A History of the Middle East

by Peter Mansfield

  All great multiracial empires decline and dissolve. The Ottoman Empire was far more extensive and enduring than the powerful states that had been established by other warrior nomads from central Asia – the Seljuks, Mongols and Tartars – but decline began rather less than halfway through the five centuries of the empire’s life, and from then on the decadence was virtually unremitting. Attempts to reform and revive the empire actually contributed to its break-up and decline.

  It is not possible to ascribe the decline to any single cause; it is certain only that the seeds of the empire’s decadence had been sown when it was apparently at its zenith under Sulaiman the Magnificent. For some further hundred and fifty years it remained a great power that was still capable of instilling in successive Popes and the Christian states of western Europe a lively dread that they would be overwhelmed by the Turkish infidel. It was the second Ottoman defeat at the gates of Vienna – in 1683, at the hands of the forces of the King of Poland – which finally removed the Turkish threat. The balance of power had turned unremittingly against Istanbul. But in 1683 no one in Europe could be confident of turning back the Muslim advance. It took time for fears to recede.

  While no simple diagnosis can be made of the cause of the transformation of the empire into the ‘Sick Man of Europe’, there are certain characteristics which suggest themselves. Often they were originally reasons for the empire’s strength and success, but they became weaknesses as they were unadaptable to changing circumstances. In the first place the empire was a huge military organization in which military values and ideals were supreme. It was also highly centralized, in the sense that virtually all land within the empire belonged to the Ottoman state. It was feudal in so far as much of the best land was allocated as fiefs to the Ottoman military aristocracy; but only in rare cases could this land be inherited, and thus the empire never developed a European kind of feudal nobility to balance the power of the monarch. If this European type of feudalism is an essential stage towards the ultimate development of capitalism, this suggests a reason why the empire gradually fell behind the European states in terms of material and industrial power. On the other hand, the lack of a landed aristocracy meant that the early empire was socially egalitarian to an exceptional degree. Not only Muslims but also Christians and Jews – ex-slaves and men of the humblest birth – could rise to the highest offices of state, provided they converted to Islam. Sulaiman the Magnificent’s outstanding grand vizier Ibrahim was born a Christian Greek. Beyond doubt the empire benefited from the use of these unusual sources of talent and ability.

  Converted Christians were the source of one of the strangest and most distinctive institutions of the Ottoman empire – the Janissaries (that is yeni-cheris, or new troops). In the fourteenth century, Murad I began the practice of recruiting Christian boys, handpicked for their good physique and ready intelligence, to form a highly disciplined and superbly trained militia which became the core of the Ottoman army. Forbidden to marry, they lived monastic lives which were devoted to the sultan. As the empire expanded, they were used to put down ruthlessly any signs of disorder or insurrection among its huge population.

  The empire did not have a hereditary aristocracy, but it did have a ruling class. This consisted of the army officers, the senior civil servants and the men of religion – the muftis and leading ulama (Muslim scholars). They represented the sultan’s authority which it was their function to preserve. Beneath them were the rayas (rai’yah in Arabic – the ‘flock’ or ‘shepherded people’), who consisted of the mass of peasant farmers and some of the craftsmen of the towns. Originally the term ‘raya’ applied to all subjects of a Muslim ruler, but it was later limited to those non-Muslims who, unlike the Muslims, paid the poll tax. Since they formed the great majority of the population in the empire’s European provinces, they provided the bulk of its revenues. They were organized into millets or self-governing communities headed by their patriarch or bishop, who was responsible for their good behaviour. They lacked any political power within the structure of the empire, and they were not allowed to join the army or the civil service, but in time they gained increasing commercial and economic influence.

  The Muslim Arabs who formed the great majority in the empire’s Middle Eastern and North African provinces were not treated as second-class citizens in this institutionalized manner, but in Syria/Palestine and Iraq an Ottoman ruling class of governors and administrators was imposed upon them. A large military garrison and a staff of civil officials was established in the principal cities. The members of this ruling class not only remained Turkish-speaking but also, in contrast to their Mamluke predecessors, failed to put down roots where they were living. There was no Turkish colonization of the land. Officials were frequently moved to other provinces of the empire, which might not be Arabic-speaking, and they normally expected to retire to the Turkish heartland. At the same time, there was no attempt to turkify the non-Turkish Muslims who were Ottoman subjects. Only a very small minority adopted Turkish as their first language and entered the Ottoman ruling class; the vast majority carried on their lives much as before. Only a few Turkish words entered their language, mostly related to the army or cuisine. Mount Lebanon, inhabited by Maronites (a small Christian sect in union with Rome) and Druze, remained especially untouched. Here the Ottomans recognized the Lebanese emirs in their hereditary fiefs and allowed them the same autonomous privileges as they had enjoyed under the Mamlukes. Hence Lebanon was the only part of the empire in which something similar to European feudalism flourished. Charles Issawi, the noted economic historian, has suggested that this is why the Lebanese alone among the Arabs have made a marked success of capitalism.

  There was some difference in the administration of Egypt as an Ottoman province. Selim the Grim had been prepared to leave the last Mamluke sultan as governor provided he accepted the status of vassal. But the sultan rebelled and was executed, and Selim appointed an Ottoman governor, or pasha. However, he left Mamluke emirs in charge of the twelve sanjaks or provinces of Egypt and they enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, which enabled them to treat their territories as personal fiefs, collecting taxes and commandeering supplies for their troops. There was a constant struggle for power between the pashas and the Mamluke aristocracy of emirs and beys, in which the Mamlukes frequently gained the upper hand before Istanbul again imposed its authority. During the three centuries of direct Ottoman rule in Egypt more than a hundred pashas came successively as the sultan’s viceroy.

  The conditions for the ordinary Egyptians were even worse than in the last years of anarchic Mamluke rule before the Turkish occupation. They could expect neither security nor justice. Ottoman administrators and Mamluke beys competed to squeeze them for taxes by use of the kurbaj (whip). No public works were carried out, the irrigation canals silted up and famine and disease were rampant. The population drastically declined. It is no surprise that Egyptians look on this period as a dark age. But Egypt suffered more than other Ottoman provinces. Because of its unique dependence on the Nile and the population’s confinement within the narrow space of the Valley and Delta, Egypt’s prosperity since the time of the Pharaohs had derived from a strong and wise central government controlling the waterway and providing security.

  Syria, with its naturally autonomous mountain and desert regions, fared rather better. Mesopotamia was a remote and stagnant backwater of the empire with little to recall its former glory. A pasha with his court ruled in Baghdad, and there was little attempt to incorporate the tribes who occupied most of the land into the state. But at least the Janissaries secured the province from external dangers until the revival of the Persian threat in the eighteenth century.

  The achievement of the Ottoman Turks, recent descendants of uneducated nomadic warriors from the Asian steppes, in building and administering their vast empire should not be underestimated. The trouble was that the institutions they created, while initially more effective and enduring than those employed by the empires which had preceded them in the reg
ion, could not be developed and transformed to meet changing needs and circumstances. An obvious example is that of the Janissaries. The idea of selecting young Christian slaves to be compulsorily converted to Islam and trained to form the core of the Ottoman army was original and certainly had no equivalent in any western Christian army. The Janissaries were not only a superb fighting force in the campaigns against the sultan’s enemies: they also maintained the internal security of the entire empire. It was probably inevitable that they should in time become not only an autonomous power but also one that was fiercely opposed to any change in the system. As the clear Ottoman superiority in military skills over the empire’s enemies declined, the Janissaries rejected all attempts to reform the army along the new lines that had been developed in the West. Whenever they felt that their privileges were being curtailed or that they were being superseded by their principal rivals, the sipahis or cavalrymen, they rose in rebellion, leading to acts of atrocious violence and barbarity on both sides. Eventually they were suppressed, but by then it was too late for Ottoman military power to catch up with that of the West.

  Another rigid institution was the sultanate itself – a despotism which never contemplated any sharing of power. It had a fierce sense of self-preservation. When Bayezid I succeeded his father Murad in 1389, his first act as sultan was to order the strangulation of his younger brother, a potential rival. He thus instituted a tradition of imperial fratricide. There was some basis for his action in the Islamic principle that anything is preferable to sedition, and Mohammed the Conqueror a century later gave the practice the force of law. Selim the Grim had not only his two brothers strangled but his five orphaned nephews as well.

  The elimination of rivals in the imperial family avoided the disastrous civil wars of the Mamlukes and can be said to have preserved the Ottoman dynasty for five hundred years. But it was at a terrible price. The sultan’s palace became a cauldron of mistrust and fear which increased as he aged and the mothers of his sons intrigued, in most cases in vain, to preserve the sons’ lives. Sometimes it was the least able son who succeeded, as when Sulaiman the Magnificent was succeeded by Selim the Sot. In moral terms the practice of executing royal princes for potential rather than actual sedition aroused horror in western Christendom and seemed to justify the denunciations of Turkish inhumanity. When an heir apparent had been clearly designated, he was kept under virtual house arrest in the seraglio in a small room known as the ‘cage’, to preserve him from possible rivals, with the result that on his succession he lacked any experience in government. He was also often in poor health or even physically deformed from his long confinement. The Safavid shahs of Persia had a similar system of immuring the heir apparent in the palace compound, and the dynasty suffered accordingly.

  The fear of sedition extended outside the royal family throughout the imperial system. Grand viziers and governors were regularly disgraced or executed if they appeared to be gaining too much power. Under Selim the Grim this happened so regularly that it became astonishing that anyone was still prepared to accept the highest offices. Even the humane Sulaiman, under the influence of his ambitious wife Roxelana, had his outstanding grand vizier Ibrahim executed. With a system based on mistrust, sultans increasingly came to rely on a vast web of espionage centred on Istanbul to watch over their subjects. It was not a situation that helped to foster talent and initiative.

  The well-being of the empire depended overwhelmingly on the character and ability of the sultan. When he was inadequate, the state suffered disastrously, unless the sultan was prepared to delegate the powers of government to a grand vizier of outstanding capacity. This occurred in the second half of the seventeenth century, when a series of grand viziers of the Koprulu family temporarily arrested the empire’s long decline. On the other hand, after a period in which the central government had been weakened by incompetence or neglect, an incoming sultan found it necessary to restore his authority through measures of ruthless severity. These were accepted as necessary for the empire’s preservation.

  From the empire’s foundation, its vital spirit was one of holy war for the furtherance of Islam. For at least two centuries it was militarily superior to its opponents, and the Ottoman devotion to military ideals could be justified. But, in contrast to the Abbasids in the Golden Age of Islam, Ottoman militarism was combined with a contempt for industry and commerce. The consequence was that when the empire was still in its heyday it was already being overtaken in material strength by the more innovative and industrializing economies of the Christian European states. Soon this was reflected in the military balance of power.

  One factor in the empire’s economic decline could not be avoided. In 1497 the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and opened a new route to India and the Far East which outflanked the traditional link between Europe and Asia through Egypt and the Red Sea. Soon the Portuguese, followed by the French and the British, were competing for control of the parallel route through the Gulf. The influence of this factor should not be exaggerated. Its most disastrous effect was on Egypt. Syrian merchants concentrated on the land route from Alexandretta (the modern Iskenderun) through Aleppo to Baghdad and Basra, and a flourishing transit trade to and from the East survived. However, much of this trade came to be dominated by non-Muslim foreigners who were granted special legal and financial privileges for their protection when the empire was strong which they were able to exploit as it weakened.

  More important than the diversion of trade was that the economy of the Muslim Middle East as a whole was transformed from the commercial and monetary economy that it had been in the Middle Ages and which could quite easily have continued to match that of Europe to one of military feudalism based on subsistence agriculture. This did not, however, immunize the empire from the economic scourge which affected the whole Mediterranean region in the sixteenth century. This was the huge influx of bullion from the Spanish Americas, which caused the depreciation of the Ottoman silver currency, leading to high inflation and increased taxation. The government was already beset with problems in financing its vast military expenditure. The lack of flourishing industrial and financial sectors in the Ottoman economy in contrast to those of western Europe greatly contributed to the shift in the balance of power over the years.

  It is far from correct that the Ottomans were always hostile to learning and the arts, as their later reputation suggested. Sulaiman the Magnificent was a man of the Renaissance. Certainly the Arabs regard their Ottoman centuries as years of cultural stagnation, but this is largely because of the downgrading of Arabic combined with the loss of political self-confidence. What is undeniable is that, as the empire weakened and declined, its leaders – sultans, pashas, generals and men of religion – turned in upon themselves to become increasingly hostile and outwardly contemptuous towards innovation, originality and external influences of all kinds. Muslim national pride demanded that attempts should be made to match the European powers by adopting some of their ideas and techniques, but these could succeed only if the rigid and reactionary Ottoman system was reformed from within. Efforts to achieve these reforms, although sincere and far-reaching, ultimately came to nothing.

  The second Ottoman failure to take Vienna, in 1683, marked a decisive stage in the long decline of Ottoman power in Europe and the enforced shift in the empire’s centre of gravity in the east. At the end of the seventeenth century, a new rival and enemy emerged in the form of aggressive and expansionist imperial Russia. Tsar Peter the Great was bent on making Russia a great European and Asian power, and the Ottoman Empire was his principal obstacle. Two centuries of intermittent Russo-Turkish wars, separated by periods of hostile peace, had begun.

  Although the Ottoman Empire was more often than not on the defensive, its withdrawal from Europe was slow and irregular. The Ottoman armies were still brave and formidable, and they benefited from rivalries between the Christian powers of Europe. In the first half of the eighteenth century some lost ground – the Grecian Morea, Belgrade – was
recovered. At the end of the century, Empress Catherine the Great failed in her declared aim of dismembering the Ottoman Empire and making Constantinople the capital of a New Byzantium. Nevertheless, under the Treaty of Küchük Kainarji in 1774, Sultan Mustafa III lost not only his control over some of his Christian subjects but also his suzerainty over the Muslim Tartars of the Crimea. As he claimed to be the Caliph of Islam, this was a greater blow than his conceding to Catherine a virtual protectorate over his Orthodox Christian subjects.

  2. Islam on the Defensive, 1800–

  At the end of the eighteenth century, the balance of power between the European Christian states and the Islamic world represented by the Ottoman Empire had swung decisively against Istanbul. The progressive retreat from Europe meant that the focus of the empire moved eastwards. In the first three centuries of its existence, the weight of Ottoman interest was directed towards the conquest and control of Christian lands – the spread of the world of Islam towards the West. It was from this that the empire’s power and glory derived. Possession of the vast territories inhabited mainly by Muslim Arabs – including the Islamic holy places in Arabia and the great Muslim cities with a prestigious past such as Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad – was important but might be said to have been taken for granted. The Arabic-speaking provinces, economically stagnant or declining, enjoyed a large measure of autonomy under local dynasties such as the Mamlukes in Egypt and Mesopotamia or the Druze emirs in Mount Lebanon.

  In the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire had become the Sick Man of Europe in Western eyes. In reaction, successive Ottoman sultans placed greater emphasis on their leadership of Islam: the Sick Man of Europe could still be the Strong Man of Asia. The title of ‘Caliph of Islam’ – disused for five centuries – was revived and, through a false analogy between the caliphate and the papacy, the sultan’s representatives began to claim spiritual authority over all Muslims, even when they were under non-Muslim rule.