Until the Saljuq defeat of the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071, Anatolia was hostile territory to the Muslims and represented a seemingly impenetrable barrier to Muslim expansion. After the battle, the entire peninsula lay open to unlimited Turkish migration for a quarter of a century. In 1098, the knights of the First Crusade discovered that Nicaea (Iznik), just a few miles east of Constantinople, was the capital of the Saljuq Sultanate of Rum. They forced the sultanate back onto the Anatolian plateau, where the Saljuqs established their capital at Konya.
For the next two centuries, the pattern of settlement in Anatolia did not change much. The Turks controlled the central plateau and the east. The majority of the population under their control remained Christian peasants, although conversions and emigration ensured that the Christian population was slowly declining throughout this period. Three independent Christian states lay on the periphery of the peninsula. On the southern shore was the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (sometimes known as Lesser Armenia). In the extreme west was the Byzantine state, which moved its capital to Nicaea when the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade captured and sacked Constantinople in 1204. The Byzantines returned the capital to Constantinople when they retook the city in 1261, but their former subjects in Trebizon, on the Black Sea coast, refused to recognize the new emperor and insisted on their independence. The zones between the three Christian states and the Turkish-controlled area were the domain of the frontier warriors known as gazis.
MAP 10.2 The Eastern Muslim World, Late Fourteenth Century
The Sultanate of Rum was the dominant Turkish power in the peninsula. It frequently cooperated with its neighboring Christian states, and as an urban society, it sometimes had tense relations with the gazis, or raiders, on the frontiers. Occasionally it restrained the gazis when their activities caused problems for their diplomatic relations with the Christian states. Despite the often peaceful relations with its neighboring Christian kingdoms, however, the history of the sultanate was punctuated by violence. For several decades, it had to contend for primacy with several other Turkish dynasties in the area, and after having established its supremacy, it had to subdue challengers. In addition, the dynasty followed the Saljuq tradition according to which the sons of the ruler fought each other for control of the sultanate upon their father’s death.
Despite the frequent violence, however, the sultanate managed to establish an urban culture that was more vibrant than had been seen in Anatolia in several centuries. It synthesized several cultural traditions. Saljuq monumental architecture incorporated Byzantine styles, an emerging Turkish Sufi musical repertoire adapted Orthodox Christian musical themes for its own purposes, and Turkish immigrants were influenced by local customs and mores in countless ways.
Persian models of government, art, and literature also influenced the culture of the Rum sultanate. The early sultans admired the Persian cultural tradition, but the Persian influence became even stronger when Konya became a haven for Iranian refugees fleeing the destruction caused by Chinggis Khan in the 1220s. The products of the newly-arrived scholars, architects, and craftsmen transformed Konya into a lively cultural center. It became famous for its beautiful mosques, madrasas, caravanserais, and other monuments, as well as for the mesmerizing lyrics of the great Sufi poet Rumi, whose career unfolded there. Although non-Muslims probably constituted ninety percent of the population in the early thirteenth century, Konya’s prestige aided in the Islamization of the sultanate. The visibility of mosques, the ubiquity of the call to prayer, and the fact that Islam was the religion of the ruling elite played important roles in the growing Islamic identity of the Anatolian plateau.
Mongol armies shattered the sultanate as decisively as they had destroyed other regimes and societies from China to central Europe. Batu of the Golden Horde challenged the sultanate at Kose Dagh in 1243 and won a decisive victory. The Saljuq army disintegrated, and Konya never again wielded effective influence outside its own environs. The sultanate withered away during several decades of tortured civil war, until it disappeared in the early fourteenth century. In 1260 Hulagu asserted his authority in the eastern half of the peninsula, and that region became part of the Il-khanate.
Although the Il-khanid regime continued to nourish the Persian strain in the high culture of eastern Anatolia, it also sparked a new wave of Turkish immigration into the peninsula. The second half of the thirteenth century witnessed the migration of tens of thousands of Turks into the area. Hulagu’s conquests had left many of them displaced and in desperate straits; others had served as troops and were now in quest of further military adventures; and still others were simply taking advantage of new opportunities that had arisen in the wake of Hulagu’s victories. As they entered Anatolia, the process of the Turkification of the peninsula accelerated. In the central region of the peninsula, neither the Il-khans nor the sultanate of Rum wielded effective authority, and it became a no-man’s-land of anarchy. Many of the new immigrants resorted to sheer banditry to survive. Others continued to the fringes of the peninsula, where they augmented the existing groups of gazi fighters.
The Turkish migration began just as the Byzantines gained their revenge on their Latin enemies. When Michael Palaeologus unexpectedly recaptured Constantinople from the Venetians in 1261, the Byzantines eagerly anticipated a revival of imperial power. Unfortunately for them, they now faced a conjunction of challenges. To the west, rival Christian states—both Orthodox and Catholic—were planning to seize the wealthy Byzantine capital; and to the east, the new Turkish migrants were swelling the ranks of the gazis. The gazis were discovering that, when the Byzantines had relocated their capital to Constantinople, they had neglected their defense structure in Anatolia. After mid-century the ambitious gazi chieftains who until then had been held in check by both Nicaea and Konya now began to carve out independent principalities in the western third of the peninsula. Many of the Turkish newcomers joined the ranks of the successful raiders, enabling some of the chieftains to establish thriving bases of power even along the Aegean coast. By the end of the century, some were hiring renegade Byzantine sailors to help them raid Aegean islands. Although the Byzantine emperor’s diplomacy had protected his realm from the Sultanate of Rum, the Horde, the Mamlukes, and the Il-khans, it was futile against the gazi tradition, which had gained a new life with the arrival of large numbers of Turkish immigrants.
One of the gazi regimes was led by a chieftain named Osman, who was born in about 1260. He developed a power base at Soghut, only a few miles east of Bursa. From there, Osman had opportunities to tax merchants who were using the trade route that connected the Aegean with Central Asia, and he could raid Byzantine territory. By virtue of his successful raids, he attracted a growing number of gazis and adventurers. Many of the latter included Christians. Thus, the early Ottomans reflected the typical gazi band, which was not a group related by kinship ties, but rather a mixture of many different peoples, Turkic and Turkicized, who chose to participate in a dynamic organization.
At some point (possibly long after Osman’s death), Osman’s group became known as Ottomans, or “followers of Osman.” Taking advantage of the Byzantines’ deadly rivalries with the Bulgars, Serbs, Venetians, Genoans, and other Christian powers, they laid an extended siege to Bursa and took it in 1326, just after Osman died. His son Orhan (1326–1362) made Bursa his capital city, and from there he captured Nicaea (1329; later renamed Iznik) and Nicomedia (1337; later renamed Izmit), the last major Byzantine cities in Anatolia.
Osman and Orhan, like all contemporary successful leaders of volunteer military forces, had to provide outlets for the energies, appetites, and religious fervor of their followers. Success necessitated further success, for victories generated new recruits who expected glory and treasure, and the veterans of previous campaigns soon felt the need for new exploits. There is little doubt that Orhan would have eventually crossed the Dardanelles on his own, due to the fact that beyond it lay a vast territory that was Christian, wealthy, and increasingly riven by co
nflicts among weak states. As it turned out, however, in 1345, he was invited to cross by a Byzantine faction vying for power in the capital city, just as earlier Byzantines had invited the Saljuqs into western Anatolia at the end of the eleventh century. After enabling his Byzantine ally to gain the throne, Orhan remained interested in the Balkans. By 1361, he had captured territory from the Dardanelles to the old Roman capital of Adrianople (modern Edirne), which he made into his own capital.
The Ottomans arrived in the Balkans at an opportune time for their ambitions. The Byzantine Empire had shrunk to a mere shadow of its former self and comprised little more than the suburbs of Constantinople; the Serbian Empire of the great Stephen Dushan had lost most of its vitality at his death in 1355; and the peoples of the Balkans were suffering from the constant warfare of numerous petty states. Few of the inhabitants of the area, powerful or weak, felt a loyalty to a Balkan state at the time. Many of them sensed that the prospect of Ottoman overlordship could be no worse than what they were already experiencing. Due to the chaotic conditions, the Ottomans were able to recruit Christian knights to serve in their army, and in some battles, other Christians defected to the Ottoman side. Many Orthodox noblemen and soldiers of fortune made successful careers out of service to the Ottoman state. Many Christian peasants and townsmen benefitted from the stability offered by the Ottomans of this era, in contrast to the anarchy and exploitation characteristic of the Balkan Christian states of the fourteenth century.
Orhan’s son Murat I (1362–1389) took advantage of the vacuum of power in the region. He consolidated his hold on Thrace, conquered Macedonia and southern Bulgaria, and forced the Byzantines to pay tribute to, and provide troops for, Ottoman campaigns. In 1389, his army, composed of Turks and Christian vassals, defeated a far larger force of Serbs and their allies at Kosovo. Murat was killed in the battle, and his son Bayezit (1389–1402) became sultan.
Murat and Bayezit laid the foundations for a future Ottoman Empire. Murat began the process of building a more reliable army than that of either the gazis or Turkish tribesmen in general, both of whom he regarded as unpredictable and independent minded. He created a unit of soldiers who were prisoners of war, and he instituted a centralized bureaucracy in order to collect the taxes required to support his growing empire. Bayezit expanded upon these initiatives. He implemented a levy of male children on Christian villages in the Balkans, who were then educated as Muslims and trained for either the military or the civilian administration. This recruitment mechanism was known as the devshirme system. The slaves in the military served in what came to be known as the Janissary corps (from “Yeni Çeri,” or “New Force”). The Janissaries rapidly became the Ottoman army’s primary infantry unit and were stationed around the sultan on the battlefield. Originally armed with pikes and bows and arrows, they later became famous for their effective use of gunpowder weapons.
As a result of his policies and leadership ability, Bayezit became a remarkably successful conqueror. Relying on the loyalty of his Christian vassals and Janissaries, he quickly conquered the western half of Anatolia from Turkish rivals, acquired large areas north of the Danube, and, in 1395, laid siege to Constantinople itself. By this time, all of the major European leaders had become aware of the potential threat of the Ottomans to their security, and they responded to the appeal of the Byzantine emperor for aid. The king of Hungary organized a huge army that attracted knights from France, Burgundy, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. This military force moved down the Danube in 1396, destroying Ottoman forts along the way. At the fortress of Nicopolis, however, Bayezit confronted the coalition’s army and utterly destroyed it, sending a wave of terror throughout Europe.
While the siege of Constantinople continued, Bayezit turned to Anatolia again in 1397, and began conquering its eastern regions. By this time, the defunct Il-khanate’s domain in eastern Anatolia had been replaced by several Muslim Turkish overlords. Bayezit won battle after battle, until he had conquered the bulk of the peninsula. His territory, extending from the Caucasus to the Danube, was poised to become an empire. His brutal Anatolian conquests, however—accomplished with the aid of large numbers of Balkan Christians—had alienated many Turkish families in Anatolia, whose own hopes for leadership had been destroyed. They looked to Timur Lang to get their revenge.
Scourges
The fourteenth century was a difficult one for much of the world’s population. The travails of the inhabitants of Europe are justly famous: famine, wars, the schism within the papacy, and the plague, which reduced the population by thirty to fifty percent. China also suffered from epidemics during this century, as well. For much of the predominantly Muslim world, however, the second half of the century was probably more wretched than for any comparably sized area on the planet.
Plague
The plague had already felled millions of people in China and India when it swept into southwestern Asia and Europe in 1347. Its sudden appearance and high mortality rate were shocking enough, but the symptoms of the disease made it even more terrible. Victims developed fever and shivering, and blackened swellings appeared in the neck, armpits, and groin, filled with dark and foul-smelling pus. Sometimes the swellings burst, causing the victim intense agony, and the stench of the escaping pus was so strong that many family members could not approach the victim. (The discolored swellings gave the disease its popular name, Black Death.) Many also experienced purple or red skin discolorations, internal bleeding, bloody urine, diarrhea, or vomiting. Many died from what appeared to be pneumonia, for their lungs filled with fluid, and they died of asphyxiation.
From Transoxiana to Egypt and Andalus, the Dar al-Islam suffered a serious blow from the pestilence. The Mamluke Empire’s experience with the plague is the best-documented case in the Muslim world, and it suggests a population loss by the end of the century of at least one-third, a rate comparable to that of Europe. Rural and urban areas alike suffered depopulation, and the disease killed the livestock upon which agriculture and transport depended. Because of the depopulation of rural areas, orchards and crops were neglected, and food production dropped. Disease spread even more rapidly in the cities; the chronicles report a continuous procession of the dead being carried out the city gates to the cemeteries. Many of Cairo’s neighborhoods were abandoned and had fallen into ruin by the end of the century. Hardest hit of all, it seems, were the royal mamluks. Refusing to leave the capital city and living in the close quarters of their barracks, the mamluks suffered huge losses. The struggle between the Qipchaqs and the Circassians had become intense by the time of the first appearance of the plague; what role it played in shifting the balance of power to the Circassians (who seized power in 1382) is a matter of speculation.
The Mamluke Empire entered a period of sustained decline in population, wealth, and military power. For reasons not understood, the pneumonic variety of the plague recurred repeatedly in the Mamluke Empire, and as a result, the mortality rates of several of the later epidemics were as high as the first one. At least fifty epidemics struck the empire over the next 170 years. The population of Syria and Egypt did not regain their preplague levels for several centuries. The regime’s military power itself declined markedly due to the high rate of death among the royal mamluks.
Mamluke agriculture remained in a centuries-long state of depression, and the thriving industries of the fourteenth century went into steep decline. The one bright spot amid the gloom of the plague was that the Mamluke Empire did witness a boom in construction. New buildings, particularly madrasas, mosques, fountains, and tombs, went up in large numbers. Many of these may have been endowed by individuals hoping to escape the plague by their good works and by others grateful for having been spared from the plague. At any rate, as a result of the increased opportunities for constructing and decorating such buildings, urban artisans who survived the epidemics were well paid. In addition, Egypt continued to benefit from its role as an entrepot in the international spice trade. Its spice merchants joined the artisans a
s the only groups who prospered during the period from the mid-fourteenth to late fifteenth century.
Apart from the urban areas of the Mamluke Empire, our knowledge of the impact of the plague on the Muslim world is surprisingly limited. It is clear that the plague caused numerous villages in Palestine (within the Mamluke Empire) to be abandoned, and much agricultural land there reverted to the control of nomads. The ports of North Africa and of Granada were also hit hard by the epidemic. The disease struck the Iberian Peninsula during a war between Granada and Castile. It hit Granada’s army before that of Castile, causing some Muslims to consider converting to Christianity as a prophylactic. Fortunately for their faith, the disease was soon raging among troops of Castile, as well. Alfonso XI, the king of Castile, was the only ruling monarch of Europe to die of the Black Death. The Ottomans were involved in the Byzantine struggle for the throne in the same year that the plague struck Constantinople (1347), but we do not know how the disease affected their campaigns.
Timur Lang
Shortly after the first incidence of the plague, another destructive scourge struck southwestern Asia. This was the army of the warrior Timur Lang, known to Europe as Tamerlane (“Temur Leng” is more accurate as a Turkic rendering of his name, but less widely used.) The ferocity and wanton destructiveness of his campaigns still provoke amazement and horror, and the victories of his undefeated army changed the course of history for numerous regimes. He came of age as the Mongol states were collapsing, and he found the heirs to those states to be easy prey. More impressive was the ease with which he defeated the Mamlukes, the Delhi Sultanate, and the Ottomans.
A History of the Muslim World to 1405 Page 48