Africa,
Madagascar, and Zanzibar.
initially the Muslims economic stature especially
attracted the socially mobile groups in these
cosmopolitan ports; many also found Muslim ideas and
practices compelling.
in this, Sufi orders and their preachers and holy men
played the main roles. however, conquest by Muslim
coastal states accelerated the process in Indonesia and
east Africa .
The Indian ocean to the south china sea was
ancient.
 Before 1200, much of the trade in these waters
had been dominated by Hindu or Buddhist
kingdoms of the Malay peninsula or Sumatra.
Arab traders had been active in the Indian ocean.
 in the east, Islam never ousted the Indian
Buddhist cultures of Burma, Thailand, and
Indochina.

In 1489 Portuguese reached the east Africa in the
ensuing 3 centuries.
 In the sixteenth century the Europeans began to
displace by force the Muslims who, by 1500,
dominated the maritime southern rim of Asia.
 in the southern-seas trade centers, Islamization
continued, even in the face of Christian
proselytizing and growing European political and
commercial presence
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THE EAST INDIES: ACHEH
by the fifteenth century its coastal Islamic states
were centered on the trading ports of the Malay
peninsula, the north shores of Sumatra and java,
and the Moluccas. and the last great Hindu
kingdom of inland java was defeated by an
Islamic coalition of states in the early 1500s.
 The most powerful Islamic state was acheh, in
northwestern Sumatra. (ca. 1524-1910).
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In the early years Acheh provided the only
counterpoise to the Portuguese presence across
the straits in Malacca.
 Also, the Acheh sultans were unable to defeat the
better-armed invaders, neither could the
Portuguese subdue them.
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SUMMARY
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The period from 1500 to 1800 marks the cultural and political
bloom and gradual demise of the last Islamic empires.
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We learned about The Ottoman Empire and the Eastern
Mediterranean world.
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The Safavid Empire and the West Asian World.
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We discussed the Mughals.
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also, we talked bout Central Asia: Islamization in the Post-
Timur Era.
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Finally we explained the Power Shifts in the Southern Oceans.
Thank you for listening.