Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the Transformation of the Ottoman Empire?
The Transformation of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Era of Transformation, constitutes a period in the history of the Ottoman Empire from c.1550 to c.1700, spanning roughly from the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent to the Treaty of Karlowitz at the conclusion of the War of the Holy League. This period was characterized by numerous dramatic political, social, and economic changes, which resulted in the empire shifting from an expansionist, patrimonial state into a bureaucratic empire based on an ideology of upholding justice and acting as the protector of Sunni Islam.[1] These changes were in large part prompted by a series of political and economic crises in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,[2][3] resulting from inflation, warfare, and political factionalism.[4] Yet despite these crises the empire remained strong both politically and economically,[5] and continued to adapt to the challenges of a changing world. The seventeenth century was once characterized as a period of decline for the Ottomans, but since the 1980s historians of the Ottoman Empire have increasingly rejected that characterization, identifying it instead as a period of crisis, adaptation, and transformation.[6]
During the two constitutional eras of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman parliament was called the General Assembly of the Ottoman Empire and was bicameral. The upper house was the Senate of the Ottoman Empire, the members of which were selected by the sultan. The role of the Grand Vizier, the centuries-old top ministerial office in the empire, transformed in line with other European states into one identical to the office of a Prime Minister, as well as that of the speaker of the Senate. The lower chamber of the General Assembly was the Chamber of Deputies of the Ottoman Empire, the members of which were elected by the general public.
Although administered by the British Empire from 1878, Cyprus remained officially part of the Ottoman Empire until 1914, when it was annexed by the British Empire following the decision of the Ottoman Turks to side with Germany in the First World War. Even then, Cyprus was not officially claimed by the British Empire until 1925, following recognition of British ownership of the island by the newly created Republic of Turkey through the Treaty of Lausanne, signed by Britain and Turkey in 1923. Up until this time, Ottoman laws were technically in force on the island, albeit administered by local and British colonial officials, and in respect to homosexuality, Ottoman Turkish law had been liberalised in 1858, when it had ceased to be a criminal offence throughout the Ottoman Empire.
In the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire initiated a period of modernization known as the Tanzimat, which transformed the nature of the Ottoman state, greatly increasing its power despite the empire's territorial losses. Despite the success of its self-strengthening reforms, the empire was largely unable to match the military strength of its main rival, the Russian Empire, and suffered several defeats in the Russo-Turkish Wars. The Ottoman state defaulted on its loans in 1875–76, part of a wider financial crisis affecting much of the globe.
The Ottoman Empire began its expansion into Europe by taking the European portions of the Byzantine Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries up until the 1453 capture of Constantinople, establishing Islam as the state religion in the region. The Ottoman Empire continued to stretch northwards, taking Hungary in the 16th century, and reaching as far north as the Podolia in the mid-17th century (Peace of Buczacz), by which time most of the Balkans was under Ottoman control. Ottoman expansion in Europe ended with their defeat in the Great Turkish War. In the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), the Ottoman Empire lost most of its conquests in Central Europe. The Crimean Khanate was later annexed by Russia in 1783. Over the centuries, the Ottoman Empire gradually lost almost all of its European territories, until its collapse in 1922, when the former empire was transformed into the nation of Turkey.
The war was brought to an end in 1699 with the Treaty of Karlowitz. On the general principle of uti possidetis, the Ottomans agreed to permanently cede all of Hungary and Transylvania to the Habsburgs, with the exception of the Banat region. Morea was annexed by Venice, while Podolia was returned to Poland-Lithuania. Karlowitz was highly significant for both Ottoman and Eastern European history in general, for it marked the definitive end of Ottoman imperial expansion. Ottoman foreign policy in Europe during the subsequent eighteenth century was generally peaceful and defensive, focused on the maintenance of a secure network of fortresses along the Danube frontier.[130] Sultan Mustafa II was overthrown in the 1703 Edirne incident, bringing an end to the rule of the final Ottoman warrior-sultan, cementing the empire's transformation into a bureaucratic empire.[131]
Perhaps the most significant economic transformation of this period was the monetization of the economy and subsequent transformation of the feudal Timar System. Over the course of the sixteenth century, coinage came to play a much larger role in the Ottoman rural economy, with tax payments in cash coming to replace payments in kind. As the Ottoman population expanded, the volume of trade grew and new regional markets appeared across the empire. The Timar System, which had been designed to take advantage of the smaller scale of the economy in previous centuries, was thus rendered obsolete.[25] Timar fiefs, which were once used to support provincial cavalry forces, were increasingly confiscated by the central government to serve other purposes, a process which has been described as "modernization."[26][27]
During the Ottoman period, when northern Albania was part of the Sanjak of Scutari, Albanian tribes in Malësia some times sided with Montenegrin tribes in fighting the Ottomans. An example is from 1658, when the seven tribes of Kuči, Vasojevići, Bratonožići, Piperi, Kelmendi, Hoti and Gruda allied themselves with the Republic of Venice against the Ottomans. In 1757, the Bushati family transformed the sanjak into the semi-autonomous Pashalik of Scutari. After this, the Albanian tribes sided with the Bushati.
After the Ottoman Empire lost the Montenegrin–Ottoman War (1876–78), Plav and Gusinje were ceded to Montenegro, which sparked Albanian attacks in the area organized by the nationalist League of Prizren in support of the Ottoman Empire. Later, in the early 20th century, the northern Albanian tribes switched sides against the Ottoman Empire and rose up with Serbian aid in 1910 and Montenegrin aid in 1911. The latter began with a memorandum signed by the Malësian tribal representatives.
The Tanzimat era began with the purpose, not of radical transformation, but of modernization, desiring to consolidate the social and political foundations of the Ottoman Empire. It was characterised by various attempts to modernise the Ottoman Empire and to secure its territorial integrity against internal nationalist movements and external aggressive powers. The reforms encouraged Ottomanism among the diverse ethnic groups of the Empire and attempted to stem the tide of nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire.
Monetization of the economy coincided with the Price Revolution, a period of inflation affecting both Europe and the Middle East during the sixteenth century. As a result, the value of the main Ottoman silver coin (akçe) became unstable, particularly after a severe debasement in 1585.[31] The currency's instability lasted until the middle of the seventeenth century and led some regions of the empire to import counterfeit European coins for everyday use. This situation was brought under control in the 1690's when the empire carried out far-reaching monetary reforms and issued a new silver and copper currency.[32]
The "Ottomans" became first known to the West in the 14th century when they migrated westward into the Seljuk Empire, in Anatolia. The Ottoman Turks created a state in Western Anatolia under Ertugrul, the capital of which was Sögüt in western Anatolia. Ertugrul established a principality as part of the decaying Seljuk empire. His son Osman expanded the principality; the empire and the people were named "Ottomans" by Europeans after him ("Ottoman" being a corruption of "Osman"). Osman's son Orhan expanded the growing Ottoman Empire, taking Nicaea (present-day İznik) and crossed the Dardanelles in 1362. The Ottoman Empire came into its own when Mehmed II captured the Byzantine Empire's capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), in 1453.
Prior to the Balkan wars of the beginning of the 20th century, Albanians were subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
The Albanian independence movement emerged in 1878 with the League of Prizren (a council based in Kosovo) whose goal was cultural and political autonomy for ethnic Albanians inside the framework of the Ottoman Empire. However, the Ottomans were not prepared to grant The League's demands. Ottoman opposition to the League's cultural goals eventually helped transform it into an Albanian national movement.
The foundation and rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality in c.1299, and ended with the conquest of Constantinople on May 29, 1453. This period witnessed the foundation of a political entity ruled by the Ottoman Dynasty in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia, and its transformation from a small principality on the Byzantine frontier into an empire spanning the Balkans and Anatolia. For this reason, this period in the empire's history has been described as the Proto-Imperial Era.[1] Throughout most of this period, the Ottomans were merely one of many competing states in the region, and relied upon the support of local warlords and vassals to maintain control over their realm. By the middle of the fifteenth century the Ottoman sultans were able to accumulate enough personal power and authority to establish a centralized imperial state, a process which was brought to fruition by Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481).[2] The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is seen as the symbolic moment when the emerging Ottoman state shifted from a mere principality into an empire, marking a major turning point in its history.[3]
The Ottoman sultans also claimed the title of Caliph starting with Murad I, who transformed the Ottoman state into a transcontinental empire.
European merchants active in the Ottoman Empire are by far the most highly studied aspect of Ottoman commerce, a fact which has frequently caused their importance to be exaggerated. European merchants were by no means dominant in the empire during this period,[35] and far from imposing their will upon the Ottomans, they were required to accommodate themselves to the terms which the Ottomans set for them.[36] These terms were defined in a series of trade agreements known as the "capitulations" (Ottoman Turkish: ʿahdnāme),[nb 3] which granted Europeans the right to establish mercantile communities in specified Ottoman ports and to pay a lower rate of tariff on their goods. European communities were except from regular taxation and were given judicial autonomy with regard to personal and family issues. All commercial disputes were to be settled in the empire's Sharia courts, until the 1670s when they were granted the right to appeal major cases directly to Istanbul, where they could be argued by their resident ambassadors.[38] Capitulations were granted first to the French (1569), then the English (1580), and finally to the Dutch (1612).[39] The arrival of Western European traders in the Levant, dubbed the "Northern Invasion", did not result in their takeover or domination of Mediterranean commerce,[40] but it did usher in certain changes. Venice in particular suffered from heavy competition, and its commercial presence declined significantly, particularly after 1645, when the Ottomans and Venetians went to war over Crete.[41] The English were by far the most successful European merchants in the empire during the seventeenth century, and they benefited from friendly relations between the two states. The Ottomans exported raw silk and imported cheap woolen cloth, as well as tin necessary for the production of military armaments.[42]
Having dispensed with the notion of decline, today's historians of the Ottoman Empire most commonly refer to the post-Suleimanic Period, or more widely the period from 1550 to 1700, as one of transformation. The role of economic and political crises in defining this period is crucial, but so too is their temporary nature, as the Ottoman state was ultimately able to survive and adapt to a changing world. Also of increasing emphasis is the place of the Ottoman Empire in comparative perspective, particularly with the states of Europe. While the Ottomans struggled with a severe economic and fiscal downturn, so too did their European contemporaries. This period is frequently referred to as that of The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, and thus the difficulties faced by the Ottoman Empire have been reframed not as unique to them, but as part of a general trend impacting the entire European and Mediterranean region. In the words of Ehud Toledano, "In both Europe and the Ottoman empire, these changes transformed states and the ways in which military-administrative elites waged and funded wars. Coping with these enormous challenges and finding the appropriate responses through a sea of socio-economic and political changes is, in fact, the story of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman history. A remarkable adaptation to new realities, rather than decline and disintegration, was its main feature; it reflects the resourcefulness, pragmatism and flexibility in thought and action of the Ottoman military-administrative elite, rather than their ineptitude or incompetence. Thus, per Dana Sajdi: "Regardless of what one may think of an individual revisionist work, or a particular method or framework, the cumulative effect of the scholarship has demonstrated the empirical and theoretical invalidity of the decline thesis, and offered a portrayal of an internally dynamic Ottoman state and society. It has also established the comparability of the Ottoman empire to other - mainly European - societies and polities, and concomitantly revised the existing scheme of periodization." The 21st-century scholarly consensus on the post-Suleimanic period can thus be summarized as follows:
The following is a list of several works which have been particularly influential in overturning the decline thesis.
The Safavid Persians had then been at war with their arch rivals, the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, for more than a century, and so decided to try to obtain European help against the Ottomans. Besides the territorial antagonism of the Ottoman and Persian realms, there was also strong religious antagonism, as the Persians proclaimed Shiism against the Ottoman Empire's Sunnism. These Persian efforts at rapprochement with Catholic Europe (the Habsburg Empire, Italy and Spain), attempted to counterbalance the Franco-Ottoman alliance (between France and the Ottoman Empire), and came at a time when Persia was in direct conflict against the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618). This embassy followed the 1599-1602 Persian embassy to Europe.
Although there were times throughout the Ottoman Empire when Jews experienced cultural and economic prosperity, there were other times when Jews were widely persecuted. The experience of the Jews throughout the Ottoman Empire can be summarized by G.E. Von Grunebaum :
The Ottoman Empire (; , ', literally "The Exalted Ottoman State"; Modern Turkish: ' or '), also historically known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or simply Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt (modern-day Bilecik Province) by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.
The Young Ottomans () were a secret society established in 1865 by a group of Ottoman Turkish intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire, which they believed did not go far enough. Young Ottomans sought to transform Ottoman society by preserving the empire and modernizing along the European tradition of adopting a constitutional government. Though the Young Ottomans were frequently in disagreement ideologically, they all agreed that the new constitutional government should continue to be somewhat rooted in Islam to emphasize "the continuing and essential validity of Islam as the basis of Ottoman political culture" and syncretized Islamic ideals with liberalism and parliamentary democracy. The Young Ottomans sought to revitalize the empire by incorporating certain European models of government, while still retaining the Islamic foundations of the empire. Among the prominent members of this society were writers and publicists such as İbrahim Şinasi, Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi, Ziya Pasha, and Agah Efendi.
While territorial losses to the Habsburgs have at times been cited as evidence of military weakness, more recently historians have challenged this notion, arguing that Ottoman defeats were primarily a result of the sheer size of the coalition arrayed against them, and the logistical burden of fighting a war on multiple fronts. To this may be added political instability, for the empire's greatest losses took place from 1684–8, when its political leadership was paralyzed first by the execution of Kara Mustafa Pasha and then the deposition of Mehmed IV. Subsequently, the Ottomans were able to stabilize their position and reverse Habsburg gains south of the Danube.[125][126]
The changing nature of sultanic authority led to several political upheavals during the seventeenth century, as rulers and political factions struggled for control over the imperial government. In 1622 Sultan Osman II was overthrown in a Janissary uprising. His subsequent regicide was sanctioned by the empire's chief judicial official, demonstrating a reduced importance of the sultan in Ottoman politics. Nevertheless, the primacy of the Ottoman dynasty as a whole was never brought into question. Of seventeenth-century sultans, Mehmed IV was the longest reigning, occupying the throne for 39 years from 1648 to 1687. The empire experienced a long period of stability under his reign, spearheaded by the reform-minded Köprülü family of grand viziers. This coincided with a period of renewed conquest in Europe, conquests which culminated in the disastrous Siege of Vienna in 1683 and the fall from grace of the Köprülü family. Following the battle a coalition of Christian powers was assembled to combat the Ottomans, bringing about the fall of Ottoman Hungary and its annexation by the Habsburgs during the War of the Holy League (1683–99). The war provoked another political crisis and prompted the Ottomans to carry out additional administrative reforms. These reforms ended the problem of financial insolvency and made the transformation from a patrimonial to a bureaucratic state a permanent one.
The defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era, a moment of hope and promise established with the Young Turk Revolution. It restored the Ottoman constitution of 1876 and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system (electoral law) under the Ottoman parliament. The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernize the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform the empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire.
Atatürk was born during the Belle Époque of European civilization. Russia was implementing reforms; Japan opened its doors to the West during the Meiji Restoration. The Ottoman Empire was going through transformation. Ottoman military reform efforts, like the contemporaneous Modernization of Japanese Military 1868–1931, managed to develop a modern army. Racial, regional, ethnic and national stereotypes were part of discourse throughout the world. Ottoman people were not immune to these developments and there was a rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire.
The city of Jerusalem, at the start of Jawhariyyeh's writing in 1904, was described as, "a relative backwater of the Ottoman Empire. As such, the city was a rather late entrant into what might be called the 'great nineteenth-century transformation,' and Jawhariyyeh was a witness to that transformation." The modernization of Jerusalem resulted in the proliferation of new classes of society such as "absentee landowners" and "the establishment of municipal councils in cities around the Ottoman Empire, by the close of the nineteenth century."