1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
PART II of this volume deals only with the "core" provinces following the re-establishment of the empire under Mehmed I, covering the time during which the Ottoman state was strong and its various institutions functioned well. The expression "core" provinces needs some explanation.
While the Ottoman Empire was a highly centralized state with strictly defined hierarchies of classes and professions and of individuals within each social and professional group, it was also amazingly variegated. Two reasons for this diversity have already been mentioned. There was, obviously, a great difference between life in the Ottoman provinces proper and in Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, and Ragusa-Dubrovnik which were vassals or allies of Istanbul. While the kanuns had to "conform" to the principles of the shari'a, they represented basically the Ottomans' acceptance of the statutory law and even folk organization of each newly conquered region and, consequently, produced important differences among the territories ruled directly by the Ottomans, the "core" provinces. Although later they were reorganized repeatedly to finally form sub-divisions of larger eyalets around the middle of the seventeenth
[note: the administrative changes were considerable. According to the 1668-9 census the eyalet of Rumelia (most of the Balkan peninsula) consited of 25 sancaks divided into 228 kazas, 4 independent vakif districts, and 1 nahiye. these figures do not include the sancak of Semendria (basically Serbia) and its 19 kazas. That sancak was usually part of the eyalet of Rumeli, but when this census was taken it was attached to the eyalet of Buda. Besides Buda and Rumelia, the European mainland eyalets were Bosnia and Temesvar prior to the seventeenth century. Shortly after 1600 the eyalet of Kanizsa was added, and for a period of about 25 years after 1660 Varad became an eyalet too.]
century, until the empire lost them, these were the European lands that were directly under Ottoman rule.
Not only the kanuns produced great differences, but so did the daily behavior of political-military and legal officials, based on common sense. Clearly local problems in the sancak comprising the Aegean Islands (Cezar-i bahr-i sefid) differed markedly from those of the sancak of Temesvar.
Finally, it should be remembered that the Ottoman state began its rise as a frontier society. just as in the United States or Russia this frontier moved with the growth of the state. Although the number of gazis who could move with it dwindled to practically nothing, the rulers continued to treat the frontier as a special region. Large areas of the eyalet of Buda as well as the northern districts of the Bosnian province were handled as "frontiers," although both belonged to "core" provinces. Frontier institutions were developed on the other side of the border too, and, thus, while no revival of a gazi-akritoi confrontation and symbiosis occurred, peculiar institutions and behavior patterns developed, which were clearly understood on both sides of the border. Border fortifications, border captains, border guards, and undeclared border wars in these regions created a new "frontier" that had very little in common with the life of the interior. These differences must be kept in mind.
A few words must be said about the time-span covered in Part II. Prior to the reign of Bayezid I most European lands were tied to the Ottoman Empire by vassalage or by alliances. Bayezid began to transform the lands of his clients into outright Ottoman provinces, but his work collapsed in 1402. It was only with the beginning of the rule of Mehmed I (1413) that the lands of Southeastern Europe became permanent Ottoman provinces. For this reason it was not difficult to pick the initial date.
The terminal date requires more explanation. Historians have picked the end of Suleyman I's reign in 1566 as the end of the "golden age" because trouble signs were already clearly visible. From the Ottoman point of view this judgment is correct. Selim II, whose reign ended with the date picked, 1574, is considered a very weak rider. Under him the power and organization of the state were declining rapidly. There can be no doubt that already under the great reign of his father, Suleyman I, the signs of trouble were clearly visible.
From the point of view of the provincial population, however, the reign of Selim II can still be included in the "golden age" because the provinces hardly felt the troubles that were beginning to beset the central administration. Mehmed Sokollu, who remained grand vezir until 1579, was able to keep the machinery of state working fairly smoothly. Military expansion continued both in Hungary and elsewhere. Although the akce was sinking in value, the devaluation was very gradual and did not affect the economic life of the provinces too drastically. It was during the reign of Murad III (1574-95) that economic problems became uncontrollable; inflation became rampant, and the corruption of the central administration began to spread to and seriously affect the provincial administrative machinery. Life in the provinces began to deteriorate markedly. By the end of Murad III's rule even military events had begun to turn somewhat to the disadvantage of the Ottomans. All these factors indicate that it was roughly in the 1574-95 period that the provinces began to feel the results of a weakened and corrupt central government.
The military expansions under Selim II fall at the end of the period to which this section of this volume is devoted. Between those of Murad II an those of Selim II very important territorial changes occurred. The conquests of Selim I (1512-20) interest us only indirectly because they took place mainly in Eastern Anatolia and the Arab countries, but they are of importance. Selim's was the first Ottoman state with a majority of Muslims in the population. Under the influence of the newly acquired lands and their religious leaders, secure in the Islamic nature of their state, the sultans became more orthodox and even reactionary in religious matters. The same trend existed among the ulema and also led first to a stricter differentiation between the Muslim and Christian reaya, and finally, in the seventeenth century, to the attempts at forced conversion mentioned above.
It was the conquests of Mehmed II, Bayezid II, and Suleyman I that rounded out the lands that were to become the European "core" provinces of the Ottoman Empire. For this reason they will be surveyed next.
2. EXPANSION IN EUROPE, 1451-1566
THERE are several reasons given in the literature for why the Ottoman Empire could not live in peace. Those most often mentioned are the need for booty, which was a major source of revenue for the treasury, the need for more land to establish timars and keep the military class satisfied, the need to keep a large military establishment occupied to avoid unrest at home, the need to extend the dar ul-Islam, and, by the time of Mehmed II, an "imperialist mentality" of conquest for its own sake. Each of these explanations contains some truth, but they are by no means exhaustive.
While Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople served all the above purposes, it was also a political and strategic necessity. The existence of a Christian citadel - not only for the Christian subjects but also for all of Europe-in the middle of the sultan's lands in a very strategic position was a threat to both the internal and external security of the empire. So long as there was a Christian Emperor and a Patriarch independent of Ottoman power, the sultan's Christian subjects, who at that time constituted the" majority of the population, had to be considered as potentially revolutionary elements. The threat of renewed crusades, especially after the Council of Florence, could be diminished if not fully eliminated by the conquest of the great city. The city had also become a source of intrigue, which reached into the Ottoman upper class supposedly as high as the grand vezir Halil Cenderli, whom Mehmed II executed for treason after the fall of Constantinople. Mehmed II had no choice but to lay siege to Constantinople, which fell on May 29, 1453.
There are several other explanations for the military actions taken by Mehmed II and his successors in Europe after they became masters of their new capital, Istanbul. In this discussion problems in Asia Minor, Persia, and Iraq will be disregarded, and only those related to Europe will be considered. Serbian, Bosnian, and Albanian states still existed in the Balkans, and the Duchy of Athens and several parts of the Morea were still independent. Venice had several positions on the Dalmatian coast and in the Morea, and north of the Danube-Sava line two Romanian principalities were always ready to come "to the aid" of the remaining Christian states in the Balkans, especially in alliance with the then powerful Hungarian state.
Mehmed II was more interested in conquest per se than in containing any challengers. Returning to the policy of Murad II, he sought to eliminate the independent states and then push the Venetians and Genoese from the coastal regions and islands. By the time of his death in 1481, he had nearly realized his first goal and had even begun to move further, attacking not only Hungary but also Italy where his troops landed, at Otranto, in 1480. The principality of Wallachia was tied to him by agreements of vassalage and tribute.
Events in Hungary, the only state that in those years could have organized a dangerous coalition against Mehmed, made his task easier and in part explain the submission of the Romanian states. After John Hunyadi died in 1452 the great feudal nobles took advantage of the minority of the thirteen-year-old king, Laszlo (Ladislas) V, to get involved in the partisan struggles and did not pay much attention to events in the Balkans. Between 1458 and 1490 Hungary had a very strong kind in Matthias, the son of John Hunyadi. Although Matthias organized a permanent army on his southern borders and was able to defeat the attacking Turkish armies, he did not pay sufficient attention to the events in the Balkans. His interests lay to the north where he first tried to gain the throne of Bohemia and then conquer Vienna in the hope of becoming Emperor of Germany Thus, Mehmed was relatively little troubled by the potentially most dangerous of his enemies.
Instead, the sultan's greatest adversary turned out to be the Albanian hero Scanderbeg (George Kastriote). Scanderbeg and his friends formed, in 1444, the League of Lezhe {Les, Alessio), the basis for an Albanian state. As a result of several previous Albanian insurrections, the future commander of the league's armies had to spend some time in Edirne as a hostage. As the son of a vassal chieftain, he had to fight with the Ottoman armies and proved his ability to the point where the sultan gave him the honorific title of sancak beyi. In 1436 the sultan sent him to govern the Albanian region of Dibra. From here he took three hundred horsemen to the sultan's army that was massing to meet an attack of Hunyadi in 1443, but he used this chance to begin his own operation, which finally led to an Albanian uprising of great size and to the establishment of the league. He fought until 1460 when he signed an armistice with Mehmed II. For a short period hostilities revived in 1462, but his final campaign began when Mehmed's forces attacked in 1464. The war was still undecided when Scanderbeg died in January, 1468. Even after his death resistance continued, and it was not until 1479 that Albania was fully subjected to Ottoman rule.
Bayezid II, a man of basically peaceful nature, did little more than finish what Mehmed II had almost brought to a successful conclusion. He withdrew his troops from Otranto, but continued to round out the Ottoman conquests in the western Balkans and succeeded in expelling the Venetians from the Morea. He secured the crucial area of the Dobrudja and forced Moldavia into a vassalage agreement with the empire. Important as these moves were, they can be considered either as mopping-up operations after the great victories of Mehmed II, or as the rounding-out of the state south of the Danube-Sava line, which was a good natural border in those days and guaranteed the relative security of the Ottoman possessions in Europe.
The actions of Suleyman I are much harder to evaluate. He was known in Europe as Suleiman the Magnificent; it was during his reign that the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith. Despite the fact that the Ottomans considered his legal work the most remarkable of his various achievements and gave him the agnomen of kanuni, the lawgiver, he was clearly a warrior sultan who led an army almost every year of his forty-six on the throne. Many experts blame his practically continuous absence from Istanbul for the rise of cliques in the central government, for the excessive power wielded by his grand vezirs, especially Ibrahim, and for the emergence of the inner palace, the ladies and eunuchs, as a political force leading to the rapid deterioration and corruption of the central ruling institutions.
Suleyman's conquests in Asia and in Europe were extensive and significant. According to most students of Ottoman history they were so far-reaching that they stretched the northern east-west axis of the Ottoman state to its utmost limits, running from the doors of Vienna to Iran and the Persian Gulf. Further permanent conquest would have been impossible because of the length of the campaign season and the need of the sipahi to return yearly to their holdings to collect their dues. The campaign season began late in the spring because of poor road conditions, and ended with the return of bad weather. Furthermore, the sipahis had to return to their holdings soon after harvest time in order to take care of their households and fulfill their nonmilitary local duties. These circumstances supposedly account for the troubles with the military and more importantly for the decline of the timar system during the following reigns.
True though these observations may be, they do not sufficiently explain the great sultan's actions, even if it is assumed that Suleyman, like several of his forefathers, took his duty to expand the realm of Islam seriously and thought of himself as the potential master of the world. His well-known alliance with Francis I of France (1515-47) and especially his Hungarian policy do not fit exactly the image of a would-be world conqueror. His reign coincided with that of the greatest of all Habsburgs, Charles V (1519-1556), who came much closer to world domination than Suleyman ever did. Notwithstanding Germany's internal problems created by the beginning of the Reformation, Charles V represented a serious danger not only to Francis I but also to Suleyman. This explains the alliance of these two rulers. It also explains the contacts between the supreme lord of the great Ottoman-Muslim state, and the Protestant princes of Germany. The Habsburg problem touched Hungary as well. In order to understand the possible non-imperialistic explanation of Suleyman's European expansion, it is necessary to examine the affairs of Hungary, especially as they concern the rapid expansion of Habsburg power.
The first Habsburg to be crowned King of Hungary was Albert, who became King of Hungary in 1437, King of Bohemia in 1438, and Emperor Albert II in the same year. When he died young in 1440, the Hungarian magnates, who did not want to be tied to a strong ruling house, elected Wladyslaw III Jagiello, King of Poland, as their ruler and crowned him Ulaszlo I (1440-44). The Habsburgs did not give up their claim to the Hungarian throne and turned to Albert s son, the child king Laszlo 6 V. When Hunyadi's son King Matthias died, the Hungarian nobles, once again looking for a weak ruler, turned to another Jagiello who was King of Bohemia, and he, Ulaszlo II (1490-1516), was followed on the throne by his son Lajos (Louis) II (1516-26).
During this time the Habsburgs were building their own party among the numerous magnate factions in Hungary. They made certain that they had a strong claim to Hungary's throne by a clever double marriage. Charles V's sister, Maria, became the wife of Lajos II of Hungary, while his brother, Ferdinand, the future Emperor of Germany, married Anna, the sister of the Hungarian ruler. Thus, unless Lajos II had sons the Habsburgs' claim to the throne was secure.
Because legitimate claims to thrones were extremely important, two others affecting the history of Southeastern Europe must be mentioned. Two daughters of King Sigismund I of Poland (1506-48) married Hungarians. Isabella married one of the richest and most powerful Hungarian magnates, the governor of Transylvania, John (Janos) Zapolyai, and Anna wed another great lord of the same province, Steven (Istvan) Bathory. Both these marriages are important not only for Polish and Hungarian, but also for Ottoman history. With these dynastic considerations in mind the policy of Suleyman I can be studied further.
Suleyman's first moves were to capture Belgrade in 1521 and Rhodes and Orsova in 1522. These actions can still be explained by the need for rounding-out possessions to their "natural" borders and by reasons of security. Situated on the southern side of the Danube, Belgrade was the last major fortress in non-Ottoman hands in the Balkans. Orsova controls the Iron Gate, all-important for navigation on the Danube. Rhodes was a serious danger not only to Ottoman naval operations, but also to trade and commerce.
Suleyman's crucial move came in 1526 when he crossed the Danube, attacked Hungary, and won the decisive Battle of Mohacs on August 29. At this moment Hungary represented no threat to the Ottomans, nor was it yet in Habsburg hands. The country was still suffering the effects of the great peasant revolt of 1514, was rent by factions, and had a young king quite capable of producing children. Suleyman's attack could, therefore, be interpreted as an aggressive step aimed at further conquest, but it could also be seen as a move to take advantage of the troubled situation in the country and deal a blow that would render the country powerless for many years. A weak Hungary would allow the Ottomans to concentrate on their Persian frontier where, indeed, they had great difficulties. We will never know what Suleyman had in mind when he moved into Hungary, but the policy he pursued after his victory, whose magnitude must have surprised even him, indicates that he had no permanent conquests in mind.
Ferdinand of Habsburg, twice brother-in-law of King Lajos II who lost his life at Mohacs, had a better claim to the throne than did his opponent. The majority of the nobility, however, especially the lower ranking and more numerous segments, were opposed to him. Their candidate was John Zapolyai, whose army was intact. Zapolyai, was the richest man in the country and was also related to the last king by marriage. He was elected King of Hungary in November, and his forces occupied most of the country evacuated by the Ottomans. The other noble faction elected Ferdinand a month later, and the two kings engaged in a civil war that lasted until 1538. At this time an agreement was reached assuring Ferdinand the throne after the death of King John, who was still childless.
The details of the civil war and the negotiations are outside the scope of this study, but Suleyman's action is not. Understandably he favored the non-Habsburg Zapolyai king, especially after John, who was very ineffective during the first years of the civil war, turned to him for help and recognized him as overlord. Nothing is better proof of Suleyman's aims than this kind of arrangement which had characterized the first European conquest of the Ottomans but had been given up in 1413 in favor of forming Ottoman provinces from conquered territories. Suleyman's numerous Hungarian campaigns between 1528 and the death of King John in 1540 had two aims: to keep Hungary out of Habsburg hands and to transform her into a vassal-buffer state. A few months before he died, John Zapolyai and his Polish wife, Isabella, had a son, John Sigismund (Janos Zsigmond). John promptly renounced his agreement with the Habsburgs. When he died his wife could not hold the throne for her infant son and keep the Habsburgs out. No other forces being available in the country to block Habsburg power effectively, Suleyman returned to Hungary in 1540, established the eyalet of Buda, and recognized the child as his vassal and king of Hungary. He assigned to him, with Isabella as regent, the eastern provinces of the country. This decision divided Hungary into three parts. The west was held by Ferdinand, the center was a Turkish eyalet, and the east rapidly developed into a new Ottoman vassal state, the Principality of Transylvania. When Ferdinand, who was more interested in German than in Hungarian affairs, recognized the Turkish conquests in 1547 and agreed to pay a yearly tribute to Suleyman - something that in the eyes of the Ottomans meant the acceptance of vassal status-the sultan considered all of Hungary rightfully his, consisting of one Turkish an two vassal provinces. After that date his moves resemble those of his predecessors who campaigned against any Balkan and Romanian ruler who did not act as vassals.
Even from the developments just described it appears obvious that Suleyman would have preferred, after his astounding victory at Mohacs, to transform all of Hungary into a vassal state on the model of Moldavia and Wallachia, and that he viewed the final solution, the tripartite division of Hungary, as a less than desirable solution. After all, if outright conquest had been his aim he could easily have taken over the eastern lands instead of assigning them to Isabella and her son. In choosing the latter solution it appears that he realized that the lands north of the Danube-Sava line were too distant to hold without difficulty, and, more importantly, that he did not have the manpower to transform these lands into Ottoman provinces by settling Turks, assigning numerous timars, and taking the other measures that had transformed the Balkans.
The eyalet of Buda had its Muslim masters, officials, timarli, etc., but hardly any of these were Turks; most were recently converted Bosnian lords. Nor was their number ever really significant. In Buda the same population exodus occurred that has been described in connection with the early Ottoman conquests in the Balkans, but there Serbs moving north from the Balkans and not ex-nomads, akhi, and timarli replaced the departing population.
The disaffection of the tribal groups in Eastern Anatolia created numerous problems for Bayezid II, Selim I, and Suleyman I. Their ruthless extermination by Selim I and the subsequent shift of their loyalties to the rising Safavid state of Persia, which now both received and had to fight against new Turkish migrants from Central Asia, together with a decline in the Muslim birthrate as a result of continued wars, finally deprived the Ottomans of a source of manpower that had made not only previous conquests, but also the establishment of "Turkish" provinces in Europe possible. Suleyman was forced to turn to the older Ottoman practice of vassal states even in a region, Hungary, where a strong bastion had to be erected against his main European enemies, the Habsburgs.
Under these circumstances the creation of the eyalet of Buda was a solution forced on him by necessity and by the weakness of his Zapolyai vassals. While Buda was to become, for the next 150 years, second in importance only to Rumelia as an Ottoman "core" province, these circumstances explain why the histories of these two most important eyalets differed so markedly from each other.
With the establishment of the Buda eyalet the creation of Ottoman provinces in Europe came to an end. The short- lived existence of the Ottoman provinces on Polish territory in the last quarter of the seventeenth century can be discounted because no real Ottoman province was established there except on paper. Nor were campaigns under the rule of Selim II important because they only changed the borders of the Buda eyalet and did not introduce important modifications. With Suleyman's successes the "core" provinces became established.