Ottoman Empire II

  General Description   In the 15th century CE, the Turkic Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, took from the last vestiges of the defeated Roman Empire the famous title ’caesar’, and added to it the grandiose title ’ruler of the two continents and the two seas’. ^[1] However, it was Suleiman I (1520-1566 CE) who earned his sobriquets ’the Magnificent’ and ’the Lawgiver’ when he reformed the Ottoman system of government, codified Ottoman secular law, and extended the Ottoman Empire into Europe as far as Vienna.
Population and political organization
The Ottoman Empire was a hereditary dynasty under the rule of an Ottoman Sultan. ^[2] The Ottoman ’slave-elite’ differed from that of the Mamluk Sultanate in that the Ottoman slaves could never achieve the position of sultan, which remained the hereditary property of the Osman dynasty. With its capital in Istanbul, the main organ of state power was the ’elaborate court, palace, and household government’. ^[3] Policy-making was weakly institutionalized: in theory, all decisions were made by the sultan himself, and so Ottoman policies were shaped by the sultan’s personal character and by the ’individuals or factions who had his ear’. ^[4] The sultans appointed their own staff and paid them with a wage or (increasingly after 1600 CE) a fief. ^[5] State funding came in large part from money raised by fief holders until Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha Kulliyesi (in office from 1718 CE) introduced a property tax. ^[6]
The administrative and military officials around the sultan were slaves educated in palace schools. ^[7] The source of this non-Turkish administrative class was the devsirme tribute, which began in 1438 CE; by the 16th century about 1,000 boys were taken per year per recruiting province in the Balkans and non-Muslim communities in Anatolia. The system divided these slaves into those who would serve the bureaucracy and those who would form the elite military corps known as janissaries. In 1582 CE, recruits of non-devsirme origin, including free Muslims, were permitted to join the janissaries and after 1648 CE the devsirme system was no longer used to recruit for the janissaries. ^[8] The imperial household together with its armies and administrative officials was truly vast, numbering about 100,000 people by the 17th century. ^[3] The renowned Ottoman architect Sinan was a tribute slave; he notably designed the Sehzade and Süleyman külliyes (complexes of buildings including mosques and mausoleums) and the Selim Mosque at Edirne (1569-1575 CE), with its four 83-metre-high minarets. ^{[9] [10]}
Ottoman sultans issued decrees through an imperial council (divan) ^[4] and the chief executive power below the sultan, the grand vizier. ^[11] Although certain regions (Egypt, for example) may have differed slightly in their governing structure, Ottoman regional government typically involved governors (beylerbeyi) ^[12] whose provinces were split into districts (sanjaks) under district governors (sanjak beyi). ^[13] The sanjak beyi also was a military commander. ^[14] Fief-holding soldiers were responsible for local law and order within their districts. ^[15] By the late 16th century, the lowest level of this system had transformed into a system of tax farms or fiefs given to non-military administrators. ^[16] In 1695 CE, these tax farms were ’sold as life tenures (malikane)’, and later shares in tax farms were sold to the public. ^[17]
Ottoman law was divided into religious - Islamic sharia - and secular kanun law. ^[18] Kanun law essentially served to fill the gaps left by the religious legal tradition, regulating ’areas where the provisions of the sacred law were either missing or too much at at odds with reality to be applicable’. ^[18] In the Ottoman Empire, this included aspects of criminal law, land tenure and taxation; kanun law drew its legitimacy from precedent and custom. ^[18] Military judges (kadi’asker) were the heads of the empire’s judiciary and heard cases brought before the imperial council. ^[19]
Ottoman Anatolia further enhanced many aspects of Byzantine culture. In 1331, in an attempt to spread Islam to new territories, Iranian and Egyptian scholars were brought to Iznik in northwestern Anatolia to teach at the first Ottoman college. ^[20] Palace schools were created to train the next generation of Ottoman officials. During the 15th and 16th centuries CE, about 500 libraries were built by sultans and high Ottoman dignitaries. These were maintained by waqf religious foundations; the majority in Istanbul, Bursa and Erdine. Initially, these were madrassa libraries and specialist libraries, but the first independent Ottoman waqf libraries were founded by the Koprulu family in 1678 CE. ^[21]
The Ottoman postal system (ulak) structured around postal stations (similar to the Mongol yam) ^[22] spanned an empire of 5.2 million square kilometres at its greatest extent, ^[23] with a population of approximately 28 million people in 1600 CE. ^[24] Istanbul likely had a population of at least 650,000 in 1600 CE. ^[25]

[1]: (Inalcik and Quataert 1997, 18) Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert. 1997. ’General Introduction’, in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Volume One: 1300-1600, edited by Halil Inalcik with Donald Quataert, 1-8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[2]: (Imber 2002, 87) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[3]: (Lapidus 2012, 437) Ira M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4]: (Imber 2002, 154) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[5]: (Imber 2002, 171) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[6]: (Palmer 1992, 33-34) Alan Palmer. 1992. The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire. London: John Murray.

[7]: (Nicolle 1983, 10) David Nicolle. 1983. Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300-1774. Oxford: Osprey Publishing.

[8]: (Nicolle 1983, 9-11, 20) David Nicolle. 1983. Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300-1774. Oxford: Osprey Publishing.

[9]: (TheOttomans.org 2002) TheOttomans.org. 2002. ’Architecture’. http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/architec.asp, accessed 3 April 2017.

[10]: (Freely 2011, 15, 29, 215, 269) John Freely. 2011. A History of Ottoman Architecture. Southampton: WIT Press.

[11]: (Imber 2002, 156) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[12]: (Imber 2002, 177-78) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[13]: (Imber 2002, 184) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[14]: (Imber 2002, 189) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[15]: (Imber 2002, 194) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[16]: (Imber 2002, 209, 215) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[17]: (Lapidus 2012, 473) Ira M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[18]: (Imber 2002, 244) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[19]: (Imber 2002, 157) Colin Imber. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[20]: (Lapidus 2012, 440) Ira M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[21]: (Agoston and Masters 2009, 333-34) Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters. 2009. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Facts On File.

[22]: (Królikowska 2013, 59) Natalia Królikowska. 2013. ’Sovereignty and Subordination in Crimean-Ottoman Relations (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries)’, in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Gábor Kármán and Lovro Kunčević, 43-66. Leiden: Brill.

[23]: (Turchin, Adams and Hall 2006) Peter Turchin, Jonathan M. Adams and Thomas D. Hall. 2006. ’East-West Orientation of Historical Empires’. Journal of World-Systems Research 12 (2): 219-29.

[24]: (McEvedy and Jones 1978, 137) Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones. 1978. Atlas of World Population History. London: Allen Lane.

[25]: (Bairoch 1988, 378) Paul Bairoch. 1988. Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.