The Ottoman Sultans
and Caliphs, 1290-1924 AD
The Sultānate of
Rūm had been dormant for some years, failing even to
capitalize on the victory of Myriocephalum (1176). After
vassalage to the
Mongols (1243), the domain finally disintegrated (1307).
Meanwhile, however, the Turkish presence in Anatolia was
actually invigorated with refugees from the Mongol advance.
The new domains that resulted were the
oghullar or "sons" of Rūm. These included many ghuzāh
(sing. ghāzin), or fighters for
Islām (otherwise mujāhidūn), particularly frontier
fighters. 'Osman Ghāzī (now just Osman Gazi) found
himself on the frontier of Roman Bithynia, across from his
Christian military counterparts, the akritai (sing. akritźs).
He defeated the Roman army at Bapheus in 1302 but is best
remembered for breaking through into Bithynia and captured
Prusa (1326), which became Bursa, the first capital of the
Ottoman Emirate.
Osmanli Oghullarļ |
'Osman I |
1290-1326 |
defeats
Romans near Nicomedia, Ottoman conquest begins,
1302;
Seljuks overthrown, 1307; Bursa [Prusa] taken, 1326 |
Orkhān |
1326-1359 |
defeats
Andronicus III, 1329; I.znik [Nicaea] taken, 1331;
I.zmid [Nicomedia] taken, 1337; Gelibolu [Kallipolis]
taken, 1354; Ankara [Angora] taken, 1354 |
Murād I |
1359-1389 |
Edirne [Adrianople] taken,
1369; Konya [Iconium] taken, 1387; Thessalonica taken,
1387; battle of Kosovo, "Field of the Blackbirds," Sult.ān
killed defeating Serbs, 1389
|
Bāyezīd I Yļldļrļm, the "Thunderbolt" |
1389-1402 |
seige of Constantinople,
1394-1402; Battle of Nicopolis, Sigismund of Hungary defeated, 1396; Battle of Ankara,
Sult.ān defeated, captured &
imprisoned by
Tamerlane, 1402 |
Meh.med I |
1402-1421 |
Civil War, 1402-1413,
between Meh.med, Süleymān, & Mūsā; Thessalonica ceded to Romania, 1403 |
Murād II |
1421-1451 |
Seige of Constantinople,
1422; Thessalonica captured from Venice, 1430 |
Meh.med
II Fātih. the
"Conqueror" |
1451-1481 |
I.stanbul [Constantinople]
taken, 1453; conquest of Bosnia, 1463; Khanate of
Crimea becomes a Vassal, 1475; Seige of Rhodes repulsed, 1480 |
Bāyezīd
II |
1481-1512 |
Selīm I Yavuz, "the
Grim" |
1512-1520 |
Conquest
of Syria and Egypt, 1516-1517 |
Süleymān I, the
Magnificent |
1520-1566 |
Fall of
Rhodes, 1523; Battle of Mohįcs, Conquest of Hungary,
death of Louis II of Hungary & Bohemia, 1526; First Siege of
Vienna, 1529; Conquest of Mesopotamia, 1534; Siege of
Malta, 1565 |
Selīm
II |
1566-1574 |
Peace of Adrianople, tribute
from
Austria, 1568; conquest of
Cyprus, 1571; Battle of Lepanto, naval defeat by
Spain,
Venice, &
Malta, 1571 |
Murād III |
1574-1595 |
inconclusive war with
Austria, 1593-1606 |
Meh.med III |
1595-1603 |
Ah.med I |
1603-1617 |
Mus.t.afā I |
1617-1618 |
'Osmān II |
1618-1622 |
Ah.med I (restored) |
1622-1623 |
Murād
IV |
1623-1640 |
Ibrāhīm |
1640-1648 |
Meh.med IV |
1648-1687 |
Naval defeat by Venice &
Malta at Dardanelles, 1656; War with Austria,
1663-1664; Conquest of Crete from
Venice, 1669; Second Siege of Vienna, 1683; Austrian
conquest of Hungary, 1686-1697 |
Süleymān II |
1687-1691 |
Parthenon destroyed in
explosion, 1687 |
Ah.med II |
1691-1695 |
Mus.t.afā II |
1695-1703 |
Russia
takes Azov, 1696; Loss of Hungary, 1697; Peace of
Karolwitz, 1699 |
Ah.med III |
1703-1730 |
Recovery of Azov, 1711; War
with Austria, 1716-1718; Loss of Banat, Serbia, & Little
Wallachia, 1716-1718; Peace of Passarowitz, 1718 |
Mah.mud I |
1730-1754 |
War with Austria, Recovery
of Serbia & Wallachia, 1737-1739; Peace of Belgrade, 1739 |
'Osmān III |
1754-1757 |
Mus.t.afā III |
1757-1774 |
'Abdül-H.amīd I |
1774-1789 |
Russian
conquest of
Crimea, 1774-1783 |
Selīm III |
1789-1807 |
Odessa annexed by Russia,
1791; Revolt of Serbs, 1804-1813;
Russian invasion, occupation of Moldavia
& Wallachia, 1806-1812; Sult.ān overthrown by
Janissaries, 1807 |
Mus.t.afā IV |
1807-1808 |
Mah.mūd II |
1808-1839 |
Treaty of Bucharest, Russia
ceded Bessarabia, 1812; Serbian autonomy, 1813;
Greek
Revolt, 1821-1829; Sult.ān massacres Janissaries, 1826;
Russian invasion, occupation of Moldavia & Wallachia,
1828-1829; Treaty of Adrianople, Greek Independence,
Danube Delta to Russia, autonomy of Moldavia & Wallachia,
1829 |
'Abdül-Mejīd I |
1839-1861 |
Crimean War, 1853-1856;
Russian invasion, 1853; Britain,
France, & Austria enter against Russia, 1854; Austria
occupies Moldavia & Wallachia, 1854-1857; Siege of
Sebastopol, 1854-1855; Peace of Paris, recovery of Danube
Delta, Wallachia & Moldavia combined as
Romania, with part of Bessarabia, 1856 |
'Abdül-'Azīz |
1861-1876 |
Revolts in Bosnia &
Bulgaria, 1875-1876 |
Murād V |
1876 |
'Abdül-H.amīd II,
"the Damned" |
1876-1909 |
Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878; Congress of Berlin, Serbia, Romania, &
Montenegro Independent,
Bulgaria autonomous, Bessarabia to
Russia, Dobruja to Romania, Cyprus to Britain, Bosnia,
Herzegovina & Novipazar, Austrian Protectorate, 1878;
British Occupy 2, 1882; Bulgaria
annexes East Rumelia, 1885; Revolt of the Young Turks,
1908, Sult.ān overthrown |
Meh.med V |
1909-1918 |
First Balkan War, 1912-1913;
Italy occupies Libya & the Dodecanese, 1912;
Second Balkan War, recovery of
Adrianople, 1913; World War I, 1914-1918 |
Meh.med VI |
1918-1922 |
Armenian Republic conquered,
1920-1921; Greco-Turkish War, 1920-1922 |
'Abdül-Mejīd II |
Caliph only, 1922-1924 |
The Ottoman Empire features
the characteristics of most other empires, and some peculiar
to those of the Middle East -- e.g. the refuge provided for
Spanish Jews in 1492. Like anybody else, with a history that
has its own pros and cons, also its own magnificience, e.g., a
desire to surpass Sancta Sophia (called Aya Sofya in Turkish,
after the Greek version of the name, Hagia Sophia)
produced a series of some of the most
beautiful mosques in Islām, which have inspired much of
subsequent Islāmic architecture (the standard doomed mosque,
starting with Muh.ammad 'Alī's Alabaster
Mosque in Cairo)
Today one of the
sights of Istanbul is the Fatih Camii (Fātih. Jāmi-i), the
"Conqueror's Mosque." This contains the tomb of Mehmed II,
with a dedicated mosque, school, hospice, and (formerly)
caravansaray. It stands on the site of the Church of the Holy
Apostles, which was the burial place of the Emperor
Constantine and subsequent Emperors of Romania. Already
largely in ruins in 1453, it is not clear what the fate of all
the Imperial burials was -- they may actually have simply been
covered over by the later construction, the way the Imperial
mosaics in Sancta Sophia were simply whitewashed, preserving
them for modern display. What the Church probably looked like
can still be seen in a probable copy, St. Mark's in Venice.
At Mehmed II's
death, the Ottoman Empire looked much the way Romania had in
the 11th Century. Selīm I "the Grim" did what the old Emperors
had never been able to do, restore Syria and Egypt to the
empire (from the
Mamlūks). Süleimān I then added areas that had never been
permanent parts of the Roman Empire, Iraq and Hungary. Picking
up the Roman conflict with
Irān, the Turks for the first time since
Alexander the Great removed Iraq from Iranian possession
(the map shows the pre-Safavid
Aq Qoyunlu or
White Sheep Turks). The conquest of
Hungary was the first penetration of Islām into Francia
since the conquest of
Spain.
The Ottoman
Empire was at its height for about 150 years. It had at that
point, however, reached the limits beyond which it could not
easily project its power. Conflict continued with Austria and
with Christian powers in the Mediterranean, but respective
holdings didn't change much. The Sultān Ahmad Mosque, or the
Blue Mosque, adjacent to the site of the old Hippodrome of
Constantinople, is a fitting symbol of the achievement and
confidence of this period. The long delayed fall of Crete in
1669 then seemed like the portent of renewed conquests. The
energetic Köprülü vizirs planned a new assault, after 150
years, against Vienna in 1683. But this turned into a
disaster, suddenly revealing the relative weakness that had
actually overcome the Empire. Even a de facto alliance with
friendly France, the greatest power of the day, could not
prevent a series of defeats, the loss of Hungary, and the
temporary loss of southern Greece to Venice.
It is noteworthy at this
point that Ottoman Sultāns ceased to murder their brothers on
accession. Henceforth the Throne passes, by Middle Eastern
custom, to brothers and even to cousins before going to the
next generation.
The threat of continuous
defeat, which the beginning of the 18th century seemed to
display, receded somewhat. Austria would not advance deeper
into the Balkans and there was some breathing room.
Nevertheless, the Ottomans were now facing the problem of
catching up with the technological advances of Europe, even of
relatively backward Russia, which it was in no way prepared to
tackle. The problem was not any particular hostility to modern
commercial culture -- merchants and markets were perfectly
respectable characteristics of Middle Eastern Islāmic
civilization -- but a very profound social conservatism, a
satisfaction with the Mediaeval forms of life, prevented any
of this from developing into modern institutions of banking,
industry, and entrepreneurship. Like the Chinese, the Turks
literally did not believe there was anything new to learn,
much less from despised Unbelievers. The bustle and excitement
of the great Istanbul Bazaar thus never led to the explosion
of energy and production that was already characteristic of
the Netherlands and other places in Western Europe. Turkey
would always be playing catch-up but would then never actually
catch up. Institutional reforms, when they were even tried,
still could never go deep enough, could never actually produce
a people striving and inquisitive beyond their previous
habits.
Peter the Great faced similar problems with another
conservative society about the same time.
At the beginning of the 19th
century, as Napoleon surged back and forth across Europe, the
subject Christians of the Balkans became more and more
restless, and Russia began to try again and again to retrieve
Constantinople for Christendom and break through the Straits.
The Ottomans, although achieving some successes, were not
going to be able to resist this. The Empire's status as the
"Sick Man of Europe" was now becoming quite established. It
was Realpolitik that came to the rescue of the Sultān:
Britain did not want Russia to be too successful and so
entered into a long policy of supporting the Turks against the
forces, from Russia or Egypt or wherever, that might result in
the collapse of Ottoman rule. Nevertheless, Britain could not
allow too much oppression of subject Christians, and as the
century wore on, small Christian states, from Serbia to Greece
to Bulgaria, were allowed autonomy and then independence by
the agreement of the Great Powers. This did not get any of
them all they wanted, and it certainly limited Russian gains,
but it kept the geo-political dam from bursting and kept the
Sultān from falling off his Throne.
Finally, it was the internal
forces of Turkey that began to shake things up after a pattern
that would become all too familiar in
"underdeveloped" countries later: A military coup, the "Young
Turks," against the detested Sultān 'Abdül-Hamīd II in 1908.
This did not help much when the Balkan states fell on Turkey
in 1912. The choice of Germany as a European ally would then
be fatal for the Ottoman future. Another ill effect was the
transformation of the Mediaeval Cause of Islām into a more
modern Turkish nationalism. This did not work well, and never
would, with the Arabs,
Armenians, and Kurds living within Turkish borders. The
disaffection of the first exploded in a pro-Allied revolt in
World War I. The second (after collaboration with "enemy")
led to deportation. And conflict with the third continues,
with campaigns of terrorism, even today.
Woodrow Wilson impotently called for an independent
Armenia state. Turkey pushed the Armenian Republic back east
of the Araks (Aras) River in 1920. No Power has called for an
independent Kurdish state. Meanwhile, the British and French
were perfectly happy to detach the Arab lands from the Empire,
not for independence, to be sure, but to further British and
French imperial projects. This turned out to be more trouble
than it was worth, especially when the Zionist colonization of
Palestine, allowed by the British, led to the creation of
Israel and to a conflict, including five major wars (1948,
1956, 1967, 1973, 1982), that continues until today. The
settlement of World War I has thus been aptly called "the
peace to end all peace."
Turkish
Republic, 1923
The job of complete social transformation of Turkey was
finally undertaken by Mustafā Kemal, who adopted the surname
Atatürk, "Father of the Turks." With no concessions to Greeks,
Armenians, or Kurds, Atatürk nevertheless abandoned most
imperial aspirations. Giving up the Arabic alphabet and
traditional costume (indeed, making their use even a capital
offense), deposing the Ottomans, and otherwise trying to make
Turkey a European, rather than a Middle Eastern, state,
Atatürk simply hoped to make it the equal of other modern
powers. To a considerable extent he succeeded, though Turkey
is still haunted by the shadow of the military dictatorship by
the threat of militant Islām, whose mediaevalism is fully
triumphant in neighboring Irān, and by the disaffection of a
small group of militant racist Kurdish nationalists-mostly
manipulated, supported and used by some neighbouring forces
and even by some international powers participating in NATO!
Meanwhile,
the hypocrisy of United States of America, British, French
and some other (incoherent paradoxical) western powers, expert
in exploiting differences to simply apply "divide and rule
principle", could be perfectly happy to detach the Kurds, too,
from Turkey (as they did to Armenians during 1st World War),
not for independence of Kurds, to be sure, but to further
Western imperial projects.
Presidents of Turkish
Republic (1923) |
Mustafa Kemal, (1934)
Atatürk |
1923-1938 |
Ismet Inönü |
1938-1950 |
France cedes Alexandretta &
Antioch, 1939 |
Celal Bayar |
1950-1960 |
Kemal Gürcel |
1961-1966 |
Cevdet Sunay |
1966-1973 |
Fahri Korutürk |
1973-1980 |
Kenan Evren |
1980-1989 |
Turgut Özal |
1989-1993 |
Süleyman Demirel |
1993-2000 |
Ahmet Necdet Sezer |
2000-2007 |
Abdullah Gül |
2007-present |
Nevertheless, Turkey has took
her lessons from the history, and is undoubtedly the strongest
state in the region, to the chagrin of neighboring Arabs and
Christians alike. Long a member of NATO, Turkey looks foward
to membership in the European Union. The membership of Turkey
to the European Union is on the way and negotiations have
began.
A discussion of general
sources for this material is given under
Francia and
Islām. Some additional sources include The Penguin
Historical Atlas of Russia (John Channon with Rob Hudson,
1995), and various prose histories, such as The Ottoman
Centuries (Lord Kinross, Morrow Quill, 1977).
Note on Turkish
The spelling of the names of
the Ottomans is intended to indicate both the Turkish
pronunciation and how they are spelled in Arabic (which no
longer matters, since Turkish is no longer written in the
Arabic alphabet, but is of historical interest). Here I have
pretty much followed the usage of the Cambridge History of
Islam. A good example is the name of the Conqueror of
Constantinople, Meh.med II. This name is Muh.ammad in Arabic
but is actually pronounced Mehmet in Turkish. Obviously, some
compromises are made and the system is not perfect. In
general, the consonants look Arabic and the vowels Turkish.
Since Turkish (and Persian) reads the Arabic alphabet with
three s's (Arabic s, s., and th) and four z's (Arabic z, z.,
d., and dh), some attempt is made to differentiate (e.g. with
s for th). Modern Turkish writes c for English j and ē
for English ch, but the English equivalents are used here.
The main reason that Arabic
writing did not work well for Turkish was the Turkish vowel
system. Where Classical Arabic
had
three short and three long vowels, and
Persian
could
match its six vowels with those, Turkish has eight vowels, as
shown at left (in the official Romanization). The most
intriguing thing about Turkish vowels is the system of vowel
harmony. Related Ural-Altaic languages, like Mongolian and
even Hungarian (though some dispute the reality of the
Ural-Altaic family, or even the Altaic family, or whether
Korean and Japanese are Altaic members), also have vowel harmony, but this seems to
appear in Turkish in its most complete, logical, and elegant
form. The rules are simply, (1) front vowels are followed by
front vowels (e.g. i by e), back vowels by back vowels (e.g. u
by a), (2) unrounded vowels are followed by unrounded vowels
(e.g. i by e), and (3) rounded vowels are followed by high
rounded (e.g. o by u) or low unrounded vowels (e.g. o by a).
There are Turkish grammatical inflections in which the vowel
is supposed to be simply either high or low, with its
character otherwise determined by the preceding vowels in the
word. This all was impossible to show in the Arabic alphabet
without a special notation that might have been developed but,
evidently, never was. There are many words in Turkish that
violate vowel harmony, but by this they can be identified as
foreign loan words -- for example islām (instead of *islem),
from Arabic, and istanbul (instead of *istenbil), from Greek
or Arabic.
In the first book I had about
Turkish, Teach Yourself Books, Turkish [St. Paul's House,
Warwick Lane, London, 1953, 1975], the author, G. L. Lewis,
specifically ridicules Hagopian's Ottoman-Turkish
Conversation-Grammar of 1907 because, out of 215 pages, it
devoted
161 to Arabic and Persian [p.vi]. Well, I have gone to some
trouble to get a copy of Hagopian's Ottoman-Turkish
Conversation-Grammar, and it is a very fine book. The section
on Arabic and Persian is very much as though every English
grammar book came along with Donald M. Ayers' English words
from Latin and Greek elements [University of Arizona Press,
1986], which I encountered as the textbook for a popular class
at the University of Texas on the Greek and Latin
contributions to English. As it happens, of course, fewer and
fewer American students are even taught English grammar, much
less enough Greek or Latin to understand or appreciate its use
of them. This not a virtue. Nor is the nationalistic
enthusiasm that seeks to purge languages of "foreign" words,
which has happened in Turkish, German, French, Hungarian, and
elsewhere. This kind of thing is simply an attempt to purge
history itself -- along with a ugly attempt to sharpen ethnic
identities and differences.
Later, Geoffrey Lewis appears
to have thought better of his ridicule. Subsequently
editions of Teach Yourself Turkish cut down on the
dismissive remarks; and recently Lewis has published The
Turkish Language Reform, A Catastrophic Success
[Oxford, 1999, 2002]. Here we learn about the artificial
coinages, supposedly "true" Turkish, and the confusion that
has now alienated modern Turkey from its own heritage, the
best of Ottoman literature. Indeed, the writings of Kemal
Atatürk himself have needed more than once to be
"translated" into New(er) Turkish. At a literary or
technical level usage still sometimes shifts between an
Arabic word, a "Turkish" neologism, or French, just to make
sure that everyone can recognize one of the words. Lewis's
own Turkish Grammar [Oxford, 1967, 2000] provides
information to enable people to read the Ottoman language.
It probably is too late to deliberately go back, but, like
German returning to Telefon from Fernsprecher, perhaps
Turkish usage will drift back to more of its Persian and
Arabic heritage
Ottoman
Empire 1800-1922 and Balkan States
The Shihābī Amīrs of Lebanon, 1697-1842 AD
The Golden Age of Lebanon is
considered by many to have come in the reign of the Amīr
Bashīr II Shihābī. The Shihābīs were originally Sunnī Moslems,
but they came to rule an area dominated by the Druzes,
practioners of a religious off-shoot of Islām and regarded by
many Moslems as apostates from Islām. When the Amīrs
themselves converted to
Maronite Christianity, this effected an alliance,
sometimes uneasy, between the largest communities in Lebanon,
the Maronites and the Druzes. Still symbolic of the success of
this alliance and the prosperity of the period is the
beautiful Bayt ad-Dīn (or Beit ed-Din, "House of Religion")
Palace, begun by Bashīr II in 1788 and not completed for 30
years. Unfortunately, Bashīr II moved to consolidate his power
through an alliance with Muhammad 'Alī of
Egypt. This would have been an excellent strategy were it not
for the intervention of Britain to drive the Egyptians out of
Syria and restore Ottoman authority. Bashīr II was deposed in
the process. The influence of France, especially, to protect
the Christians in Lebanon, however, was not exerted
successfully to preserve Lebanese autonomy, and tended to
alienate the non-Christians anyway. After Lebanese
independence from France itself in 1946, Bayt ad-Dīn became a
residence for the President of the Republic. For many years
Lebanon prospered as the "Switzerland of the Middle East," and
Beirut as the "Paris of the Middle East"; but by the 1970's
the communal differences that had been a source of strength
when the communities needed to unite against outside
persecution began to be a source of weakness, as sometimes had
happened before, when the communities fell out among
themselves and the issue came to be the distribution of
political privileges and patronage to each "confessional"
community. Things were particularly destablized by the large
number of Palestinian refugees, who had no political standing
in Lebanon at all, and whose activities against Israel drew
Israeli retaliation on Lebanon. Since the Maronites were
politically and economically dominant, everyone united against
them and full civil war broke out in 1975. This ended up
bringing the Syrians into Lebanon in 1976. The Druzes, and
much of the anti-Maronite cause, were led by the charismatic
Kamal Jumblatt, whose assassination in 1977, widely rumored to
have been ordered by the Syrians, symbolically ended the first
phase of the Lebanese "troubles." The shakeup of the civil war
then brought to the surface something new: The Shi'ite
community, always the poor relation in Lebanese politics,
predominant in the South and in the Beka'a Valley (areas
originally peripheral to Mount Lebanon), had not only quietly
grown into the largest community in Lebanon but now was
throughly radicalized and activized, in a natural alliance
with the Palestinians, and, ominously, with the more distant
Shi'ite coreligionists, the Iranian Islāmic Revolutionaries.
The Israelis, who invaded Lebanon in 1982 to
get rid of the Palestinians, more or less accomplished that
task, with the PLO leaving for Tunisia, but then discovered,
as the Syrians had already, that the communal rivalries of the
Lebanese themselves, especially with the Shi'tes adopting
Iranian suicide and terror tactics, made the place a tar baby
for any outsiders who wanted to exert control by force. With
the foreign powers chasened, the Lebanese began to patch
things up with some needed political compromises; and as the
1990's progressed, some peace and prosperity seemed to be
returning to the country. It remains to be seen, however, if a
modus vivendi can be found to produce another golden age of
communal alliance against the outside.
The House of Muh.ammad 'Alī in Egypt,
1805-1953 AD
Egypt was abruptly pulled
into modern history with the invasion of Napoleon in 1798.
Although Egypt had been conquered by the
Turks in 1517, the strange slave dynasty of the
Mamlūks had continued and by Napoleon's time had
reestablished de facto authority in the declining Empire.
After the French were driven from Egypt in 1801, Muhammad Alī
arrived, supposedly to reėstablish Turkish authority.
Brilliant, ruthless,
farsighted, and probably the most important
Albanian in world history, Muhammad 'Alī very quickly
established his own authority instead. The final Mamlūks were
massacred in 1811, and Muhammad 'Alī moved to create a modern
state, and especially a modern army, for Egypt. In this he was
as successful as any non-European power at the time. By the
time the Greeks revolted against Turkey in 1821, it was
Muhammad 'Alī who turned out to have the best resources to put
down the revolution and was called on by the Sultān in 1824 to
do so. He very nearly did, until Britain intervened and sank
the Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827.
Frustrated in that direction, Muh.ammad 'Alī was successful in
his conquest of the Sudan (1820-1822), probably advancing
further up the Nile than any power since Ancient Egypt, though
at a terrible cost to the Sudanese in massacre, mutilations,
and slaving (of which the American boxer Cassius Clay was
probably unaware when he adoped the name "Muhammad Ali" upon
his conversion to Islām). Egyptian interventions in Arabia in
1818-1822 and 1838-1843 very nearly exterminated the House of
Sa'ūd and its fundamentalist Wahhābī movement, which much
later would create a united and independent Sa'ūdī Arabia.
When Muhammad Alī moved into
Syria in 1831, however, this was a threat to the authority and
perhaps even the existence of the Ottoman Empire. When war
broke out in 1839, Britain intervened to support the Empire
and to throw Muhammad 'Alī out in 1841.
The most formative subsequent
event for Egyptian history was certainly the construction of
the Suez Canal. Although Britain had nothing to do with the
project, and it was the French Emperor
Napoleon III who attended the lavish opening ceremonies,
the collapse of Egyptian financies led to the purchase by
Britain of all Egypt's shares in the Canal Company. This did
not solve Egypt's financial problems, which got worse. The
Khedive Ismā'īl also wasted resources on disastrous campaigns
against
Ethiopia in 1875-1876. With its interests now in danger,
Britain occupied Egypt, without French support, in 1882.
Ironically, the Occupation was undertaken under Prime Minister
William Gladstone, who was opposed to British Imperialism. He
was not, however, going to endanger British finances just
because the Khedive didn't know how to handle his.
This made Egypt a de facto
part of the
British Empire, indeed one of the most important parts,
with the Suez Canal an essential strategic link between
Britain and India. Some of the most colorful episodes in
British Imperial history occured because of this. In 1881 a
revolt had started in the Sudan, led by a man claiming to be
the Apocalyptic Mahdī of Islāmic tradition. Gladstone was not
going to spend British money, or Egyptian, in trying to
suppress the rebellion. Consequently, Charles Gordon, known as
"Chinese Gordon" for his part in putting down the Taiping
Rebellion in
China (1860-1864), and who had already been
governor-general of the Sudan from 1877-1880, was sent back in
order to evacuate the Egyptian garrison. Once there, he
decided to stay and resist the Mahdī. By 1885 this
insubordination stirred up public opinion back home and forced
Gladstone to send a relief expedition; but it missed rescuing
Gordon by two days, as the Mahdī's forces overran Khartoum and
killed Gordon. This made Gordon one of the great heroes of the
day, humiliated Britain, and resulted in the fall of
Gladstone's government. However, the Sudan was, for the time
being, abandoned. When the British returned in 1898, in the
heyday of imperial jingoism, Lord Kitchener, with a young
Winston Churchill along, calmly massacred the mediaeval army
of the Mahdī's successor at the Battle of Omdurman, avenged
Gordon, and made himself one of the immortal heroes of the
British Empire too. Although formally in Egyptian service,
Kitchener reconquered the Sudan as an Anglo-Egyptian
"condominium." The theory of British and Egyptian joint rule
in the Sudan continued until Sudanese independence in 1956,
though between 1924 and 1936 the British didn't even allow
Egyptian forces or authorities into the Sudan.
All
this took place with Egypt still legally part of the Ottoman
Empire. Right down until 1914 the Turkish flag was dutifully
flown and Turkish passports issued. When Turkey repaid a
century of British support by throwing its lot with Germany in
World War I, however, the fiction came to an end, and Egypt de
jure came under British rule as a Protectorate, with the
Sultānate, abolished by the Turks in 1517, re-established.
This was not popular in Egypt, and after the war Egypt did
become a formally independent Kingdom. However, the British
did retain Treaty rights to garrison and protect the Suez
Canal; so, in many ways, the British Occupation of 1882 simply
continued. There was little doubt of that once World War II
started. Egypt, a legally Neutral country, was first invaded
by Italy and then by Germany, with British forces meeting,
fighting, and ultimately expelling them. Egypt at the time
seemed no less a part of the British Empire than it had ever
been. Egypt did eventually declare war on Germany, but not
until February 24, 1945.
The end of Muh.ammad 'Alī's
dynasty resulted from the humiliation of continuing British
occupation, the mortification of Egyptian failure in the war
against Israeli independence in 1948, and from the failure of
King Fārūq, who was rather more successful as a playboy than
as a leader, to deal with any of it. The army, soon led by
Gamal Abdel Nasser, swept away the monarchy, got British
forces to leave Egypt, and then won a great political victory
when Britain and France (74 years late) reoccupied the Canal,
Israel invaded the Sinai, and both the United States and the
Soviet Union told them all to leave in no uncertain terms, in
the Suez Crisis of 1956 (just as Soviet tanks were rolling
into Hungary!). Thus, Egypt became a player in the Cold War,
and the heritage of Muh.ammad 'Alī, the Ottoman Empire, and
British imperialism faded rapidly.
The Sanūsī Amīrs & Kings of Libya, 1837-1969 AD
Libya begins as two domains
in the Ottoman Empire, Tripolitania in the
west and Cyrenaica in the east. Eventually, lands in the
deeper desert, Fezzan, were brought under control. Most of the
desert, however, is uninhabitable. Cyrenaica entered history
originally as a place of
Greek colonies. It is mountainous and, especially in the
past, reasonably well watered. Tripolitania clings to the
Mediterranean coast around the city of Tripoli. Just a few
miles down the coast from Tripoli is Labdah, Roman Leptis
Magna, which was the home town of the Roman Emperor
Septimius Severus (b.145).
This was a thinly populated
backwater for the Turks, noteworthy mainly for Roman ruins and
piracy (with U.S. Marines landing at Tripoli in 1801). It all
achieved greater significance when Italy displaced the
Ottomans in 1911 (ceded in 1912). Indeed, Libya became one of
the most important strategic theaters of World War II. The
Italians tried invading Egypt from Libya in September 1940 but
by February 1941 had been thrown completely out of Cyrenaica,
with 130,000 soldiers captured. Alarmed, Hitler sent Erwin
Rommel with a couple of divisions to prevent the Italian
position from collapsing completely. Rommel, however, went on
the offensive. For more than a year, things surged back and
forth, with Cyrenaica recovered, lost, and recovered again. By
July 1942, Rommel was deep into Egypt, barely stopped at El
Alamein, 60 miles from Alexandria. By then, however, the
United States was in the War; and the strongly reinforced
British began an offensive in October. They broke through and
soon swept the Germans and Italians entirely out of Libya.
Retreating into Tunisia, they were caught against the
Americans who had landed in Morocco and Algeria in November.
After the War, Libya formally
became independent in 1951, under the Sasūnī Amīr of
Cyrenaica. The long lived King Idrīs was eventually overthrown
in 1969. This was under the leadership of the eratic and
megalomanaical Muammar Qaddafi. Along with armed clashes with
Egypt and Chad, Libya became a sponsor of terrorism. Blamed
for a bombing in Berlin in 1986, Libya was bombed by
Ronald Reagan in retaliation. Later blamed for a bomb that
brought down Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in
1988, sanctions were imposed on Libya until accused operatives
were surrendered. This eventually happened, Qaddafi may have
thought better of his ways, and sanctions were lifted in 2003.
Meanwhile, Qaddafi had dressed up his dictatorship with an
idiosyncratic political theory. Libya became the "Great
Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya." Jamahiriya,
similar to the Arabic word for "republic," jumhūrīya, was a
term coined by Qaddafi for his politcal system, which was
supposed to be a kind of direct, mass democracy, but is
probably no more democratic that similar arrangements in the
Soviet Union. Like Mao's little red book, Qaddafi produced a
little green book. Qaddafi seems secure enough, like many
other dictators (one thinks of Castro), but increasingly
anachronistic (Castro, again).
Ottoman
Empire 1800-1922 and Balkan States
- Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812
- War of
Greek Independence (1821-1829)
- Crimean
War (1853-1856)
- Russo-Turkish
War of 1877-1878
- Balkan Wars
A
characteristic of imperial states is an easy mixing of peoples
and languages. They all have too much to fear from the
imperial power for too much trouble to develop between them.
When the heavy imperial hand is withdrawn, however, serious
trouble can result. Thus, the end of the
British Empire resulted in the partitions, amid war and
massacre, of India, Palestine, and Cyprus. The decline of
Turkish power similarly uncorked more than a century of
conflict, continuing even in 2000, in the Balkans. Border
areas end up with the most ambiguious identities and so can
provoke the greatest conflict.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been swapped back and
forth between Hungary and Romania and Serbia in the 12th and
13th centuries, and then were long held by the Turks, ended up
with a mixed population of Croats (Latin/Catholic Christians),
Serbs (Orthodox Christians), and Moslem Bosnians (Bosniacs).
All, as it happened, spoke the same language, Serbo-Croatian,
but written in different alphabets. The disintegration of
Yugoslavia, with the lifting of the heavy imperial hand of
Communism in the 1990's, led to terrible fighting, massacres,
and atrocities, most famously carried out by the Serbs against
the others, but not unheard of from the Croatians, Bosniacs,
and Kosovar Albanians also. A famous bridge in Mostar in
Herzegovina, which had linked, actually and symbolically, the
Christian and Moslem parts of the city, was destroyed
(evidently by Croatians) in the fighting. With a peace
settlement patched up for Bosnia, the Serbs then turned their
hand against the restless Albanian majority of Kosovo, which
the Serbs regarded as the Serbian heartland but which had
contained few Serbs for a long time. It is enough to make one
yearn for the return of the
Palaeologi.
Russo-Turkish
War of 1806-1812
The first map above shows the situation in
1817, after the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, rebellions by
Serbia, and a final grant of autonomy to Serbia. The Ionians
Islands had originally belonged to Venice but were seized by
Britain in the Napoleonic Era and ceded to Britain by the
Congress of Vienna.
War of
Greek Independence (1821-1829)
The two maps, just above and
to the right, show the situation (1) after the War of Greek
Independence (1821-1829) and (2) after the Crimean War
(1853-1856). To save Greece, all the Great Powers were drawn
in against Turkey.
With Greek independence went
increased territory for Serbia, autonomy for Wallachia and
Moldavia, and border concessions to Russia.
Crimean
War (1853-1856)
In the Crimean War, Britain
and France joined Turkey against Russia, with much of the
fighting taking place, as one might expect from the name, in
the Crimea. This pretty much preserved the status quo for
Turkey, though the borders were extended against Russia along
the Black Sea. One change we see, however, was the unification
of Wallachia and Moldavia into the state of Romānia.
The Russian wars against
Turkey in the 19th Century led several times to the occupation
of Wallachia and Moldavia. After the Crimean War (1853-1856)
and, for a change, Austrian occupation (1854-1857), and a bad
experience with a local candidate for rule of the unified
country, a European prince, as in Greece and Bulgaria, was
brought in, Karl of Hohenzollern. The Congress of Berlin
recognized Karl (Carol) and Romanian independence (1878). With
the Allies in World War I, winning Transylvania from Hungary
and Moldova from Russia -- Romania was the biggest long term
winner of the War in the Balkans -- Romania, after much
internal strife, switched to the Axis in World War II, losing
Moldova to the Soviet Union (seized in 1940, actually, before
Romania was a belligerent) and part of Dobruja to Bulgaria.
Rejecting the Cyrllic
alphabet and the Turkish influenced "Rumania" (or "Roumania")
for
the
Latin alphabet and the pure Latin Romānia, Romania can now
claim that name as its own, with few remembering that it was
the proper name of the Roman (and the "Byzantine") Empire. In
the Middle Ages, "Romania" tended to refer to the
contemporaneous extent of the Empire, i.e. Anatolia and the
Balkans ("Asia and Europa" or "Rūm and Rumelia").
Russo-Turkish
War of 1877-1878
The two maps above show the
situation before and after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.
Note that by then Britain had ceded the Ionians Islands to
Greece (1864). In 1875 rebellions started in Bosnia and then
Bulgaria. The brutality with which these were suppressed
aroused European opinion, and after some delay Russia declared
war. With some hard fighting, the Russians ended up capturing
Adrianople and arriving at the outskirts of Constantinople.
The Treaty of San Stephano which ended the war mostly freed
the Balkans, but the Great Powers didn't like it. The Congress
of Berlin rolled things back a bit. Serbia, Romānia, and
Montenegro all became independent, with increases in
territory, but Bulgaria was divided and merely allowed
autonomy. Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Novipazar were made
protectorates of Austria. The map looked much the same for
many years, with Bulgaria annexing East Rumelia in 1885.
Balkan
Wars
1908 was a big year
in the Balkans. Bulgaria became independent and Austria
annexed most of its protectorate from the Congress of Berlin.
In Turkey, the Sultan, "Abdul the Damned," was overthrown by
the Young Turks, whose impetus, unfortunately, was more merely
nationalistic than liberal. Meanwhile, Greece was able to add
Thessaly (1881, with adjustments in 1897). A rebellion on
Crete led to autonomy (1898) as a prelude to Greek control
(1912).
The revolt of Greece against
the Turks was one of the sensations of the 19th century,
drawing partisans, like Lord Byron, from far and wide. Against
the Ottomans alone, the Greeks could well have been
successful, but the Sultan called in Muh.ammad 'Alī, who had modernized the Eyptian army enough
that the rebellion was being suppressed. This was too much,
however, for "civilized" opinion. Not only the Russians, the
traditional protectors of Orthodox Christians in Turkey, but
Britain and France, inspired by all that Classical Oxbridge
learning, moved to help the Greeks, sinking Muhammad 'Alī's
fleet at Navarino in 1827. They say that the ships are still
visible at the bottom of the bay, right by the island of
Sphacteria, where the Athenians defeated the Spartans early in
the Peloponnesian War, and just south of "Sandy Pylos," where
a great Mycenaean city supplied wise Nestor to the Greek
forces at Troy.
The house of Denmark supplied
most the kings of modern Greece. The kingship itself contained
an interesting ambiguity, since the Greek word basileus only
meant "king" in Classical Greek. In mediaeval Greek, basileus
was used by the Emperors of
Romania to translate Latin imperator, i.e. "emperor." So
which was it? Was the ruler of Greece merely the King of the
Hellenes, or the Emperor of the Romans (Rhōmaioi)? When the
Greeks tried to seize a large part of western Asia Minor from
the Turks in 1920, it looked like restoring the Empire was the
objective. Turkey remained, and remains, fundamentally
stronger than Greece, and the Greek invasion only provoked the
expulsion of Greeks from the Asia Minor.
Politically,
Greece
has swung back and forth in the 20th century. Whether the
monarchy was a good thing was often in doubt, as it was
briefly abolished in the 20's and almost not reinstituted
after World War II. Then the Army took over in 1967, creating
a dictatorship that lasted until 1974. King Constantine II
tried to organize a counter-coup against the dictatorship, but
then fled the country when he failed. Eventually the dictators
abolished the monarchy. When democracy was restored, after a
stupid attempt to overthrow the government of Cyprus
(provoking a Turkish intervention), the Greeks nevertheless
seemed to think that Constantine had not been sufficiently
vigorous in opposing the dictatorship, so the monarchy was not
restored. Since then, Greece seems to have made a speciality
of electing anti-American, socialist governments, long after
that made any sense either geo-politically or economically. A
good example of recent foolishness was a nationwide strike on
May 17, 2001, with 10,000 protesters marching on the
Parliament in Athens. Protesting what? Well, the Greek state
pension system is nearly bankrupt, and the Government is
considering reforms, like cutting benefits and increasing the
retirement age (to 65). Even the socialist government,
however, might have anticipated the offense to the Greek sense
of entitlement that this would cause.
A real basis for the latter
concerns Cyprus. In 1974 the Greek generals tried to annex
Cyprus to Greece. This provoked a Turkish intervention and the
de facto partition of the Island (and, happily for Greece, the
overthrow of the generals). The Turks even set up a separate
Turkish Cypriot Republic, which is recognized by no one in the
world but Turkey. What this all really meant was that the
effort to maintain Cyprus as a bi-national Republic, since
independence from Britain in 1960, had failed utterly. The
obvious solution would seem to be a real partition of the
island with the Greek and Turkish parts annexed, respectively,
by Greece and Turkey.
As noted above, it is now
largely forgotten in Greece, and entirely outside of it, that
in the Middle Ages the Greeks called themselves "Romans"
(Rhōmaioi), because, as it happens, they were. For many
centuries Hellźnes, which the Ancient Greeks had called
themselves, and now the modern Greeks again, meant pagan
Greeks. The history of Mediaeval Greece is thus found with
that of Rome and Byzantium.
The map for 1912
gives us the situation right before the Balkan Wars. Turkish
holdings in Europe still extend all the way to the Adriatic,
including Albania which, although largely Moslem, has already
been restless for independence.
The Balkan Wars all
but eliminated Turkey in Europe. In the First War (1912-1913),
everyone attacked Turkey, which even lost Adrianople to
Bulgaria. Serbia was going to annex Albania, but the Great
Powers required that it become an independent state. The Serbs
were not happy about that, and Bulgaria wasn't happy about its
share either. So the Second War (1913) featured everyone
against Bulgaria, which lost Macedonia to Serbia, Adrianople
to Turkey, and some territory south of the Danube to Romānia.
Meanwhile, Italy had been at war with Turkey in 1912 and had
obtained Libya and, on this map, the Dodecanese Islands.
Bulgaria was the last of the
mediaeval Balkan states to regain complete independence from
Turkey. Although usually regarded as a Kingdom, rather more
was implied when King Ferdinand (a second cousin of Edward VII
of England) also called himself "Tsar." He is actually
supposed to have carried around the vestments (obtained from a
theatrical costumer) of a Roman (/Byzantine) Emperor. This was
no less than what most of the successor states wanted, but the
Bulgarians came closest to the physical heart of mediaeval
Romania in the First Balkan War (1912-1913) when they occupied
Adrianople and drew near Constantinople. This advantage,
however, was lost in the Second Balkan War (1913), when
Bulgaria took on all the other belligerents from the First
War, largely in a dispute with Serbia over Macedonia (where a
dialect or near relative of Bulgarian was spoken), and was
overwhelmingly defeated. Adrianople went back to Turkey,
Macedonia went to Serbia, and other territories went to Greece
and Romania. Still stinging from this defeat, Bulgaria threw
its lot with the Axis in World War I, which cost it access to
the Aegean Sea. The same strategy was followed in World War
II, where the wartime borders show us the Bulgarian wish list,
with gains from Serbia, Romania, and Greece (Turkey was not in
the War). The post-War settlement erased those gains, except
against Romania, which had also been a member of the Axis.
Today Macedonia has broken away from Yugoslavia, but to become
independent rather than a part of Bulgaria. Note that the
numbering of Kings Boris III and Simeon II goes back to the
original mediaeval Bulgarian
Tsars.
Trouble over Bosnia began World
War I, when a member of a Serbian "Black Hand" assassination
squad killed the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Austria
ended up declaring war on Serbia, Russia on Austria, and
Germany on Russia. The Germans then, of course, invaded
France, Russia's ally, and did so through Belgium, violating
recognized Belgian neutrality and bringing Britain into the
War. Turkey and Bulgaria, the losers of the Balkan Wars, sided
with Germany and Austria, while the other Balkan countries
went with the Allies (Greece reluctantly -- Queen Sophia was
Kaiser Wilhelm's sister). The result was losses for Bulgaria
and gains for all the Allies, with Serbia orchestrating the
formation of Yugoslavia from Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
and other remants of Austria-Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia.
Romānia got Transylvania from Hungary and also gains from
Russia, which was distracted by the Russian Revolution and
Civil War. Bulgaria's loss of its Aegean coast would prove
fortunate for the region when it later went communist. However
little Greece and Turkey liked each other, it was convenient
for them as Western allies to have a land frontier.
Just about the poorest and
least educated people in Europe, the Albanians had unexpected
independence thrust upon them after the First Balkan War
(1912-1913) and then found themselves locked into paranoid and
pauperized
isolation
by a particularly nasty and megalomanaical Communist regime
after World War II, under longtime Communist Party Chief Enver
Hoxha. After the schism between Comminist China and the Soviet
Union, for many years Albania was China's only international
ally and supporter, regularly submitting the PRC for
membership in the United Nations. But eventually, after
membership, China began allowing Capitalism, and Albania had
to retreat into its own paranoid isolation as the last
surviving Stalinist dictatorship. Since Hoxha expected the
Capitalists to invade at any time, the Albanian landscape
became covered with small bunkers, to defend every inch. The
country, which had always been poor anyway, became even poorer
in Hoxha's grip, and it is nowhere near even recovering, much
less developing to the level of its European neighbors. The
Fall of Communism even witnessed large numbers of Albanians
attempting to flee to Italy by boat. Among the mysterious,
autochthonous peoples of the Balkans, the Albanians were
strongly Latinized under Rome, Islamicized under Turkey,
coveted by Italy and Serbia, and include substantial
communities in Greece (denied by Greece, which officially has
no ethnic minorities). Like a number of peoples in the
Balkans, they may not know just what to make of themselves in
the modern world, much less how their society is supposed to
function. Recent conspicuous Americans of Albanian heritage
have been the Belushis, John and his brother Jim, and Sandra
Bullock (whose mother is German and father, reportedly, of
Albanian derivation). One of John Belushi's memorable roles on
Saturday Night Live was in the ongoing "Greek Diner" skits.
The Belushis, indeed, had run such a diner in Chicago.
As the
Ottoman Empire declined in strength,
and Christians in the Balkans found European allies who
favored their independence, like Britain for Greece and Russia
for Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria, the Balkans became the
scene of one conflict after another. The Turks were not
entirely out of the picture until 1913, and this still left a
number of the successor states, especially Bulgaria and
Serbia, not entirely happy with their shares. The Serbs also
pursued a grievance against Austria-Hungary, which inspired
the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914,
precipitating World War I. In the end the Serbs realized their
dream of "Yugoslavia," the union of all the "Southern Slavs."
The dream of the Serbs, however, was not necessarily the dream
of all their fellow Yugoslavs. Macedonians really spoke a
dialect of Bulgarian, and would have been part of Bulgaria if
the Bulgarians had had their way. Slovenia, which historically
had been part of Austria, and Croatia, which historically had
been part of Hungary, were divided from the Serbs by religion,
Catholicism versus Serbian Orthodoxy, and history, the Latin
West versus the Greek, Slavonic, and Turkish East, even though
both the Serbs and Croatians really spoke the same language --
Serbo-Croatian. Bosnia-Herzegovina was a messy mixture of
Serbs, Croatians, and those from both groups who had converted
to Islam during the long Turkish presence (the Bosniacs).
Sources and Links
-
Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.
-
Rome and Romania Index
-
Islāmic Index
-
Philosophy of History
-
Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.
-
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~turkish/resources
-
http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/topkapi.html
- http://turkishstudies.org/grantsprogram2.html
- http://tsi.idc.ac.il/ts/ts.html
-
http://www.ejts.org/document86.html
-
http://www.theottomans.org/english/index.asp
-
http://www.osmanli700.gen.tr/english/engindex.html
-
http://lexicorient.com/e.o/ottomans.htm
-
Hellenistic Index
-
Outremer
-
Russia Index
-
Culmen Mundi
-
Culmen Franciae
-
Modern Romania Index
-
Armenian Issue: Allegations & Facts
-
Assembly of Turkish American Associations
TransAnatolie Tour
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