Ottoman Empire was established by Turkish Oghuz tribes in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and grew to be one of

the most powerful empire in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries. However, the timeline of this
long empire was not a straight line of establishment, zenith and decline. After having been established in
1300, the empire faced multiple degenerative periods along with multiple periods of rebirth.

Over the course of years, the interpretation of Ottoman history from the reign of Qanuni Sulayman
through the Tulip Period has changed from decline as a result of moral degeneracy at the top to decline
as a result of military, financial, and socio-economic stresses to successful transformation in response to
those same stresses.

The present scholarly interpretation of the era is provided by Steusand, who states that the deviation
from the “classical” Ottoman patterns and practices of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
did not imply degeneration. The decline of specific institutions like the timar army did not imply systemic
failure.

However there were many factors at play which created a trough in the Ottoman dynastic timeline.

Internal Politics

Internal politics, not religious or attitudinal reluctance to change, hindered the Ottoman “military and
fiscal transformation,” to use Halil Inalcık’s expression. The said internal politics became apparent in the
system of succession after the murder of Bayezid and his sons in 1562. Initially, owing to a lack of law of
succession, the contenders to the throne were involved in fratricidal battles. However, by the end of the
century, Ottoman succession was no longer decided by the wars of succession.

Selim and Murat came to power unchallenged as the only surviving adult son and similarly Mehmet III,
the eldest son of Murad was the only one to serve as the provincial governor. These successions laid out
a pattern of precedence after which Ottoman princes were not appointed to provincial governorship but
raised within the haram. Also, succession was not decided by battles but rather through factional politics
within the haram.

These new Sultans did not receive adequate training, thus becoming unfit to rule and susceptible to
harem politics. Hence, what developed was a number of weak Sultans who had to relegate power to
their Grand Viziers and administrators who were fast allowing corruption to grow.

After Süleyman accession and appointments to positions came less as the result of ability than as a
consequence of the political maneuverings of the devşhirme-harem political parties. As the grand viziers
lost their dominant position following the downfall of Mehmed Sokollu (served 1565–79), power fell first
into the hands of the women of the harem, during the “Sultanate of the Women” 2 and then into the
grasp of the chief Janissary officers, the agas.

Sultanate of women was known as kadinlat sultanat and had started with the prominence of Hurrem,
who died in 1568 and went about till the death of the mother of Sultan Murad IV in 1651. 2 The period
marking the end of the Sultanate of Women coincided with the devaluation of the Ottoman currency,
thus causing a chaotic era in matters of political and financial difficulties.
Rise of Janissaries

The mid-16th century also saw the triumph of the devşirme over the Turkish nobility, which lost almost
all its power and position in the capital and returned to its old centres of power in southeastern Europe
and Anatolia. In consequence, many of the timars formerly assigned to the notables to support the
sipahi cavalry were seized by the devşirme and transformed into great estates.

While the sipahis did not entirely disappear as a military force, the Janissaries and the associated
artillery corps became the most important segments of the Ottoman army. In 1622 Janissaries rebelled
against the state which culminated in the assassination of the then Sultan Osman and replacing him with
the mentally incompetent ruler Mustafa. However, later in the same year, Mustafa was deposed by the
Istanbul ulama.

And as Streusand points, the Janissaries had leverage not only because of their pivotal political
significance but because of the growing military requirement for them as a result of the Military
Revolution.

Military Incompetence

Of Geoffrey Parker’s three dimensions of the Military Revolution, the growth in the size of European
armies challenged the Ottomans far more than the increase in firepower and improvement in
fortification.

The Ottomans, however, did not adopt drill until the eighteenth century. This situation prompted the
remark of the great French commander Marechal de Saxe that “it is not valor, numbers, or wealth they
lack; it is order, discipline and military technique.”

In the 17th century, the Ottoman army started losing its power. Military slavery created highly reliable,
expert armies, not mass forces. In order to compete against the Europeans, the Ottomans had to use a
different mechanism of recruitment and create a different kind of soldier. The Ottomans recruited mass
infantry armies not because they preferred infantry to cavalry or wanted to exploit the military potential
of peasant manpower but because they had no alternative.

Jelali Revolts

As far as the regime was concerned, the soldiers of each boluk reverted to reaya status as soon as their
contract to fight expired. The armed peasants were rarely content to return to the role of taxpaying
cultivators. Like unemployed soldiers in other historical contexts, they became insurgents, known as the
jalalis. These rebels aspired to be sipahis or Janissaries. Karen Barkay describes the jalali problem as the
product of deliberate state policy.

Osman II however, sought to restore vigor to the empire by substituting the insurgent jalalis for the
incumbent qapiqullar. His assassination led to a major jalali uprising headed by Abaza Mehmed Pasha,
the governor of Erzurum. Murad IV eventually pardoned Abaza Mehmed Pasha and incorporated his
forces into the official army, a significant victory for the jalalis. Similar uprisings by governors continued
into the Köprülü era.

The resultant failure of the timar system also meant a breakdown of the restraints on provincial
governors, since there was no longer a class of rooted military notables to restrain their power. These
conditions led to a massive flight of Anatolian peasants to cities and to Europe. To protect the general
population from the ravages of bandits and officials alike, the central government used general
mobilization (nefer-i am) to form local emergency militias.

Economic Crisis

Economic difficulties began in the late 16th century, when the Dutch and British completely closed the
old international trade routes through the Middle East. As a result, the prosperity of the Middle Eastern
provinces declined. The Ottoman economy was disrupted by inflation, caused by the influx of precious
metals into Europe from the Americas and by an increasing imbalance of trade between East and West.
As the treasury lost more of its revenues to the depredations of the devşirme, it began to meet its
obligations by debasing the coinage, sharply increasing taxes, and resorting to confiscations, all of which
only worsened the situation.

The Europeans took the monopole with the trade with India, China and penetrated in the Ottoman
markets. A number of unfavourable, for the Ottomans, trade agreements, called Capitulations, gave to
the Europeans a footstep for aggressive trade policy. These agreements, generally knows by their Arabic
term, imtiyazat (separation), began as imperial concessions to European merchants which offered them
legal securities and trading privileges within the Ottoman Empire.

However, soon these concessions were being exploited by the Europeans to the level that these
Capitulations reflected and intensified Ottoman decline relative to the European states. As Streusands
says, the interpretation of the Ottoman economic difficulties of the late sixteenth century emphasized
the effect of “intercontinental movements of specie,” specifically, the effects of the influx of American
silver, the so-called Price Revolution.

Period of Reform

In the face of such internal and external factors which created obstacles for administrative efficiencies,
political stability and economic abundance, the decline of the Empire seemed inevitable. However the
Empire managed to last for almost another two centuries.

Ayan Era

In this political, military, and financial turmoil, official corruption became rampant. The change in
provincial finance and administration meant that many of the tax farmers and their agents became
members of the central armed forces, especially the central cavalry. In the course of the seventeenth
century, however, this system helped to empower new provincial elite, which became known as the
ayan. The eighteenth century became the era of the ayan.
According to Halil Inalcık, the principle interpreter of the ayan era, the central government turned to the
ayan as a means of protecting the general population from the depredations of both rebels and
legitimate officials collecting illegal taxes, and then as tax collectors themselves.

The Ottoman Empire in the ayan era differed dramatically from the classical empire of the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. Due to the lasting local connections, the ayans had a motive to invest in
the welfare and development of their provinces rather than seeking short-term gains. Moreover, they
provided the central government means to draw on the resources of the provinces.

Modernization

The internal struggle and economic and military crisis urged the Ottoman sultans to “modernize” the
military on European lines. During the 18 th century they started employing French military advisor and in
1793 Selim III ordered the creation of Nizam-I Jedid or “New Force”.

Creation of a new military was only one of the measures undertaken to modernize or reconstruct the
Empire. Selim also revived old institutions and social controls along with some new educational and
administrative reforms. He opened embassies in Europe and laid the foundation for the first set of
secular schools with European instructors in Istanbul.

He also created a new treasury, called the irad-i Jedid (“new revenue”), whose revenues came from
taxes imposed on previously untaxed sources and from the confiscation of some timars whose holders
were not fulfilling their military and administrative duties to the state.

These changes however became reasons for the Janissaries’ revolt in 1807 along with the help of some
ulama. This revolt intervened in the accession of Sultan Mahmud II who had to come to an agreement.
He agreed to recognize the provincial notables’ land as inheritable property in exchange of which they
recognized his legitimacy along with that of the Grand Vizier. Dale names this agreement as the
Ottoman Magna Carta.

Efforts of Mahmud II

Mahmud II was able to rid the Empire of the Janissary dominance by using the Nizam-I Jedid army to
slaughter the Istanbul Janissaries in 1826 and also their Bektashi Sufi associates. He also created a new
waqf administration which asserted central control over the various charitable holdings which
represented agrarian and mercantile resources.

Mahmud II also incorporated the Sheikh al-Islam as the religious advisor in the new system. This new
state structure included many ‘modern’ institutions like ministries for civil affairs, agriculture, foreign
affairs and schools for training purposes.

However despite Selim III and Mahmud II’s reforms for modernization of the Empire, the Ottoman
Empire continued to shrink in its territorial capacity due to a number of external and internal factors.
These included the Russian expansion, and various local independence movements like the Greek Revolt
which by 1830 led to the formation of the Greek nation state.
As Dale remarks, the Ottoman Empire continued to exist at the pleasure of the European states and its
longevity was a function of European rivalries

Tanzimat

After the demise of Mahmud II, Resit Pasha, the mister of the new Sultan Abd al-Mecid, announced in
1839 a series of measures which aimed at strengthening the state and also to attract favours from
European powers. These reforms were known as Tanzimat or ‘Ordering’. The best-known of the reforms
were the Hatt-i Şerif of Gülhane (“Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber”;, 1839) and the Hatt-i Hümayun
(“Imperial Edict”; 1856).

The proclamation ordered the equal treatment for all its subjects, Muslims and Non-Muslims alike,
security to life and property, a system of fixed taxes and a new penal code. This proclamation initiated a
series of reforms which culminated in the form of a written constitution in 1876 and the following two-
year parliamentary period. In 1846 the first comprehensive plan for state education was put forward.

The Tanzimat reformers had two objects in the reform of law and legal procedure: to make Ottoman law
acceptable to Europeans, so that the Capitulations could be abolished and sovereignty recovered, and to
modernize the traditional Islamic law.

The Tanzimat reforms moved steadily in the direction of modernization and centralization. However, the
reformers were handicapped by a lack of money and skilled men, and they were opposed by
traditionalists who argued that the reformers were destroying the empire’s fundamental Islamic
character. The success of the Tanzimat reformers, ironically, created a systemic weakness as
centralization removed the checks on the power of the sultan.

However despite such deteriorating conditions, the Empire managed to stay existent for another two
centuries. Having existed for a period spanning over more than 600 years, the Ottoman Empire finally
came to an end only in 1922, when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and various successor states
in southeastern Europe and the Middle East.