Ottoman Military Matters

REVIEW OTTOMAN ARTICLES MILITARY MATTERS VIRGINIA H. AKSAN McMasterUniversity Booksmentionedin this review: Godfrey Goodwin, TheJanissaries (London: Saqi Books, 1994), 288 pp., ill., maps, select bibliography + index, f 25.00, ISBN 0863560490 (hardback). Shai Har-El, StruggleforDominationin the MiddleEast: The Ottoman-Mamluk War, 148591 (The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy, 4) (Leiden: Brill, 1995), ill., maps, bibliography + index, $94.00/Eur. 81.00, ISBN 9004101802 (cloth). Geza David and Pal Fodor, editors, Hungarian-Ottoman Militaryand DiplomaticRelations in the Ageof Szilgmanthe Magnificent(Budapest: Loránd Eötvös University, 1994), 210 pp. + index. Geza David and Pal Fodor, editors, Ottomans,Hungariansand Habsburgsin Central in the Era of OttomanConquest(The Ottoman Empire and Europe:The Military Corifines its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy, 20) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), xxvii + 362 pp., ill., maps, bibliography + indcx, $93.00/Eur. 80.00, ISBN 90041 19078 (cloth). OttomanGarrisonson the MiddleDanube:Based on the AustrianNational LibraryMs MXT 562 or 956/ 1549-1550. Transcribed into regular Arabic script and translated by Asparuch Velkov and Evgeniy Radushev; with an introduction by Strashimir Dimitrov (Bibliotheca Orientalis Hungarica 46) (Budapest: Akad6m]al Klad6, 1996), 546 pp. Rhoads Murphey, OttomanWarfare,1500-1700 (Warfare and History) (London: UCL Press, 1999),278 pp., ill., maps, select bibliography + index, $55.00, ISBN 0813526841 (cloth); $25.00, ISBN 081352685X (paper). in EighteenthCenturyBosnia(The Michael Robert Hickok, OttomanMilitaryAdministration Ottoman Empire. and its Heritage: Politics, Society and Economy, 13) (Leiden: Brill, 1997), xxiii + 190 pp., bibliography + index, $70.00/Eur. 70, ISBN 9004106898 (cloth). Jane Hathaway, The Politicsof Householdvin OttomanEgypt :The Rise of the Qazdaglis (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 198 pp., bibliography + index, $64.95, ISBN 0521571103 (cloth). Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha's Men: MehmedAli, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge Middle East Studies 8) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 334 pp., ill., bibliography + index, $90.00, ISBN 0521560071. 53 in theMiddleEast and Central Erik J. Z3rcher, editor, A7mingthe State:MilitaryConscription Asia, 1775-1925 (London: Tauiis. 1999), ?65.00, ISBN 186064404X. 1999), 168 pp., $65.00, (London: I.1. B. Tauris, Jeremy Black, editor, EuropeansWarfare,1453-1815 (Problems in Focus) (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 286 pp., "Notes & References" + index, $24.95, ISBN 0312221185. Jeremy Black, editor, War in theEarly ModernWorld:1450-1815 (London: UCL Press, 1999), xi + 268 pp., index, $75.00, ISBN 0813336120 (cloth). Increasing interest in the Ottoman Empire among early modern historians prompted the Journal of Early Modern History to solicit a review of recent publications on Ottoman war and society. Offered the opportunity to do so, I have selected works published in the last decade, which represent a variety of approaches and an international scholarly enterprise. With a couple of exceptions, the choices have been limited to time monographs or collected works, and restricted to the "pre-modern" which means I have not included new work on the frame, interesting late imperial period (Crimean War through World War II).' The discussion is restricted to publications in English, and to land armies, which is to neglect the decades of effort by historians in territories once under Ottoman control and in present-day Turkey. Similarly, leaving out the Ottoman navy is to miss the considerable number of recent publications about the eastern Mediterranean.2 2 Ottoman military historiography is a surprisingly neglected field, most particularly the period after 1600, especially as one of the general assumptions about the Ottomans is that it was an empire organized principally to engage in war with the infidel. Since the work of Shaw and Levy3 in the sixties and early seventies, little effort has been made to unravel the mysteries of continued Ottoman military survival (or more accurately revival) after the defeats embodied in the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) or Kucuk Kaynarca (1774). There are a couple of obvious reasons for the neglect. One has to do with the enormity of the linguistic ' For example, the two brand new studies of the late Ottoman experience:James J. Reid, Crisisof the OttomanEmpire:Preludeto Collapse,1839-1878 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000), and Edward J. Erickson, Orderedto Die: a Historyoj'the OttomanArmyin the First WorldWar (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001). z As in the work of Daniel Panzac, Molly Greene, Palmira Brummett, Salih Ozbaran, and Idris Bostan. Panzac does have an article on manning the Ottoman navy in Arming the State. 3 AvigdorLevy, "The Military Policyof Sultan Mahmud II, 1808-1839,"Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 1968; Stanford J. Shaw, BetweenOld and The Ottorraan Empire UnderSultanSelimIII, 1789-1807 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 54 training and archival research required to arrive at an understanding of a military system utterly alien to historians of armies of Europe. The records for the Janissaries in the post-1700 period are, moreover, in considerable disarray, even though archivists' efforts in the past two decades have brought some order to the serendipity. A further leap is required to become familiar with the literature of military history, itself a vast and variegated topic. In North American academic circles, moreover, military history resonates with the "Vietnam syndrome," as the United States deals with its own military failure, and is much disdained by scholars of the sixties generation. Europeans, by contrast, have a more developed historiography of war and society that has sparked much discussion about the nature of conflict, the role of technology, and the development of the nation state. Of recent days, Ottomanists the eighteenth centhemselves have been struggling to reconceptualize has been unraveled as the old of and decay tury, paradigm stagnation and not yet rewoven into an integrated view of war and society in the pre-colonial Middle East. Ottomanists have been joined by world historians, who are incorporating the Ottomans (and their military history) into the longue durie narrative. The books under consideration here can be clustered roughly into three periods of Ottoman history: the emergence of the imperial idea, 1300-1500; the consolidation of an imperial capital and culture, 1500to modern absolutism, 1700-1850.4 In 1700 ; and the transformation terms of the military, 1300-1500 covers the long drawn-out struggle for hegemony over Anatolia and the Balkans, the contest between the landbased "native" cavalry (sipahis) and the palace-based "foreign" slave an and the final of center, imperial Constantinople. conquest infantry, 1500-1700 is generally defined as the "golden age" of the Ottoman military, when the unique Janissary organization (the "New Troops"), both feared and admired by European observers, was most effective, and when warehouses, supply systems and disciplined infantry coupled with superb siege tactics were characteristic of the campaigns. After 1700, the slave recruitment system collapsed, the Janissaries became entrenched as an empire-wide social welfare network, and the Ottomans had to resort to militia-style and province-based logistical systems to confront the increasingly better disciplined European armies on the Danube and 4 The beginning and end of each period is the subject of much debate, so the dates have been generalized to centuries rather than to specificreigns, or treaties, as is more often the case. 55 elsewhere. Local Ottoman military elites and their cavalry-dominated armies were the more typical forces of the wars of the latter half of the eighteenth century. By 1850, Selim III (1789-1807) and Mahmud II (1808-1839) had replaced the Janissary system with modern-style infantry and artillery corps, but continued the use of local forces in the irregulars of the provincial reserves. I. The Emergence of the Imperial State, 1300-1500 There is as yet no comprehensive history of the Ottoman land forces, from beginning to end, in English. Uzuncarsih's history in Turkish was first published in 1943-44, and has been neither translated nor superseded. Much nibbling around the edges is now occurring. Cemal Kafadar's Between Two Worlds reviews the historiography of the emergence of the Ottoman house, but does little to challenge the general theory of the religiously-inspired warriors (gazis) who happened to be in the right place at the right time.' Nonetheless, this work and others have inspired genuine debate about how to describe the forces of an empire that between 1300-1453 eliminated (or reduced) most of the dynastic houses of the Balkans, and with some exceptions, a majority of their rivals in Anatolia proper. The first book on the list does represent one effort to narrate Janissary history in its entirety. Goodwin has subsequently published books on the Harem and on Topkapi Palace.' They are, in fact, catalogues of stories culled from numerous observers of the Ottomans across the centuries. The Janissary version is arranged chronologically, and includes much interesting material, but the level of analysis can be illustrated by the epilogue: "The shabby janissaries merely mirrored, after all, the society for whom they (occasionally) fought. They bequeathed a curious tradition of popular political leadership which bred the modern officer castes of the Middle East and Egypt, better educated and more idealist but also, at times, corrupted by their interest in trade" (232). It is, in spite of that criticism, an accessible, if sensationalistic book, aimed at a generalized audience for whom such Oriental tales might sufhcebut it will not serve as a history of the imperial military system. ' I. H. DevletiTeikilahndan Uzuncarsih, Osmanlz KapukuluOcaklan,2 vols. (Ankara:TTK, Two Worlds:TheConstruction 1943-44);Cemal Kafadar, Between of theOttomanState(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);also an e-book. 6 Godfrey Goodwin, ThePrivateWorldof OttomanWomen(London: Saqi Books, 1997), and Topkapi(London: Saqi Books, 1999). 56 Shai Har-El's history of the Ottoman-Mamluk War, 1485-1491, is a remarkable book in the Brill series edited by Suraiya Faroqhi and Halil Inalcik. A richly documented history, Har-El tells the story of the conflict between two imperial powers just prior to the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1516/17. Har-El lists Ottoman, modern Turkish, Arabic and Italian chronicles, narratives and archival documents to tell the story of rivals for the loyalties of Cilicia and the Syrian Gates of eastern Anatolia. In this ambitious work, one chapter deals with "Mamluk Frontier Policy in Anatolia," arguing for the importance of a buffer zone (an idea carried over from the Byzantines) between the two Muslim powers and client kingdoms in maintaining border security. Chapter seven describes the 1488 battle between the Mamluk and Ottoman armies, in detail and well-illustrated with maps and contemporary representations of the and secconfrontation. Har-El has built on a wealth of contemporary and a that is a model for what produced military history ondary sources can and should be done for the period 1300-1500. Together with the reissue of John Woods's work on the Akkoyunlu (Aqquyunlu), we are better equipped to deal with one of the most confusing periods of Central 7 Asian-Iranian-Anatolian histor-y.' II. The Consolidation of an Imperial Capital and Culture 1500-1700 The Hungarians, whose history with the Ottomans was deep and ended early, are foremost among scholars of the military of the "golden" or classical age. David and Fodor are to be commended for their explicit intention to make Hungarian scholarship on the period available to an international audience (Preface, 1994). Among the sixteen articles in the two volumes, KlAra Hegyi's "The Ottoman Military Force in Hungary," (1994: 131-48), is of particular interest, as it describes the Ottoman system of fortresses and their garrison soldiers from 1556-1590, as well as the sipahis (timarlis), emphasizing by the cautious use of statistics the line in Ottoman strategy. Earlier of the Hungarian vital importance archival material (between 1512-1514) is utilized by Fodor and David to illustrate Ottoman diplomacy prior to the victory at Mohacs in 1526 1994: 9-49). The 2000 volPeace Negotiations," ("Hungarian-Ottoman ume represents a continuation of the project, more overtly around the ' Empire.Rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: John E. Woods, TheAqquyunlu:Clan, Confederation, University of Utah Press, 1999). 57 theme of the Habsburg-Hungarian-Ottoman border, with the collaboration of Europeanists and Ottomanists. Here, there is much of general interest to military historians of Eastern Europe, such as Jozsef Kelenik's "The Military Revolution in Hungary," which engages the historiography of Geoffrey Parker and others (2000: 117-59). Fodor's "Making a Ottoman Living on the Frontiers: Volunteers in the Sixteenth-Century Army" (2000: 229-63), and David's "An Ottoman Military Career on the Hungarian Borders: Kasim Vojvoda, Bey and Pasha," (2000: 265-97), make for fascinating and informative reading. A "Select bibliography" (2000: 299-314), of recent publications by Hungarian scholars, completes the volume. '1'his effort resembles most the decades-long, ongoing project of Bela K. Kiraly and others, "War and Society in East Central Europe," expanding immensely our access to the pre-1700 army of empire. Similarly, Ottoman Garrisons is a collaborative and rare effort to publish an example of the fundamental documents of Ottoman organization, a roll-call register of the non Janissary local forces in Hungary (Buda, compiled in 1549). Most of the volume is a transcription of the Ottoman text and a translation of its contents, with very little analysis. Dimitrov's introduction makes an effort to consider the ethnic and religious source of the local manpower of the Ottomans, which is itself a valuable and essential exercise for the early period, but no less fraught with difficulties, e.g. inferring from names that individuals were converts to Islam. Early modern military historians will recognize the problem of "fixing" the source for recruitment in pre-national armies. Useful lists of Muslim, Christian and geographical names are also included. Like other armies of the world, the Ottomans had a plethora of terms and names that came and went over a 600-year period. One of the chief obstacles faced by any historian trying to universalize the Ottoman experience is precisely the mediation between the reader and hundreds of obscure terms that the field itself has not yet precisely fixed. (There is no basic etymological or historical dictionary of the Ottoman language.) The next book on the list, Murphey's Ottoman Warfare, 15001700, by one of the modern masters of the mysteries of the Ottoman archives, is illustrative of the tension involved in the attempt to reach a broader audience, while insisting on the use of uniquely Ottoman terms. The result is a fascinating yet frustrating account of the "constraints on and limitations of Ottoman warfare" (xviii). Murphey is an expert on both eastern and western campaigns of the seventeenth century, and is also well-read in all the contemporary chronicles. This work is richly illustrated with maps, tables and appendices, and contains astonishing 58 information on how much a camel could carry; on the fiscal burden of Janissary wages; on the negotiating capability of local troops in times of desperate need for manpower; and on rations and formulas for feeding the troops, to cite just a few examples. To my knowledge, this is the first effort to bring together that kind of information for a 200-year Iranian and the Austrian." period, and for two Ottoman fronts-the Murphey pays very close attention to provisioning troops, and to siege warfare, which was the Ottoman forte. He describes the investment of Baghdad in 1638, during the campaign when Murad IV (1623-40) recovered Baghdad for the empire-letting us know along the way that sappers averaged no more than fifty yards of trench a day, and these grew to a length of five miles by the time they zig-zagged their way to the outer moat at Baghdad (117). Lists of troops, supplies and auxiliary services in great detail accompany the unfolding narrative of that campaign. Similarly, describing lesser campaigns in Austria and Hungary, he insists on a pattern of investment and surrender that belies the common portrayal of Ottoman brutality, and suggests an appreciation for the role of negotiated settlement along increasingly fixed borders, and for more organized armies (128). In chapter eight, "The Aftereffects of Ottoman Warfare: a Review of the Essential Elements of Ottoman Pragmatism in the Military Sphere," Murphey reiterates what he sees as a "mutuality of effort" and the "sharing of benefits and rewards" as part of the constraints on Ottoman administration of war. He asks three questions: How destructive was Ottoman warfare in the seventeenth century? How aware were Ottoman strategists of the problem? In what ways did a re-distributive function operate? Murphey holds out for the ameliorating role of diplomacy and negotiation, pauses on the ongoing demographic debate in Hungary over the impact of the Ottoman invasion, and argues for a more balanced view of Ottoman military logic. Our tendency to retell only the largest and most destructive battles, he notes, has blinded us to the smaller, seasonal, local campaigning that fell into a regular pattern on both sides of the middle ground in the seventeenth century. Murphey agrees here with much of the new work in the two Hungarian volumes described above. 8 Caroline in Hungary, Finkel, TheAdministration of Warfare:the OttomanMilitaryCampaigns 1593-1606 (Wien: VWGO, 1988), should be mentioned here, as it is a study addressing many of the same issues as Murphey's. Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead's and His Age:the OttomanEmpirein theEarlyModet-rt World(London: SiilgmantheMagnificent Longman, 1995), is an elegant reflection of current thinking about the golden age of the Ottomans. 59 On the second question, Murphey would argue that Ottoman bureaucrats, like those of the European dynastic houses, were incapable of the over-taxation and over-extension of resources essential to sustain war, and the lack of a chiefly because of distances, lack of communication that could It is be coercive. provincial organization precisely in those Ottoman story of the eightinterstices that local parvenus emerge-the eenth century, with its seeds in the seventeenth. The final question posed by Murphey engages the issues of warfare as a stimulant or depressant of local economies. Even with more information, and monographic studies, I doubt this issue will ever be resolved. Murphey wants only to suggest that Ottoman campaigning, in fact, could enhance the growth of economic distribution, of smaller cities, and of agricultural production. Ottomanists' reception of Murphey's book has been mixed, partly because it is so specialized, but also because of our inherent unwillingness to draw conclusions without complete archival evidence (although the evidence is quite massive here), and because he challenges the fundamental view, even among practitioners in the field, that this was the most violent and destructive of dynasties. Anyone who has dabbled in contemporary studies of war and society in other parts of the world will be aware that archival completeness is an impossible (and unanticipated) goal, and that violence is no longer the exclusive prerogative of the "other." Murphey has set an agenda for debate. III. 'The Transfonnation to Modem Absolutism, 1700-1850 The parvenus of the eighteenth century are the subject of the next three books on the list. Hickok and Hathaway consider the relationship between Ottoman provincial households and campaigning, one in Bosnia, and the other in Egypt. Both discuss the emergence of indigenous notable families (ayans)9 and their entourages as predicated on their ability to manipulate the military needs of the dynasty. Hickok's book is a description of the militia of Bosnia, the most loyal and probably the longestserving local military organization of the Ottoman Balkans. He delineates the methods of payment, perhaps first organized as communal ocakhks, a term for the revenues of land and poll taxes that supported local garrisons and troops, that then became holdings of prominent Istanbul families as malikane, essentially lifetime tax farms. Just as importantly, Hickok 9 As singled out long ago by Albert Hourani, "The Politics of Ottoman Notables," and later by Metin Kunt to be the defining aspect of the middle period of the empire. 60 the vicissitudes of an Ottoman Grand Vizier, Hekimoglu Ali Pa§a, many times Governor of Bosnia, and commander of the Bosnian forces leading to the Ottoman victories during the 1736-39 Habsburgdeclined in relation to Ottoman War. Bosnian military independence their loss of control over the revenues to support the local garrisons. examines how Anatolian members of one family Jane Hathaway elite (Qazdagli) of one of Egypt's Janissary regiments (Muteferrikas-an guard regiment) emerge as provincial powers precisely in the manipulation of the iltizamlmalikane tax farming system introduced over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Creation of large households, strategic marriages, and commercial interests generated the tremendous power that produced Muhammad Ali (Mehmet Ali) Pa§a (1801-1848), Governor (later Khedive) of Egypt, appointed by the sultan, who reformed the Egyptian army, and threatened the Ottoman house itself by the 1830s. It has to be admitted that neither of these books is an easy read, nor are they standard military histories. Hickok's work challenges the of Bosnian property ownership in Yugoslavian Marxist misrepresentation history. Hathaway argues against the school of Egyptian historiography that contends that the Qazdaglis were simply the final stage of the old Mamluk system, which Selim I (1512-20) did not completely destroy after the conquest in 1517. The field is still largely self-referential, in spite of such efforts as these to broaden our understanding of the middle period. There is much here that contributes to the growing body of literature on center-periphery relationships after 1650, more especially as driven by the military demands of the center. Fahmy's book makes a close study of the military reforms of Muhammad Ali, mentioned above. Egyptian historiography of the nineteenth century is enormous and rich. Fahmy utilized Egypt's archives in this work, especially the correspondence Ali between Muhammad and his son, Ibrahim, the conqueror of Syria in 1831. The work focuses on the creation of the national army by Muhammad Ali through conscripting the Egyptian peasants. As such, it resembles work that has been done on other such systems of conscription, the development of officer corps, and the impact of such reforms on a traditional society.'° Fahmy is sympathetic to the plight of the conscripts, to their bewilderchronicles '° Like John Keep's Soldiersof the Tsar Annyand Societyin Russia,1462-1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). The experiences of the Egyptian peasant and the Russian self look very similar. 61 ment at the imposition of European systems of regimental discipline and order, and to their impulse to flee at the slightest opportunity. It is a portrait of a brutal awakening and an imposition of alien ethical systems, a la Foucault. Fahmy notes two interesting aspects of the Egyptian officer corps: it was largely composed of foreigners (Circassians, Anatolian Turks and Albanians) and completely unreliable (at least in Ibrahim's Ali and his son, Ibrahim, worked to estimation). Both Muhammad replace the officers with Arabic-speaking Egyptians. They could at least speak the same language as the soldiers under their command. It was the same hard lesson that Mahmud II had to learn when he began his reforms, only he rejected the use of non-Muslims (especially rebellious Greeks) both in the ranks and in the officer corps. In spite of the book's universal reach, Fahmy spends much time in his introduction arguing against the Egyptian nationalist historiography that makes Muhammad Ali the founder of modern Egypt. Even so, there is much here for military historians of the Napoleonic age. Arming the State.- Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia, 1775-1925 is a collection of papers from a conference held at Nijmegen in the Netherlands. This work most resembles in scope the Parry and Yapp volume of the 1970s." The focus here is the impact of creating conscript armies on Middle Eastern societies. The conscription story is continued by "Ottoman Military Recruitment Strategies in the Late Zurcher's "The Ottoman Conscription Eighteenth Century" (Aksan, 21-39), in System Theory and Practice" (79-94), and Odile Moreau's "Bosnian Resistance Against Conscription in the Nineteenth Century" (129-138). The Bosnian revolts demanding autonomy were a predictable outcome in a region that had preserved its independence precisely by its ability to supply military manpower to the Ottoman state. In addition, there is an interesting article by Nicole van Os called "Taking Care of Soldiers' Families" (95-100), which, though outside the scope of this review, is worth mentioning as one of the few articles that has dealt with the 2 problem of war widows' rights.' " V. and Societyin the MiddleEast J. Parry, and M. E. Yapp, editors, War, Technology (London: Oxford University Press, 1975). 12Nicole van Os has been instrumental since then in bringing together historians of the later empire for further discussionof militarymatters pre-World War I. NewPerspectives on Turkty(Spring 2000), has two articlesgrowingout of that initiative:Isa Blumi, "Looking Beyond the Tribe: Abandoning Paradigms to Write Social History in Yemen During World War I" (117-45),and Gottfried Hagen, "The Prophet Muhammad as an Exemplar in War: Ottoman Views on the Eve of World War I" (145-72). 62 The final two titles on the list represent comparative history by publishing proximity rather than by research collaboration. Part of Jeremy Black's effort to foster dialogue among historians of warfare across disparate societies, these books aim at the classroom, but should prove of use to researchers as well. European Warfare, 1453-1815, has an article by Gabor Agoston, "Ottoman Warfare in Europe, 1453-1826" (118-44), followed by "The Development of Russian Military Power, 1453-1815," by Brian L. Davies (145-79). Both have monographic studies underway. Agoston is also represented in each of the David and Fodor volumes on the list. War in the Early Modem World, 1450-1815, has an even greater geographic range. My own "Ottoman War and Warfare, 1450-1812," (147-75) joins articles from other parts of the world, such as Japan (Paul Varley), China (Peter Lorge), India (Jos Gommans), and North America (Armstrong Starkey). Articles in both volumes have their own bibliographies, making them very useful for those interested in the topic of early modern war and society across the globe.