In the expansion of their empire the main characteristic of the Ottomans had been fidelity to their tribal origin in Asia and to their religion; they showed little elasticity in modifying their system of government to new conditions, but they did recognize the necessity of progress. After their conversion to Mohammedanism their supreme guide was the “cheriat,” under which term is signified the religious law of orthodox Moslems in the threefold division of Koran, Sunna, and the Sentences. In addition to this, there were the various official interpretations from the Sultan’s hand in the application of the law called the Kanoun. So much importance had this aspect of the Sultan’s functions that Souliman is remembered under his title of El Kanouni, that is, as a Turkish Justinian, rather than as a great military leader.
As head of the Empire, the Sultan’s various titles are significant of the progressive stages of Ottoman development from a tribe to a great world power. The sovereign was still called Khan, as the head of a Turkish nomadic horde. When the Turks were converted to Islam, there was first added the title emir, an Arabic word, Chief of Believers; then came the name sultan, king; after the conquest of Constantinople, the Persian term padishah, king of kings, came into use. As we have seen, the conquest of Syria, of Egypt, and Arabia, made the Sultan defender of the holy cities and khalif.
After the conquest of the capital of the Cæsars, the influence of Byzantine traditions introduced a rigid system of court ceremonial; the days of patriarchal simplicity were closed; the person of the Sultan was raised in dignity. The change is clearly indicated in an edict by Mohammed: “It is not my will that anyone should eat with my imperial majesty; our ancestors were wont to eat with their ministers, but I have abolished it.” The influence of the Byzantine bureaucratic hierarchy can be traced in the method of Ottoman administration; even in small details the permanence of the Roman imperial tradition is noteworthy. The sovereign’s documents were, like those of his Greek predecessors, written in gold, purple, and azure. His letters of victory are but a continuation of the “litterae laureatae,” while the bakkchich given to the Janitschars is but a reminiscence of the Imperial donation.
But actual assimilation between the Turks and their subject peoples was prevented by difference of religion. Racial differences made no distinction between Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and Roumanians; they were all orthodox Christians, while the same people, if they became converts to Islam, were turned into Ottomans. The two types of religious allegiance were mutually irreconcilable. The peculiarity of Ottoman absolutism is to be found in the exclusion from governmental offices both of the free Moslem and the free Christian subjects of the Empire. The administration from top to bottom was in the hands of slaves, and these slaves were largely recruited from the children of Christian families of the subject races, who were constantly exposed to a detestable and unnatural form of oppression. The conquered populations were ruled despotically by men of Christian birth, who, during their initiation into slavery, had become Moslems. The famous Admiral Dragut was the son of a Christian of Asia Minor. Many of the famous generals were taken from Christian Albanian, Bosnian, and Dalmatian families. Of forty-eight grand viziers, only twelve were of Moslem birth.
Many Christians also became renegades, since an easy road to fortune was opened to them in this way. The hardy, adventurous, and less scrupulous elements of the conquered races accepted the religion of their conquerors; even a Paleologus, one of the last descendants of the imperial line, became a Moslem. There were conversions on a large scale, accomplished without special pressure among the landed proprietors, who were warriors by tradition, and who refused to endure the restrictions placed upon them by their religious profession.
The absolutism of the Sultan allowed no rival in any of the religious dignitaries of Islam. Even the Cheikh-ul-Islam had no authority over the Sultan; though the supreme ecclesiastical dignitary, he was only an authoritative expert in the law, the head of the body of oulemas, whose opinions could, if necessary, be passed over. At the same time the Cheikh-ul-Islam’s advice carried weight, and we sometimes hear of ambassadors being protected from the rage of the Sultan by his intervention. Legally, the Sultan was altogether above the law, or, rather, outside of it; he had the right to execute his brothers and children “if the peace of the world required it.”
While women in the household of the Padishah played no conspicuous rôle, there were exceptions to the rule. Under the institution of the harem the Sultan’s wives were slaves, and frequently domestic discords that had an influence on the destiny of the Empire were the result of harem intrigues. Often the sons of the Sultan were children of different parents. It was remarked in the time of Souliman that one of his wives, Roxelane, perhaps a Russian, acquired great ascendency over him. The Venetian ambassador reported that Souliman, contrary to the custom of his ancestors, had taken her for his legitimate wife. She became practically an empress, and was responsible for the Sultan’s policy on several occasions. The war with Persia and the undermining of the power of the grand vizier were due to her.
As to the army, it kept the basis marked out for it by Ala-ed-Din. The élite body of the Janitschars still formed the chief protection of the Sultan’s power. From the regular tribute of blood only Constantinople, Athens, Rhodes, a few other islands, and the Mainotes, the Laconian mountaineers, were exempted. Every five years the officers of the Sultan passed through the villages where children of the peasants were collected, and each fifth one was taken. Oftentimes Christian families were glad to pay the exaction even before the tax collectors appeared. Many of the members of the corps preserved traces of their early faith, and so drank wine without scruple. The solidarity of the body was maintained by exceptional privileges; their pay was large; they had a special share of the booty, or regular donatives, and the assurance of a pension for old age. The Janitschars were forbidden to marry or to engage in any trade. They could be punished only by their own officers, and even the grand vizier had no jurisdiction over them. In the time of Souliman they numbered 12,000, and as their numbers increased their turbulence grew. Selim attempted to meet this difficulty by incorporating in their body 7000 of the palace servants, and by dividing the command.
In the government of the subject peoples no uniformity was observed. The inhabitants of mountain regions, the Albanians, the Montenegrins, the Mainotes, the dwellers on Mt. Libanus, were protected from tyrannical actions. Where the country was level, there were no bounds to the barbarity of Turkish governmental methods. The vassal states, such as Transylvania, Moldavia, Georgia, were still ruled by native princes. But under Ottoman rule, in spite of the constant wars and the attendant anarchic conditions, there was worked out a crude kind of unity throughout the Empire. At least, with an Ottoman overlord, there prevailed a condition of internal peace between the various portions of the Empire, that gave stability to commercial relations and rendered communication easy between distant parts. Religious persecution in the sense in which it had existed in the Byzantine Empire, and in the Eastern domains of the Italian municipalities, was now unknown. At Rhodes the Greeks preferred the new régime to the rule of the Knights Hospitalers, who, as Latins, had showed no sympathy with the Orthodox Church. In Crete and Greece the Turks were more popular as masters than the Venetians; and the Servians, Hungarians, and Roumanians preferred Moslem control to that of Catholic Austria.
Economically, the substitution of Turkish for Byzantine rule was a benefit to the Greek industrial population, who were better protected against foreign competition than they had ever been. Customs duties were arranged by an ad valorem scale, under which the Italian merchants were taxed four and a half times as much as the native Christians, although these, in turn, paid more than the Moslem traders who were favored by the Ottoman government. The Greek parts of the Empire entered upon an era of prosperity such as had not been seen since before the Latin conquest of Constantinople. For example, a large colony of Greeks established themselves at Ancona, where, in 1549, they transacted business to the annual value of 500,000 ducats. Moreover, the persecution of the Moors and Jews of Spain brought much capital into Ottoman territory; soon there were numbered 30,000 Spanish Jews at Constantinople, and 15,000 to 20,000 at Salonica. On this commercial basis the national renascence of the Greek peoples was founded. The landed proprietors of their own race mostly became Moslems, while their scholars and literary men found a refuge in the Occident; but the traders made and kept a place for themselves. Hence there was created a new center in which the old ideals of an independent Greek nationality could grow.
The Slav peoples were much worse off than the Greek population, because over their provinces were scattered Turkish garrisons, and through them passed the roads used by the Sultan for the interminable expeditions into Hungary. They retained fewer traces of autonomous existence, and their clergy were more ignorant than the Greek. The higher ecclesiastical positions were never bestowed on Slavs, and their landed gentry mostly became Moslem. The Roumanians, who were more remotely situated, preserved, under the form of vassalage, a complete national organization. They paid a moderate tribute, and were obliged to furnish military contingents, but there were no Turks in their territory, and no mosques were built among them. Wallachia and Moldavia, in the time of Souliman, made more than one attempt to throw off Turkish rule, but both principalities were compelled to submit before the middle of the sixteenth century.
The Turkish conquest of North Africa begins, strictly speaking, with the resistance of the Moslem Berber tribes and princes to the extension of Spanish influence over the African Mediterranean coast towns. This was a primary object of Charles V, who was bent on following up, by his control of sea power, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. After many vicissitudes, Kheir-ed-Din, who had a powerful rival supported by the Spaniards, became King of Algiers. He turned to ask help from the Sultan of Constantinople, Selim, and he offered, in return, to become his vassal and to incorporate his small kingdom as an integral part of the Ottoman Empire.
Selim sent to Kheir-ed-Din 2000 Janitschars, well realizing the importance of using Algiers to block the progress of Charles V in his North African ambitions. Four thousand men were also recruited in Anatolia to defend the Moslem cause. It was a critical time, when the Viceroy of Sicily (1519), at the head of an armada of forty ships, appeared off Algiers. The Spaniards were beaten off, and many of the ships were lost in a storm. An even greater success for Moslem arms was the conquest, ten years later, of the citadel of Peñon, which commanded the harbor of the city that had for long been in the hands of the Spaniards. The island on which it stood was, by instructions from Kheir-ed-Din, joined to the mainland, and so an impregnably fortified harbor was constructed, which turned Algiers into the lasting home of those Barbary pirates that were for so long the plague of the Mediterranean commerce.
In 1535, Tunis was captured by Charles V in person, that monarch’s great expedition of 400 ships and 30,000 men having proved too strong for Kheir-ed-Din, who had hurried to save the place with only 9000 men. At Algiers, the Emperor’s next objective, Kheir-ed-Din could not take part personally in the work of defense, since he was not kept in command of the Turkish fleet. The government of Algiers was turned over to Hassan Aka, no idle leader. The Christian Emperor’s armada was calculated to inspire terror; when it gathered at Spezzia, in August, 1541, it numbered 65 galleys and 451 transports, ready to embark the 29,000 troops, German, Italian, and Spanish, and the members of the Knights of Malta. In addition to the Emperor, who was in command, there were a large number of high officers of the various arms, and members of the nobility from Charles V’s wide domains.
To oppose this brilliant host, Hassan had only 800 Turks, 5000 Moors, some Moriscos from Spain, and a few renegades from the Island of Majorca. There were rumors of treachery on the part of Hassan, but when the actual attack was made, nothing was left undone by him to keep up an effective resistance. He was helped by a severe storm, which caused much damage to the fleet; many ships were driven ashore, where the crews were attacked and the cargoes seized. An attempt to attack one of the forts by which the city was defended failed; the imperial troops got near the walls, but no farther; even the heroism of the Knights of Malta failed to save the day. The Spanish admiral, Doria, insisted that the expedition should reimbark, as his ships could not hold their anchorage. No other attempt on such a scale was made to arrest the progress of the Turkish vassal powers in North Africa. Tripoli was conquered in 1556, and there was incessant warfare with the Sherif of Fez, and also with the Spaniards, who still continued to hold Oran.
After the death of Hassan, the Turkish Beglerbeg at Algiers was Euldj-Ali, the son of a Calabrian fisherman. He had given up his faith and become one of the most dreaded Corsairs in the Mediterranean. He promoted the revolt of the Spanish Moriscos, afterwards winning a great success at Tunis, where, in 1573, Don John of Austria had brought 27,000 men to defend the Spanish citadel in the harbor. Euldj gathered an overwhelming force, took Goletta, and massacred the Spanish garrison. By this decisive victory Tunis became the seat of a Turkish pashalik. His next step was to make the throne of Morocco dependent on the Sultan.
The government of these African provinces was strictly centralized; over the whole was a Beglerbeg, who transmitted to his subordinates the directions which he received from Stamboul. The military strength of the provinces was remarkable, notwithstanding the unimportant part played by the regular Turkish soldiers. In their place there were regiments of renegades, Kabyles, and mercenaries of many nationalities. The navy was made up of corsairs, organized in a kind of guild, whose members made a life business of hazardous expeditions on the sea for the purpose of plundering vessels or harrying coast towns. No effort was made to interfere with the local customs of the tribes in the interior. All that was asked by the Beglerbeg was free passage for military expeditions and the payment of a large tribute.
Turkish rule was maintained with a very small display of military power. The whole country was controlled by little more than 15,000 men, most of them in a small number of garrison towns. Scattered through the country were small divisions of soldiers, whose chief business was the collection of the tribute. For the purposes of local government there were artificial tribes made up of natives, placed under the authority of a sheik or religious personage. The government of Algiers gave these groups certain landed concessions, and they paid some small dues to the sheik. They were expected to support soldiers or travelers when these appeared in their territory. They lived in tents or huts along a highway and the principal group was called a konak. In addition there were the real tribes, of warlike temper, that had once been independent; they paid no tax on their land or herds, but they had the function of collecting the tribute from inferior tribes called raias. This recognized position was enough to secure their loyalty.
The Algerian corsairs became famous for their ravages in the narrow seas, for their ships were models for speed and lightness, and their crews worked under the strictest discipline. Each vessel carried soldiers, cannon, and artillerymen. The merchant vessels they seized were brought back to Algiers, where the passengers, crews, and cargoes were sold at auction. These undertakings proved most profitable to the captains, “Reis,” who built themselves a quarter of the town, where they lived in houses resembling fortresses, since their captives were kept in these buildings (bagni) until they could be sold. So was formed a Barbary aristocracy, which ended by winning its independence from Turkish rule. Among the corsairs were many renegades, especially Italians.
Algiers developed from a small town to a city of 100,000 souls. Many of the captives gave up Christianity and won their freedom. With such elements it is not surprising that the hold of the Turks on the inhabitants became weakened, until finally, not long after Greece won its freedom, Algiers was conquered by the French in the reign of Louis Philippe.
After the death of Souliman the Ottoman Sultanate underwent an eclipse. The succession of strong rulers was broken, and the empire was largely under the direction of the women of the harem and slaves. Of the eight successors of Souliman, one only can be called a military leader; many were mere children when they were called to the throne. Even Murad IV (1623-40), the most active of all, took the title of Sultan when he was twelve years old, and his career ended when he was twenty-eight. But even under such unfavorable conditions the progress of Turkish conquests was not arrested.
Of the western powers, the chief rival of the Ottoman Empire, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was Venice. At the cost of a yearly tribute of 236,000 ducats, she enjoyed great commercial privileges, was mistress of possessions in the Levant and on the Dalmatian coast, and blocked the way to complete Ottoman domination. Though Rhodes had been taken from the Knights, as we have seen, the large islands of Cyprus and Crete were still in the hands of the republic of the Adriatic, and her possessions in the Ægean Sea were a constant source of annoyance to the Turkish lords of the Morea. Piracy flourished in these ports, which became centers of retaliation for the excesses of the Barbary corsairs.
Aggressive measures were taken by Selim, Souliman’s successor, who, after long years of peace between the two powers, summoned Venice, in 1570, to surrender the Island of Cyprus. One hundred and seventy-one Ottoman galleys supported the demand. Venice had tried to get the Christian powers to coöperate against the Turks, even calling on the Persians and the Arab tribes of Yemen to aid her in the defense of the island. But the arms of the Turkish generals soon prevailed. The chief fortress of the island, Famagusta, capitulated in 1571; and with its fall the Turks began the occupation of the island, which only ended after the war between Turkey and Russia in 1878.
During the progress of the siege an anti-Turkish league had been completed, composed of Venice and the Papacy, Spain, the Knights of Malta, and many Italian states. The result was the despatch of a large fleet under the command of Don John of Austria, at this time a youth of only twenty-two years. The objective of the armada was Patras, because, in the Gulf of Lepanto, close at hand, all of the squadrons of the Turkish navy were assembled. In all, the allies had 208 ships of war, the Ottomans slightly more, but the weakness of the Turks was due to the lack of soldiers to defend their fleet. There were but 2500 Janitschars on their galleys, the rest were troops raised from continental Greece, 22,000 in all, who were either new recruits or were not trained for naval warfare. Among the Turkish captains were present many older men who desired to avoid conflict with the Christian armada. Of a different temper were Hassan Pasha, the son of the famous Kheir-ed-Din, and Ali-Muezzin-Zade, the new captain pasha of the whole fleet.
The Christian fleet was in an admirable state of preparation for the fight. It was composed entirely of armed vessels directed by skilful rowers; besides the 203 galleys there were six galiasses, great floating citadels carrying heavy artillery and 500 soldiers. Don John had also armed the Venetian vessels with contingents of Spanish infantry. On the side of the Christians there was the additional advantage of superior equipment in armor and weapons for the individual warrior. The soldiers wore helmets and breastplates, and were armed with arquebuses, while the Turks used lances and arrows. There were also superior numbers on the side of the allies, the fighting men numbering between 28,000 and 29,000.
The two fleets took up the same position and adopted the same tactics. In the center on each side were collected the largest ships under the command of the respective chief admirals. Some initial successes were won by the Ottomans over the division made up of the Venetian vessels, but in the center, after desperate fighting, the men under Don John, owing to their superior weapons, got the better of their enemies, and the captain pasha was killed. The Algerian vessels showed much tactical superiority to the Christian right wing, under the command of John Andrew Doria; but, although they inflicted much damage, they could not save the day for the Ottomans. The victory cost the Christians dear, for they lost 12 galleys and 7500 men. But the defeat of the Turks was overwhelming; 15 galleys were sunk, 177 were captured, and many pashas and governors of provinces lost their lives; 12,000 to 15,000 of the galley slaves on the Turkish vessels, Christian captives, were set free.
Such was the remarkable victory of October 7, 1571, remarkable not only for the heroism displayed, and the sensation caused by the success of the Christians, who had for so long been incapable of resisting Ottoman aggression, but also because of the small practical results produced. The Christian armada returned to Corfu, and from there made for the coast of Italy, where it disbanded. On the side of the vanquished, Euldj-Ali, gathering together eighty-seven ships as a nucleus for a new Ottoman fleet, sailed into the harbor of Constantinople, and was welcomed as a conqueror by the Sultan and the grand vizier, Sokoli. New honors were heaped upon him, not altogether undeserved, for during the winter a new fleet, larger and better armed than the one destroyed, was made ready for sea.
The recuperative energy of the Ottoman Empire was not lost on the Venetians, and their agent at Constantinople, Antonio Barbaro, saw that there was more than an empty boast in the words of the Vizier, who said to him, “There is a great difference between your loss and ours. By taking from you the Kingdom of Cyprus we have cut off your arm; by defeating our fleet you have only shaved our beard. A beard grows out thicker for being shaven.” This argument appealed to the republic, and in 1573 peace was made. The conditions were the cession of Cyprus, the payment of a heavy war indemnity by Venice, and a regulation of the frontier in Albania and Dalmatia, that secured to the Turks their ancient possessions there. The Venetians also were required to increase the annual tribute exacted for the Island of Zante, which was still in their hands.
Three generations after the taking of Cyprus the long-coveted island of Crete, or Candia, was annexed to the Ottoman Empire. Hostilities began between Venice and Sultan Ibrahim I, because of the seizure by the Knights of Malta of a Turkish vessel carrying high officials of the court to Egypt. The Maltese ships were received in the friendly harbors of Crete, where they took refuge. In April, 1645, a great fleet of 302 ships, and a large army of over 100,000 men, commanded by a Dalmatian, Pasha Joseph Markovitch, set sail for Crete. In June, one of the two chief fortresses of the island, Canea, was invested. After two months’ siege it surrendered. In 1648 began the first siege of Candia, but this stronghold proved as hard to capture as Rhodes. During the course of twenty-one years it was the objective of repeated attacks on the part of the Turks, and only fell into their hands in 1669.
As has been seen, the Ottoman Empire began to decay from the top. The Sultan finally became the mere figurehead of palace intrigues, and the effect of the rottenness in the supreme head of a centralized military despotism was widespread. Taxation became extravagantly burdensome; the royal domains were alienated, the coinage was debased, offices were sold to the highest bidder, and this general venality caused the disappearance of the military fiefs from which the armies of the empire had been recruited.
The Janitschars lost their characteristic qualities as warriors when the custom of recruiting them from the Christian population was abandoned. They finally degenerated into a mere rabble of turbulent blackguards, composed of the worst elements of all nationalities, Christian and Moslem, who disappeared from the ranks during a war, or fled from the battlefield and lived normally by blackmail or by illicit trading. The abandonment of this living tithe was due probably to the jealousy of the Moslem families, who objected to the monopolizing by men of Christian birth of the lucrative privileges attached to an élite corps. The last time the tithe was collected was in 1676, when 3000 youths were brought in as recruits. With the abolition of the Janitschars dates the rise of the bands of brigands among both the Slavic and Hellenic populations. The able-bodied members of the conquered races found in this sphere of activity a chance for developing their capacities in guerrilla warfare; with the training and traditions so acquired they were able in later years to act as the leaders in the national movements which, during the course of the nineteenth century, ended in the dismemberment of the Ottoman provinces in Europe.