162225

The Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (1517) and the Beginning of the Sixteenth-Century WorldWarAuthor(s): Andrew C. HessSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 55-76Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162225 .

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Int. . Middle East Stud. 4 (1973), 55-76 Printed in Great Britain

Andrew C. Hess

THE OTTOMAN CONQUEST OF EGYPT (1517)

AND THE BEGINNING OF THE

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD WAR

Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries major changes in the relations between great states once again highlighted the importance of a land whose history marks all ages - Egypt. Students of Western naval explorations are familiar with the significant place of Egypt in the imperial plans of the

Portuguese during their expansion into the Indian Ocean after I488. But while the Portuguese attempt to control the Red Sea and Persian Gulf trading routes

brought Egyptian history solidly within the periphery of European scholarly interest, the almost simultaneous conquest of the Mamluk empire by the Ottomans (I517) makes no such impact on the historiography of the Western world. Yet the seizure of Syria, Egypt, and Arabia not only catapulted the Ottomans into a position of leadership within the vast Muslim community, but it also gave the Istanbul regime resources sufficient to project its power north to the gates of Vienna and west to the Strait of Gibraltar. Could this 'distant'

conquest have played a more active role in the history of Europe than hitherto

imagined? Clearly the answer to this question involves a comparison between the

imperial histories of Europe and the Middle East during the age of the Renais- sance. Once the first steps are taken to break the artificial historical divisions

preventing such a comparison, there is little doubt that Selim the Grim's victory over the Mamluk empire was a major event in both European and Middle Eastern history.'

The manner in which European scholars have approached the history of the Ottomans has influenced greatly the inherited picture that appears in studies of Eurasia during the simultaneous expansion of European states and the Ottoman

empire in the age of the Renaissance. For many Western authors the turn of the sixteenth century is the period in which the Oceanic Voyages shifted the center of political activity in the world from the Eurasian steppe to the shores of the

Western authors who recognize the importance of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt are Fernand Braudel, La Mediterranee et le monde mediterraneen a l'e'poque de Philippe II, 2nd ed. (2 vols., Paris, 1966), vol. ii, pp. 16-18; and Vitorino de Magalhaes Godinho, 'A viragem mundial de 1517-1524 eo o imperio portugues', in Ensaios Sobre Historia de Portugal (2 vols., Lisbon, 1968), vol. II, pp. 141-53. The arguments contained herein owe much to the scholarly exchange that took place at the University of Washington con- ference on 'Islam in the Later Middle Ages', 19-21 June I970.

55



56 Andrew C. Hess

Atlantic. Building on this point of view, Western writers have sought to capture the uniqueness and importance of the Iberian navigations by contrasting the

wide-ranging accomplishments of the European voyagers with the apparent in-

activity of Asian society. Thus, why Asian societies failed to respond to the

change in the interrelations between the Western world and the East after I500 became a standard theme that led to special studies on how Asian societies did not develop institutions similar to those of the West rather than what gave the Eastern communities their cohesion.2 Simultaneously, Western writers produced an enormous literature on the world-wide impact of the Oceanic Dis- coveries. Again, however, the weight of this effort naturally fell on the European side of what was a multicultural experience and thereby continued to draw attention away from the internal history of Eurasia.3

Not intentionally, the work of Orientalists on the Middle Eastern history of the Early Modern period has reinforced the manner in which most modern historians perceive the history of the Ottomans. Among the fields of Islamic

history the Ottoman period is the least developed. As a result, arguments that are not widely grounded in Turkish sources concerning the decadent character of Ottoman history during the age of the Renaissance evoke little response.4 Only recently have the labors of Ottomanists begun to produce a substantial body of modern history, but largely for the nineteenth century. Furthermore, if a com-

parison is drawn between the work of Western writers whose concerns lead them to comment on Middle Eastern history during the Renaissance and the studies of Orientalists for the same period, rarely do these two communities of scholars deal with similar problems, or, for that matter, do they speak to the same audiences. The upshot of all these trends is that the picture of an inactive

sixteenth-century Asian, and therefore Ottoman, world dominates a massive

segment of historical literature. When the Ottoman history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is com-

pared with the current view of Middle Eastern history on the eve of the European I The best expression of this point of view is in Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on

Trial (New York, I948), pp. 62-96. 2 A study of the Asian reaction to the Oceanic Revolution from the Western point of

view is covered in the following article collections published under the general editorship of Leften Stavrianos: The Muslim World on the Eve of Europe's Expansion, ed. John J. Saunders (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966); European Expansion and the Counter- Example of Asia, 3oo-600oo, ed. Joseph R. Levenson (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, I967); and Asia on the Eve of Europe's Expansion, ed. Donald F. Lach (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965). The technological conservatism of Asians during the Age of Dis- coveries is the special concern of Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires (New York, I965).

3 This tendency reaches a climax with Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe (vol. i in two books to date, Chicago, I965), vol. I/2, xv, where he defines the Islamic world out of Asia.

4 For example, John J. Saunders, 'The Problems of Islamic Decadence', Journal of World History, vol. VII/3 (I963), pp. 701-20; and Claude Cahen, 'Quelques mots sur le declin commercial du monde musulman a la fin du Moyen Age ', in Studies in the Econo- mic History of the Middle East, ed. M. A. Cook (London, 1970), pp. 3I-6.



The Ottoman conquest of Egypt 57

oceanic voyages, not only is there an Asian state that is very active indeed, but also the rise of the West coincided with the rise of an Islamic state whose impact on Europe deeply affected Western culture. To explain this clash between the

European version of a passive Asian history and the fact of Turko-Muslim influence on the West raises the question of the degree and distribution of

imperial power among the states that encircled the Mediterranean during the

Age of the Oceanic Discoveries. Since, at the turn of the sixteenth century, it is Ottoman history that is relatively unstudied, a judgement on the strength of this

empire in relation to both Islamic and European states would go a long way toward drawing a more correct picture of sixteenth-century history. Once new information from such an orientation is applied to the Age of Discoveries, what

emerges is not the displacement of world dominance to the shores of the Atlantic, but, for the states bordering on the Mediterranean, the unfolding of two grand imperial movements, one European and one Turko-Muslim, that once again underline the important role of Egypt in the history of the world.

As the number of wars fought within and near her frontiers indicates, Egypt has had a long record of being the imperial goal of someone else. Her geo- strategic position and her ability to produce, in the pre-modern period, a rela-

tively large grain surplus repeatedly made the rich fields along the Nile a prize of high value. On the other hand natural barriers and a capacity to support large armies often facilitated the defence of Egypt, and permitted, from time to time, Egyptian imperialism. Just such a cycling of Egyptian history had taken place in the thirteenth century when Turkish slaves established the Mamluk dynasty. In the fifteenth century, however, vast changes in the complexion of state power outside the Fertile Crescent paralleled a decline in the economic strength and

political cohesiveness of the Mamluk ruling class to set the stage for a new attack on Egypt.

In the early fifteenth century Ming naval expeditions into the Arabian Sea extended the frontiers of Chinese influence to the borders of the Mamluk empire. Authors have offered diverse explanations for these voyages: the disruption of Eurasian caravan routes by Timfrid and Chinese campaigns, the rise of merchant interests to a position of power within the Chinese court during the early Ming period, the attempt by Ming officials to place distant frontiers within the Chinese world order, and the combination of the above and other unknown motives. Whatever the cause, the Chinese sent large flotillas into the seas west of India from the year I405 until I433. For reasons equally unknown, the appearance of Chinese ships under the command of the admiral Cheng Ho in front of the

wealthy trading posts of the Persian Gulf and Yemen did not draw the Mamluks into a naval war with the Chinese. Later on, when the periphery of the sinocentric world order of the Ming dynasty receded in I433, Muslims continued to develop their lucrative Indian trade upon which the Mamluk state more and more came to depend for tax revenues. Because the withdrawal of the Chinese stimulated no new competition from other great states in the regions of the Indian Ocean, there



58 Andrew C. Hess

was little incentive for the Mamluks to expand in southern regions that would be

uncongenial to the equestrian culture of their military society. As a result the Indian Ocean frontier remained politically becalmed from the middle of the fifteenth century until the turn of the sixteenth when the arrival of the Portu-

guese suddenly militarized this southern border.' On the northeastern frontier of the Mamluk state the long era of warfare that

had for centuries thrown up strong Central Asian empires drew to a close in the mid-fifteenth century. Following the death of Timur in I405, the empire he had created started down the path of political subdivision so familiar to steppe politics. By the middle of the fifteenth century a series of smaller sultanates, established on the basis of Turkoman elements, split up the previously unified Central Asian and Iranian heartlands. While the instability of nomadic politics inhibited the formation of a major new steppe empire, changes in the technology of war also struck at the military basis of the states that maintained Turko-Mongol traditions. Fifteen years before the disastrous campaign in 1468 of the Timurid ruler Abu Sa'id b. Timur, the Ottomans marshalled before the walls of Con-

stantinople the equipment of modern warfare. Cannons, fire-arms, and galley fleets, together with all of the urban-based organizational techniques necessary to command and sustain complex military units, heralded an end to the long dominance of the mounted archer and the transfer of military leadership in the East from Central Asia to the eastern Mediterranean terminus of the Eurasian land mass. Not only did the large-scale use of these new weapons shift the technological balance against the Nation of Archers, but the modern implements of war created extraordinary new financial requirements for imperial politics. In the centuries to come, the systematic organization and extraction of taxes from all resources would be just as much an element of imperial strength as would the

possession of fire-arms. Here also neither small Central Asian polities nor steppe states based on a herding economy could compete with the emerging bureaucratic

empire to the northwest in an age when control of large agricultural areas and naval commerce became crucial.2

While the Turkoman frontier states of eastern Anatolia and western Persia - the

I Mamluk policy in the Red Sea regions at the time of the Ming voyages in the Indian Ocean is covered by Ahmad Darrag, L'tgypte sous le regne de Barsbay 825-841/1422-1438 (Damas, I96I), pp. i97-237. For the Chinese view of international relations see The Chinese World Order, ed. John King Fairbank (Cambridge, Massachusetts, I968), passim.

2 The drift of events in fifteenth-century Persia has been summarized by Vladimir F. Minorsky, 'La Perse au XVe siecle', in Iranica (Tehran, I964), pp. 317-26. On the military and administrative history of the Ak Koyunlu dynasty and the Ottomans compare V. Minorsky, Persia in A.D. I478-1490, in Royal Asiatic Society Monographs, vol. xxvi (London, 1957), pp. 20-4, 36-4I, 63, 88, i i6, with Mehmed Ne?rl, Kitab-z Cihan-Niimd (2 vols., Ankara, 1949-57), vol. II, p. 819; Ibn Kemal, Tevarih-i-Al-i Osman. VII Defter, photo. reproduction in vol. I, transcription and criticism in vol. II by $3erafettin Turan (hereafter all references to vol. ii, cited as Ibn Kemal) (Ankara, 1954-7), vol. II, pp. 3 6- I9, 338-9; R. M. Savory, 'The Struggle for Supremacy in Persia after the Death of Timur', Der Islam, vol. XL (I964), pp. 35-65; and Paul Wittek, 'De la defaite d'Ankara i la prise de Constantinople', Revue des etudes islamiques, vol. I2 (1938), pp. I-34.




Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu - for the moment offered no major threat to the Mamluk empire,, the forces behind European expansion had already brought about a new form of conflict between the Mamluk empire and the Christian world. Since ancient times the rulers of the Nile valley had generally contended with the imperialism of centralized states that aimed to conquer and hold

Egyptian territories. But the revitalized European societies that appeared in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Middle Ages did not evolve along grand imperial lines; rather they expanded as competitive units within the general cultural framework of Western Christendom. In the age of the Renaissance this

fragmented order of the Western world on the one hand prevented the growth of a unified form of Christian imperialism intent upon great conquests and on the other hand encouraged a rigorous development of commercial activities.

Exploiting the decline of Byzantium and the disorganization of the Islamic world during the period of the Crusades, the Italian city states pushed the Western European frontier into the Levant. But these border states demonstrated

by the end of the Crusades that they were not directing their energies primarily toward the furtherance of any imperial ideology or toward the incorporation of vast new territories. Because of the small size of their territories, the commercial interests of their ruling classes, and the geographical scope of their economic

activities, the competing Italian polities created limited colonial empires along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Resting their power not on the basis of large land armies but on political flexibility, superior naval technology, and commercial success, the merchant princes placed fortified trading posts on

strategic points along the major communication routes in the Levant so as to take advantage of the increasingly lucrative trade between Europe and the East.

When, for example, Europe recovered economic strength in the fifteenth century, Venice, the largest European distributor of Eastern spices, displayed the shape of the new relations between the Christian world and the Mamluk empire not

by seizing the Nile Delta but by capturing the Egyptian coinage.2 Although by mid-fifteenth century the Venetians seemed to have won the

often violent competition between Western commercial states for predominance in the Levant trade, a challenge from another Christian competitor built up in an altogether unexpected area. Long before the fifteenth century the Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula had brought the small Portuguese nation close to the Strait of Gibraltar. Crossing the geographical division between Europe and North Africa in I415, the Portuguese seized the strategic North African port of

Ahmad Darrag, L'lJgypte, pp. 5-7, i62, 38I, 39I-9, covers the boundary problems in the early portion of the fifteenth century. The struggle between the Ottomans and the Mamluks for influence at the Ak Koyunlu court after I453 is in Abi Bakr-i Tihrani, Kitdb-i Diydrbakriyya, ed. Necati Lugal and Faruk Siimer (2 vols., Ankara, I962-4), vol. H, pp. 553-4. The Ottoman defeat of the Ak Koyunlu at Otlukbeli in I473 is in Ibn Kemal, pp. 353-8.

2 A. S. Ehrenkreutz, 'Contributions to the Knowledge of the Fiscal Administration of Egypt in the Middle Ages', BSOAS, vol. xvI/3 (I954), pP. 502-I4.



60 Andrew C. Hess

Ceuta and began their oceanic expansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Much like the Italian states the Lusitanians found that their size, economic

position, and social-political structure favored a limited form of imperial activity along the coast of North Africa. Once Portuguese kings decided to search for commercial advantage rather than to conquer Morocco, the caravel became the primary weapon of Portuguese imperialism, transporting the gold and products of Black Africa northward by sea to Lisbon. By I443, ten years before the

conquest of Constantinople, the Lusitanian frontiersmen established a fortified

trading post on the island of Arguin from which they administered their Western African activities. Attracting trade in North West Africa away from the caravan routes that ran east to Egypt, the Avis dynasty then collected sufficient resources from this outpost to encourage a far more ambitious exploration.'

Among the aims of the men who directed the Portuguese exploration of Africa, two of the most prominent objectives were to replace the Venetians as the princi- pal distributors of Asian products, and to join the Christians of the East in an attack on the Islamic world from the rear.2 Both of these goals directly embraced some form of an assault on the Mamluk empire. How much the Portuguese appreciated the strategic position of Egypt in their imperial designs is apparent from the itinerary of the two agents Dom Joao II dispatched to the East in 1487. Pero da Colvilha and Afonso da Paiva, both of whom spoke Arabic, assumed the disguise of honey merchants and left for Rhodes, from which they travelled to Alexandria. Journeying south from Cairo, the Portuguese spies reached Aden where they parted, studying separately commercial operations and political conditions in India and East Africa. Whether or not their reports on the trading activity whose international routes they followed or on the political relations of Christian Abyssinia and other Muslim states with the Mamluks influenced

Portuguese policies is not clear.3 When, however, the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope, they were well informed about trading networks and inter- state competition in the East. Quickly, their commanders attempted to block the naval trade between India and Egypt and to form the Safavid and Abyssinian states into an alliance against the Egyptian regime. Again, exterior actions of foreign states confirmed the important position of Egypt in world history.

The general advance of the Christian frontier in Iberia had for some time stimulated the Mediterranean ambitions of Spanish states. Well before the end of the Reconquest in I492, the Aragonese dispatched Catalan corsairs against the coasts of Syria and Egypt. During the same period the eastern Iberians, like the Portuguese, considered establishing an alliance with the Christian state of

On fifteenth-century Portuguese expansion see C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825 (New York, I969), pp. 1-38. The economic side of Portuguese activity in Africa is in Vitorino Magalhaes-Godinho, L'1~conomie de l'empire portugais aux XVe6 et XVIe siecles (Paris, I969), pp. 33-4, et passim.

2 Ibid. pp. I7-3I, 290-3I0, 550-5, 783. 3 Boxer, The Portuguese, pp. 33-8; and H. V. Livermore, A New History of Portugal

(Cambridge, I966), pp. 122-31.



The Ottoman conquest of Egypt 6i

Abyssinia.I The subsequent union of Castile and Aragon coupled with the final defeat of Islam in Iberia during the year I492 only added to the momentum of this Spanish advance. Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar at the turn of the sixteenth

century, the Spanish pushed their front lines along the coast of Islamic North Africa toward Egypt, reaching Tripoli in July of 15I0. But the war with France in 1511, the death of Ferdinand in I516, and the accession difficulties of the

Hapsburg ruler, Charles V, turned the attention of Spain northward and

temporarily stalled the drive against Islam during the Ottoman conquest of

Egypt. Concurrently, the European invasion of America drew Spanish frontiersmen from the Islamic border in North Africa when the conquistadores began the

conquest of Mexico in I519. Although these events may have diluted the forces behind the eastward movement of the Christian frontier in the Mediterranean, Charles V would bring together in his inheritances large human and material resources which he would organize in accordance with the universal traditions of the Romano-Christian past. As such the Hapsburg empire quickly became the most powerful opponent of the Muslim world. But before the Christian emperor could assemble his imperial forces on Sicilian and Lybian fronts, Ottoman armies conquered Egypt (I 57) and forced Charles V to deal with an expanding Turko-Muslim empire whose naval frontiersmen, under the command of the Barbarossa brothers, spread into the western Mediterranean.2

The fall of the Mamluk empire in I 517 came about as a result of major changes in imperial strength within and about the Middle East that favored a conscious drive on the part of Ottoman sultans to rule the Sunni community. Although the nature of this shift in state relations is highly complex, the history of Ottoman frontier actions from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the final defeat of the Mamluk army in I5I7 provides one means of marking out the current of events

leading to the conquest of Egypt and to the new relations between the Turko- Muslim empire and European states following the Ottoman absorption of Syria and Egypt.

The expansion of the northern Turks south from Istanbul includes both the

history of the relations between the Islamic states in and around Anatolia and the development of the Ottoman navy. Of the two subjects much less is known about the growth of Turko-Muslim sea power. Yet from the beginning of the Anatolian conquests in the pre-Ottoman period the Turks had shown a willingness to fight on the seas. Utilizing the skills of the Anatolian maritime populations who had previously been organized by the Byzantine empire, the border warriors for the Faith launched naval raids against Christian lands from the shores of western Anatolia at the end of the eleventh century. When the Ottomans absorbed the coastal regions of Anatolia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they in-

Ahmad Darrag, L'Sgypte, pp. 2I0-Il, 33I-9. 2 J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (New York, I963), pp. 128-60, gives a general

picture of Spanish expansion. The counter-expansion of the Ottomans is described in Hayreddin Barbarossa's history. Sander Rang and J. F. Denis, Fondation de la regime d'Alger, histoire des Berberousse (2 vols., Paris, i837), vol. I, pp. 21-283.



62 Andrew C. Hess

corporated already well-developed corsair communities into their expanding Turko-Muslim state. This addition of eastern Mediterranean maritime experience then became the foundation upon which the Ottomans constructed their navy.I

There is little doubt that the conquest of Istanbul represents a major turning- point in Middle Eastern military history. While the siege of Istanbul demonstrated that the Ottomans possessed new military organizations and large numbers of powder weapons, the conquest and consolidation of the city also indicated that Ottoman sultans would launch their armies from an imperial city that had a history of expansion in the Mediterranean. Unstressed, however, in most accounts that describe the establishment of the Ottoman capital in Istanbul is the appearance, at the same time, of a new and large Ottoman fleet.2 In 1453 the Ottomans had, among other things, decided to become a naval power. This

particular decision would subsequently have much to say about where the Ottomans would wage war. In the past the horse gave mobility to the great Turko-Mongol armies of the Eurasian steppe. But for this urban-based dynasty with its foot soldiers, heavy siege artillery, and other impedimenta, Mediterranean

ships would be a major means by which Ottomans would project their operations over great distances.3 The Ottoman military establishment, therefore, contained

important elements whose use would exert an anti-steppe pressure on the direction of imperial action.

Astride the narrows between the Mediterranean and the Black Seas where

trading routes from Europe and Asia converged, Istanbul commanded an im-

mensely important geographical position for the development of a naval force as an element of state power. With little delay, therefore, the Conqueror brought to Istanbul sailors from the coastal regions that had been the source of naval talent for the Byzantine empire. Similarly, merchants who used the sea were settled in the rebuilt city and given relief from taxes in order to encourage trade.

Combining the resources of his empire with the maritime experience of Muslim frontiersmen and artisans, the sultan promptly ordered the construction of arsenals and war galleys.4 Hence the establishment of an expensive and powerful

I For a summary of Turkish naval history through the conquest of Egypt see Andrew C. Hess, 'The Evolution of the Ottoman Seaborne Empire in the Age of the Oceanic Discoveries, I453-I525', The American Historical Review, vol. Lxxv/7 (Dec. I970), pp. I870-I919.

2 Figures on the Ottoman fleet are in Ibn Kemal, pp. 42-3; 'A?lkpa?azade, 'Afzkpafa- zade Tarihi (Die Altosmanische Chronik des 'Afzkpasazade), ed. Friedrich Giese (Leipzig, 1929), p. 132; and Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. Charles T. Riggs (Princeton, New Jersey, 1954), p. 37. Italian and Greek figures are given by Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (Cambridge, I965), pp. 215; 76, n. i.

3 Ibn Kemal, pp. 220-I, 285, 383-5, 470-3, 500, 507-8, records the imperial use of the Ottoman fleet.

4 Kritovoulos, pp. 37, 83,93, 140-I, 148-9, 184-5; 'A?lkpa?azade, pp. 133, 148; Ibn Kemal, pp. 96-8, 11o; Philip P. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios by the Genoese and their Administration of the Island, pp. 1346-566 (3 vols., London, I958), vol. I, p. 219; and Avedis K. Sanjian, Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, 1301-I480 (Cambridge, Mass., I969), pp. 245, 284, 326.




navy became a major internal institution tugging the Ottomans toward the sea.

Where would Mehmed the Conqueror apply naval power? Surely geography, potential opposition, as well as economic and political opportunities, all pointed toward the use of the fleet in the Mediterranean. In the fifteenth century, however, the main reason for the westward drag that naval history exerted on the Ottomans lay rooted in the superior naval forces of the Italian states, among which the Venetians were the most powerful. Not only did the Venetians extend Christian power to the Muslim shores of the eastern Mediterranean, but the Italians also exerted an outward influence over the Levantine economy from their eastern trading stations. In contrast to the Venetian organization in the East, Mehmed directed an Ottoman expansion along interior lines toward the sea in order to channel the tax revenues of the Levant to Istanbul. Ottomans and Venetians, therefore, had clashing economic interests that intensified other reasons for war between these two vastly different states.'

In the naval conflicts that followed (I463-79) the Ottomans steadily advanced

against the Venetians so that by the end of the Conqueror's reign in 1481 they had turned the Black Sea into an Ottoman lake and had broken out of the Aegean Sea with a two-pronged naval assault on important Christian outposts in the Levantine trading system. In 1480 Mesih Pasa, following the trade and pilgrimage route from Anatolia to Egypt, launched an amphibious attack on the island of Rhodes. A year later Gedik Ahmed Papa landed an expeditionary force in southeastern Italy, taking the town of Otranto. Here also the Ottoman naval action threatened Venetian control over the sea routes running past the narrows at the mouth of the Adriatic. Just how these two engagements advanced imperial interests remains somewhat obscure, since both campaigns had failed by the accession of Bayezid II in I48I. The historian Ibn Kemal, however, preserved a record of the Conqueror's imperial design on the eve of his death. According to the court historian, Mehmed had set the Mamluk border in Syria as his main

objective.2 Mehmed's successor, Bayezid II, is surely one of the least understood of the

early Ottoman sultans. Although reputed to have been unwarlike because he

expanded the empire marginally, Bayezid II did not break the pattern of strong military leadership that marked the centuries of Ottoman growth. Rather than

winning great land victories, this sultan presided over an unparalleled development of a large and expensive navy, an undertaking that had grave consequences for both Europe and the Mamluk empire.

More important for the long run, Bayezid and his advisors defended the state against fundamental challenges to the structure of the empire. Between

I Compare Freddy Thiriet, La Romanie venitienne au Moyen Age (Paris, 1959), pp. 4-45; Ibn Kemal, pp. 105-6, 117, 165, I76, i8o, 2I9-20, 287, 291, 309, 384, 388, 500; and Kritovoulos, pp. 15-i6, 24, 96, 107-8, 138, I63.

2 Ibn Kemal, pp. 500-7, 528, 542, 544.



64 Andrew C. Hess

I481 and his death in 1495 the brother of the sultan, Cem,I proposed the division of the empire, based his revolt on groups heavily influenced by tribal institutions, and sought aid both from the Mamluk empire in 1481 and the Christian frontiersmen on the island of Rhodes in 1482. Reacting to these multiple dangers, which were compounded by Cem's imprisonment in Christendom after I482, the sultan pursued a policy of external peace and internal consolidation. Secret

negotiations with Cem's Christian captors between his flight to Rhodes in 1482 and his death in I495 neutralized the threat from the West while a successful Black Sea campaign in 1484 improved Ottoman control over the northern frontier. Internally, the sultan used the period of relative external inactivity to

reorganize the financial structure of the Empire and to apply the resultant increase in revenues for war and not peace.

On the southern edge of the Ottoman domain, Bayezid's armies and the Mam- luks fought a series of inconclusive wars between I48I and 1491 that both

preserved the shape of the southern frontier and presaged a struggle for su-

premacy in the Orthodox Muslim world.2 For the future two internal events from these battles deserve attention. First, the inconclusiveness of the border clashes can be measured by the survival of the Turkoman buffer state of Dhu'l Qadr.3 Secondly, when the Ottomans requested the use of the port at Famagusta on the island of Cyprus in order to supply their troops from the sea, the Venetians, who controlled the island, refused the Ottoman petition and dispatched their own fleet to Cyprus.4

If these conditions demonstrated how quickly Ottoman power shaded off in southern Anatolia, at the end of the fifteenth century a restlessness, rooted in the culture of Turkomans and Persians, foreshadowed the rise of a new menace to the integrity of the Taurus Mountain frontier system. Out of the interregnum that followed the downfall of the Timfirid empire, the Safavid family emerged as the leaders of a powerful Persian-based state that would overcome the in-

stability of the clan-based regimes then ruling portions of Persia and Anatolia.

Emphasizing the religious prestige of their eponym, Shaykh Safi al-Din, the

hostility of Turkomans to the centralizing forces of the Ottoman empire, the heterodox religious beliefs of the Turks and the cultural distinctiveness of the Persians, the first major Safavid ruler, Shah Isma'il, assembled at the turn of the sixteenth century a large cavalry force drawn from Turkoman tribes - the

Kizllbag. Not only did the Shah create a large supra-tribal army but he also established a religious movement, complete with secret agents and propagandists,

I A bibliography on Cem can be found in Halil Inalcik, 'Djem ', The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition (hereafter EI2) (2 vols. to date, Leiden, I960- ), vol. II, pp. 529-3I.

2 Selghattin Tansel, Sultan II Bayezit'in Siyasi Hayatz (Istanbul, 1966), pp. 93-1I6, describes the Ottoman-Mamluk wars. Note the reproduction on pages 97-8 of the proposal to conquer the Arab lands.

3 J. H. Mordtmann and Miikrimin H. Yinanc, 'Dulkadlrhlar', in Islam Ansiklopedisi (Io vols. to date, Istanbul, 1950- ), vol. IIn, pp. 654-62.

4 Tansel, Bayezit, p. 178.




that paralleled his military organization and extended his influence deep into Anatolia and Syria.I Since the rise of the Safavids fits the classical categories of an Islamic frontier movement aiming at the formation of a large state, the Ottomans had to react or risk letting the momentum of this third attempt to

organize Turkomans turn the border peoples of Anatolia against the Ottoman

empire.2 Toward the end of BAyezid's reign the frontier strife in the south and east

suddenly worsened. In I507 Safavid armies raided into southern Anatolia, passing through the Taurus Mountain buffer state of Dhu'l Qadr. During 1509, as part of a brewing dynastic struggle to succeed Bayezid II, the Ottoman prince Korkud fled to Egypt where the Mamluk sultan, Qansfuh al-Ghawri, received him with honor.3 In 15 1 a revolt, sparked by Safavid agents, broke out among the Turkomans and spread rapidly throughout central Anatolia until the Otto- mans killed the leader of the uprising, Shah Kulu, in that same year. Along with these events, the internal battle for power between the sultan and his son, Selim, intensified during the twilight years of Bayezid's reign. By 1512 political factions intent upon the resumption of great campaigns defeated Bayezid and raised to

power another warrior sultan, Selim the Grim.4

Although Safavid aggression would soon provoke a counter-attack from the north, the Ottoman sultans had taken steps in other areas, separate from the

problems of the Anatolian-Persian frontier, that would also encourage a southward extension of their influence. Throughout the years in which the detention of Cem by the Europeans checked Ottoman expansion, Bayezid II used the resources of his state to build the largest navy in the Mediterranean. Aware that his fleet came nowhere near the Venetian in the quality of its galley officers, the sultan solved this problem by turning to the sea frontier for experienced naval commanders. Appointing veteran Muslim corsairs, such as Kemal Reis, to salaried positions in the navy, Ottomans again drew maritime talent from the shores and islands of the eastern Mediterranean to increase the naval power of

I Minorsky, Persia, pp. 6i-8; Hjasan-i Rimmlu, Ahsanut-Tawdrikh (A Chronicle of the Early Safawis), trans. C. N. Seddon (Baroda, I934), pp. I8, 26-7, 57-71; R. M. Savory, 'The Consolidation of Safawid Power in Persia', Der Islam, no. 41 (October, I965), pp. 71- 94; and Hanna Sohrweide, 'Der Siege der Safaviden in Persien und seine Riickwirkungen auf die Schiiten Anatoliens im i6. Jahrhundert', Der Islam, no. 41 (October, I965), pp. 3 1-7, for the Klzilba? centers in Anatolia. The Ottoman response is treated in Tansel, Bdyezit, pp. 245-64; Selahattin Tansel, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Ankara, 1969), pp. 3-00oo; M. S. Tekindag, 'Yeni Kaynak ve vesikalarin llginda Yavuz Sultan Selim'in Iran Seferi', Tarih Dergisi, vol. xvii (I968), pp. 49-78; and at the propaganda level Elke Eberhard, Osmanische Polemik gegen die Safawiden im i6. Jahrhundert nach arabischen Handschriften (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1970), pp. 159, et passim.

2 This is not to argue that the Ottomans were in a defensive stage of their history. On the relation between ideologies and frontier history see Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 2nd ed. (3 vols., Princeton, New Jersey, 1967), vol. I, pp. 3 3-36.

3 Ibn Iyas, Journal d'un bourgeois du Caire, trans. Gaston Wiet (2 vols., Paris, 1955- 60), vol. I, pp. 148-9.

4 Hasan-i Rfmlu, Ahsan, pp. 57-64. 5 MES 4 I



66 Andrew C. Hess

their military organization. During the same time that new men entered the

fleet, Venetian ambassadors began to fill their correspondence with reports of an

extraordinary Ottoman effort to construct new galleys. Lists of ships available for Ottoman military campaigns ran over 200 by I498. Finally, Ottoman naval artisans experimented with expensive new designs, producing some ships that were enormous by Mediterranean standards.I

In May of 1499 an Ottoman fleet of over 250 units for the first time defeated the Venetian navy in an open-sea battle. Four years later the Ottomans emerged victorious from their naval contest with the Venetians who, in order to preserve their commercial advantages in the Levant, agreed to Ottoman terms that gave the Turks strategic predominance in the eastern Mediterranean.2

Rarely has such an important change in Mediterranean naval conditions received less notice. By I502 the Ottomans had turned around centuries of Mediterranean naval history. No longer did the Italians rule the Interior Sea, and according to the Portuguese historian Godinho, no Christian state could

compete with the Ottoman navy after 5oo.3 Shifting the balance of naval power from the Christian to the Muslim side now left the Western European states that bordered on the Mediterranean with the difficult task of forming a Christian

league between governments whose spirit for the Crusade had waned with the

passing of the Middle Ages when defense against an Ottoman naval attack seemed

necessary. The simultaneous naval victory of the Ottomans and the arrival of the

Portuguese in the Indian Ocean at the turn of the sixteenth century squeezed the Mamluk empire between two stronger naval powers. Reacting to the Portu-

guese attack on the Indian-Egyptian trading network and to the appearance of Christian ships in the Red Sea near the Holy Cities of Islam, the Mamluks

promptly dispatched a galley fleet under Husayn al-Kurdi to drive the Portu-

guese from the Indian Ocean.4 After an initial victory at Chaul on the west coast of India in 1508, the Mamluk admiral lost his fleet in an engagement with the Portuguese at Diu in I509.5 Lacking trained sailors and materials for a new

I Hess, 'The Ottoman Seaborne Empire', pp. 1904-6. The development of Ottoman sea-power makes an impact on histories from Venice to Persia. Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, ed. Nicolo Barozzi et al. (58 vols., Venice, 1879-1903), vol. I, cols. 398-9, 323; vol. II, cols. 568-70; vol. III, cols. 1348-9; and Hasan-i Rfimlu, Ahsan, pp. I6-I7.

2 Haji Khalfah, The History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks, trans. James Mitchell (London, I83I), pp. 19-24, observes how Bayezid's naval victories allowed Selim the Grim to punish the 'Persians' and annex Syria and Egypt. For further references to European and Ottoman sources see Sidney Nettleton Fisher, The Foreign Relations of Turkey 148i-1512 (Urbana, Ill., 1948), pp. 54-89; and Tansel, Bdyezit, pp. 176-225.

3 Godinho, 'viragem', pp. 143-4. 4 For this part of South Arabian naval history see Robert B. Sergeant, The Portuguese

off the South Arabian Coast (Oxford, 1963), pp. 41-51; L. 0. Schuman, Political History

of the Yemen at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century (Amsterdam, 1961), p. 9. 5 Portuguese sources are abundant. Damiao de Gois, Crdnica do Felicissimo Rei D.

Manuel (4 vols., Coimbra, I949-54), vol. ii, pp. 85-91, 132-7, chronicles the two battles.




navy, Egypt quickly sought maritime aid from outside the Fertile Crescent. When Mamluk ambassadors approached the Doge with a request for naval

assistance, he officially turned down the Muslim plea, claiming the necessity of

maintaining good relations with the Pope. But at the same time the Venetians advised the Mamluks to petition the Ottomans for the necessary naval support.I Thus the last years of Bayezid II's reign witnessed a sudden improvement in Ottoman-Mamluk relations, not only because both empires regarded the rise of the Safavids, who had adopted Heterodox Islam, as a menace to their respective Taurus Mountain frontiers but also because the Egyptian regime now began to receive great quantities of naval supplies and military equipment from Ottoman territories. In Egypt camel caravans quickly transported the naval ordinance and construction material from Mediterranean ports to Suez, where the Mamluk sultan had ordered the preparation of a new fleet. Dependence on the Ottomans, however, went far beyond building supplies, as Bayezid II also provided naval

captains and 2,000 matchlockmen. In 15I5, when the galleys were ready, Selman

Reis, an Ottoman, commanded the Red Sea armada of the Mamluks.2 In yet another area the Egyptian regime had come to depend on the outside.

The Mamluks recognized that imperial aggression usually follows changes in

military strength. On this matter Ibn Iyas left explicit testimony of Mamluk fears. During 15 I5, a year after the Ottoman victory over the Safavids at (aldiran, the Mamluk sultan, Qansuh al-Ghawri, ordered new coastal fortifications constructed against a naval attack from the north when he heard rumours that the Ottomans had constructed a fleet of 400 ships.3

Even though the history of the land campaigns leading to the conquest of

Egypt is fairly well known, it is worth examining the actions of Selim and his armies to see how imperial decisions, military actions on land, and Ottoman naval activities intensified the pressure on the Mamluk empire. The greatest danger to the Ottoman state after the accession of Selim the Grim in 1512 came not from European lands but from the Safavids of Persia.4 Upon securing control of the sultanate, Selim adopted a course of action against the Safavids that was

just as provocative as Shah Isma'il's raid into Anatolia in 1507. Drawing up a list of Safavid sympathizers who were within Ottoman territories, Selim issued orders for their execution. The elimination of Klzilba? partisans - some accounts list as many as 40,000 victims - struck directly at the prestige of Shah Isma'il

among the Turkomans and made a military contest between the two states unavoidable. Finally, the Ottomans also imposed, through the use of their army and navy, an economic blockade on the products carried over the trade routes that

passed through Persia.5 In August of 514 the struggle on the eastern Ottoman border came to a climax

I Godinho, L'IEconomie, pp. 7I3-64. 2 Hess, 'The Ottoman Seaborne Empire', pp. 1909-14. 3 Ibn Iyas, Journal, vol. II, pp. 435, 440-6. 4 Sa'd al-Din, Tic-ut Tevarih (2 vols., Istanbul, 1862-3), vol. II, pp. 241-2. 5 Savory, 'The Consolidation', pp. 82-94; Tansel, Selim, pp. 31-72.

5-2



68 Andrew C. Hess

when the armies of the Ottomans and the Safavids met in Azerbaijan near the

plain of (aldiran. The Ottoman victory that followed largely reflected the

technological superiority in fire-arms of the Ottoman military organizations. Conquest of Persia, however, did not result from the Ottoman victory. Even

though military organization and equipment gave the advantage to the Ottomans on the field of (aldlran, the supply requirements for foot soldiers and their

heavy equipment yielded the edge in mobility within Persia to the mounted archers of the Safavids. Thereafter the history of sixteenth-century Ottoman- Persian wars featured attempts on the part of the Safavids, through the use of classic steppe tactics, to get their opponents to over-extend themselves into areas where the Janissaries found 'no enemy', while the Ottomans tried to increase their

range of action in Persia through the use of the navy.' Whatever the balance of military weaponry and organization, Selim's Persian

campaign also had the political result of further isolating the Mamluk regime by removing a Safavid check to the southward drift of the Ottoman boundary. Even

though Ottoman chroniclers naturally document the preparation of another

expedition against the Heterodox Safavids rather than the Orthodox Mamluks, frontier politics pointed in an altogether different direction. After the battle of (aldlran in I514 the sultan sent the historian Idris-i Bidlisi, who was probably of Kurdish origin, to the newly conquered regions in the east where he was assigned the task of organizing the Kurds against the Safavids.2 This turning of the inner frontier tribesmen against the outer preceded the Ottoman attack on the buffer state of Dhu'l Qadr in I 5 I 5 and occurred at approximately the same time Ibn Iyas recorded Mamluk fears of Ottoman naval power. In June I515 the Ottomans continued their march against the tribal states separating Syria and Egypt from the Ottoman empire. Changing the frontier conditions in the Taurus Mountain regions against the Egyptian regime, the Ottomans defeated and killed the Dhu'l Qadr ruler, 'Ala' al-Dawla, and installed a pro-Ottoman candi- date, 'Ali Beg, as ruler of the Elbistan state in I5I5.3

Stationing his navy in the eastern Mediterranean to guard his rear and to supply his expeditionary forces, Selim then embarked, in the summer of 1516, on the conquest of the Mamluk empire. Inferior in modern military technology, isolated in exterior politics, internally divided, economically dependent on

Ahmet Feridun Bey, Miin,a'cat-us Saldtin (Istanbul, I858), vol. II, p. 401; and Sa'd al-Din, Tdc, vol. II, p. 259, describe the Janissary revolts. On the problems of the Persian frontier see Bekir Kittiukoglu, Osmanh-Iran Siydsz Miindsebetleri (Istanbul, I962), pp. 36, 144-6; Halil Inalcik, 'Osmanli-Rus Rekabetinin Mensei ve Don-Volga Kanali Tesebbiisii (1569)', Belleten, vol. xn/46 (April, 1948), pp. 349-97; and Ibrahim Pe;evi, Tdrih-i Pefevi (2 vols., Istanbul, i866), vol. II, pp. 36-7.

2 The crucial role of Idris Bidlisl on the eastern frontier is clear in Sa'd al-Din, Tdc, vol. II, pp. 321-3. For his Ak Koyunlu background see Sharaf Khan al-Bidllsl, Sharaf Ndmeh, ed. Muhammad 'Abbasi (Tehran, I333/1914-15), p. 448. On the fall of Mardin and its role in the history of the Ottoman invasion of Mamluk territories see Nejat G6yiinq, XVI Yiizytlda Mardin Sancagi (Istanbul, I969), pp. I5-34.

3 Tansel, Selim, pp. 101-7.




exterior structures, and defenseless in naval men and material, the Mamluk empire succumbed to the Ottomans in the early months of i517.1

Rolling over their opponents like a wave, the Ottomans had selected Egypt in

preference to Central Asia. Despite the advice of 'Ali Ekber Hitayi to conquer China, Selim the Grim launched no campaign across the steppes after his conquest of Egypt but returned to the task of developing the Ottoman navy just before his death in I520.2 Hand in hand with the Oceanic Discoveries the history of western Eurasia worked to shift the center of imperial history away from the plains of Central Asia.

The Ottoman conquest of Egypt, however, did not result solely from changes in levels of military technology, from imbalances in inter-imperial relations, or from fortuitous events. Ottoman sources contain ample evidence on the long- standing reasons for war with the Mamluks. In general, the Ottoman justifica- tions for an attack on another Orthodox Islamic state boil down to political grievances. The Egyptian dynasty, for example, supported Ottoman enemies in southern Anatolia, aided dynastic opponents of the northern sultans, and allied with the Unbelievers against the Warriors for the Faith. Along the southern frontier the repeated military incursions of the Mamluks into Anatolia, as well as their political interference in the affairs of the Dhu'l Qadr border state threatened the integrity of the Istanbul-centered empire. Moreover, the Mamluks refused to acknowledge the elevated position of the northern empire in the Turko- Muslim world after the conquest of Istanbul. This same line of conflict also appears in the disputes concerning the failure of the Mamluks to congratulate Mehmet the Conqueror on his seizure of Trabzon in 1461, in the difficulties between the two empires over Ottoman assistance for the Pilgrimage, on the problems involving Ottoman diplomatic relations with Muslim states in India, and finally over the war of titles in which the Ottomans gradually escalated the position of their state in relation to the Mamluks. Taken all together these entries in Ottoman texts reflect a struggle with the Mamluks for supremacy within the Muslim political community following the conquest of Istanbul in 1453.3

1 Ibid. p. 193; and David Ayalon, Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom (London, 1956), on the whole question of military technology.

2 Seyfi Qelebi, L'Ouvrage de Seyfi Qelebi, trans. Joseph Matuz (Paris, i968), pp. 19-25, discusses the Asian proposal. On Selim's plans after the conquest of Egypt see Hess, 'The Ottoman Seaborne Empire', p. 1911.

3 Tansel, Bayezit, pp. 93-100, summarizes the reasons for Mamluk-Ottoman hostility up to the accession of Selim the Grim in I 512. Ibn Iyas, Histoire de Mamlouks Circassiens 872-9o6, trans. Gaston Wiet (a vols., Cairo, I945), vol. II, pp. 201-I I, 234-5, 240-8, 265, 28o, 302-3, 357, documents the rise of Mamluk hostility toward the Ottomans. I. H. Uzunfar?llh, 'Memlfik Sultanlan yamna iltica etmi? olan Osmanli Hanedamna mensup $ehzadeler', Belletin, vol. xvii/68 (Oct. I953), pp. 5 I9-35, underlines the use of Egypt by Ottoman political refugees. Information on the Ottoman relations with India as a cause of tension is in Gelibfltili Mustafa 'All, 'Kiinh-ul ahbar', Istanbul Univ. Library TY 5959, Iv, fo. 140a. 'A?ikpa?azade, pp. 200-34, has a long section on the reasons for Ottoman-Mamluk enmity in which the question of imperial titles is a main issue. For an analysis of that question see Halil Inalcik, 'Padi?ah', IA, ix, pp. 49I-5.



70 Andrew C. Hess

These points of dispute are, however, only keys to understanding the broad

significance within the Islamic world of the Ottomans' phenomenal growth following their victory at ?aldlran (1514).

At the imperial level the Ottomans appreciated the need for a new political legitimation that would give them sufficient authority to rule a large and com-

plex Muslim state. Continual wars against Turkoman groups and other Islamic states demonstrated that the prestige of border conquests could no longer

guarantee the political stability of the Ottoman state. By the sixteenth century the dynamism of their expansion had carried the Ottomans into so many conflicts with other Muslim dynasties as to raise the question of where they stood in the Islamic political spectrum. To match their new strength with a new organizing principle the heirs of Osman sought a more universal position within the Muslim world than that of march warriors. Entangled in the war of titles and in the question of whether or not Selim the Grim took the title of Caliph after the conquest of Egypt is the decision by the Ottomans to assume the political leadership of the entire Islamic community. Since Ottoman political unity would rest on the historically rooted sentiment among Muslims for the unity of the Islamic community, the northern Turks strove to appropriate the symbols of that universality: the protection of the Holy Places, the defense of the Pilgrimage, and the support, in whatever form it may have been, of the caliphal institution.x

In a society where the ideological component of life was supremely important, the elevation of the Ottoman sultan to the position of protector for Sunni Islam immeasurably strengthened the Ottoman state. In the years to come the orthodox institution would spread respect for the Ottoman empire to all corners of the Islamic world. In addition, while the 'Ulemd supported Ottoman authority because the sultan protected the institutions of the Community, so also did the Sunni religious leaders condemn rebellions against the Istanbul regime since in an Islamic context revolt and religious sectarianism ran together. Absorption of enormous territories peopled by Orthodox Muslims then joined success in the

Holy War to place Ottoman society, still fluid in structure, more than ever under the stabilizing influence of an unchallenged and revived Islamic culture. In this area the transfer of the 'Ulemd from Cairo to Istanbul after the conquest of

Egypt symbolized the final religious and social shaping of an Ottoman state whose population was now solidly Muslim. Lastly, rule over the Holy Places for Christians and Jews further extended Ottoman control over the Protected

I On the importance of the Holy Places see Cutb ed-Din, Geschichte der Stadt Mekka und ihres Tempels, ed. Ferdinand Wiistenfeld in Die Chroniken der Stadt Mekka (4 vols., Leipzig, I858-61), vol. II, p. 278; and Ibn Iyas, Journal, vol. I, pp. 356-7, 37I-4, 401-2.

Tansel, Selim, pp. 210-I7, studied the problem of the Caliphal title. The drive toward political unity in the Islamic community is discussed in H. A. R. Gibb, 'The Heritage of Islam in the Modern World (I)', International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. I/i (January 1970), pp. 3-17. The world-wide implications of Selim's religious policy are covered in Halil Inalclk, 'Les peuples de l'Europe du sud-est et leur r61e dans l'histoire: l'empire ottoman', in lditions de l'Academie Bulgare des Sciences, vol. iii (Sofia, I969), pp. 88-94.




Communities that the sultans had already organized within administrative frame- works borrowed from previous Middle Eastern empires.'

If imperial expansion is facilitated by an advance into areas where the social

organization of the new regions is reasonably similar to the structure of the

conquering state and where the problems of rule are not insuperable, then the Ottoman ingathering of the Arab lands represented just such a growth. Having experienced centuries of rule by Turko-Muslim dynasties the Fertile Crescent now fell under the control of another Turko-Muslim ruling class whose objective was not to disturb the Islamic social organization of the Arab territories but to

organize the conquered peoples under more efficient Ottoman administrative institutions. Thus the seizure of the Mamluk domains did not introduce social structures hostile to urban Islamic society; rather the impact of the Ottoman intrusion resulted in a greater degree of communal stability as the expanding Ottoman state applied administrative practices inherited from previous Islamic

dynasties and the Byzantine empire to a region of the Muslim world that had

experienced social decline. Ottoman historians underscored this development for the empire as a whole by conferring the title Lawgiver - Kanuni - upon Siiley- man, the sultan who succeeded Selim the Grim in I520.2

Because study of Ottoman economic history is in its beginning stages, the consequences of the Ottoman victory are hard to measure. One point, how-

ever, is certain and that is the acquisition of Egypt and Syria represented far more than a marginal addition to the Ottoman economy. With the establishment of Ottoman rule in Egypt the last of the major trading routes in the Levant fell into the hands of the Ottomans, giving them additional opportunity to tax the commerce that passed through the harbors of the Fertile Crescent. Just as im-

portant for this agriculturally based empire, however, was the massive addition that the conquest gave to the internal economy of the Empire. Once Ottoman officials pacified and registered Syrian and Egyptian territories, the records that have been studied document an increase in agricultural production, and therefore tax yield, that must have been general for all the old lands of the Mamluk

empire.3 Equally significant from an economic point of view, the Ottomans

I Henri Laoust, Les Gouverneurs de Damas (Damas, I952), pp. I37, I43-7, I54-9,

gives one example of the attitude of religious leaders toward the arrival of the Ottomans. For Selim's actions in Jerusalem regarding non-Muslims see Tansel, Selim, pp. 159-60. The place of Egypt in the social history of Ottoman Europe is pointed out by Stanford J. Shaw, 'The Ottoman View of the Balkans', in The Balkans in Transition, ed. C. and B. Jelavich (Berkeley, California, I963), p. 67.

2 As in so many other areas, the social history of the Ottoman Empire is only beginning. Nevertheless see the Misir Kanunndmesi (I 524) in Omer Lutfi Barkan, Osmanlh Imparator- lugunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukukz ve Mali Esaslari (one vol. to date, Istanbul, 1945- ), vol. I, pp. 360-8, for the internal objectives in Egypt of the Ottoman Empire. The important question of guild organization is taken up by Gabriel Baer, 'The Administrative, Economic and Social Functions of Turkish Guilds', International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. I/i (Jan. 1970), pp. 49-50.

3 Godinho, ' viragem ', pp. I41-4, using Venetian figures, documents Ottoman financial strength. Two studies from Ottoman sources for the captured territories support Godi-



72 Andrew C. Hess

could easily integrate the additional agricultural and commercial resources of the south into the imperial economy through their control of the eastern Mediter- ranean.I In an age of urban bureaucracies, standing armies, and siege operations, the substantial economic contribution of the defeated Mamluk empire supported Ottoman military expansion throughout the rest of the sixteenth century.

The imperial convergence on Egypt, which began in the fifteenth century, had run its course by the first quarter of the sixteenth century, leaving neither Western nor Eastern empires in charge of this strategic area. Rather a centralized Turko- Muslim empire based in Istanbul took control of the Fertile Crescent. Further

imperial growth now depended on the intentions of the Ottoman ruling class and on what kind of relation existed between the newly enlarged Ottoman state and its near competitors.

If the results of the Egyptian contest centralized political relations within the western regions of the Muslim world in favor of the Ottomans, internal political history within Europe moved in the opposite direction. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century the map of Western Christendom contained a bewildering array of competitive states possessing different ruling structures. Although the later evolution of the European nation state would produce political organizations more powerful than the Ottoman empire, in the sixteenth century the struggles within and among the evolving European states diminished their ability to com-

pete with the Ottomans. The feud between the Hapsburgs and the Valois, for

example, directly assisted the advance of the Ottoman frontier in the Balkans and North Africa. While Suleyman the Lawgiver ruled a unified block of Muslim territories along the Christian frontier from Tripoli to the Danube, Charles V, the leader in the war against Islam, commanded a geographical monster in whose middle stood the ruler of France who, when defeated by the Hapsburg army in 1525, established an alliance with the Ottomans and encouraged the sultan to attack the eastern portion of the Hapsburg empire.2 Similarly the Ottomans found it easy to break Spanish-Venetian alliances on the basis of the Venetian fear of the Hapsburgs and the Italian interest in the Levant trade.3 Just as European states had exploited divisions within the Ottoman empire in

nho's conclusions. Stanford J. Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt (Princeton, New Jersey, i962), pp. 283-312; and G6yiin;, Mardin, pp. 125-40. Non-Muslim sources also reflect the improvement in economic affairs after the conquest of Egypt. Bernard Lewis, 'A Jewish Source on Damascus just after the Ottoman Conquest', BSOAS, vol. x/i (I939-42), pp. 179-84.

1 Shaw, Financial, pp. 272-9, 283, 305-7, 3I3-15, 332-5. There is abundant docu- mentation for the importance of the sea route from Istanbul to Egypt. Matrakci Nasuh, 'Dastan-i Sultan Siileyman', TKS R. I286, fos. 54b-55b; Selanikl Mustafa Efendi, Tdrih-i Seldniki (Istanbul, I864), p. ioo; and Liutfi Giiger, Osmanli Imparatorlugunda Hububat Meselesi ve Hububattan alinan Vergiler (Istanbul, I964), pp. 32-6.

2 Kemal Pachazadeh, Histoire de la Campagne de Mohacz, trans. M. Pavet de Courteille (Paris, I859), pp. 7-I9, 24-6, notes the connection between the conquest of Egypt, the development of the Ottoman navy, the exploitation of Hapsburg-Valois rivalry, and the victory over the Hungarians in 1526.

3 Braudel, La Mediterrane'e, vol. II, pp. 377-82, 415-17.




the fifteenth century, the turn of the sixteenth century saw the Turks reversing international politics with great imperial benefit for themselves.'

The common Christian background of the Europeans could have provided the basis for Western unity in the face of an enlarged Ottoman empire. But the course of fifteenth-century history witnessed the decline of the one institution, the Papacy, that was most representative of European religious cohesion. Moreover, the Roman Catholic church faced an unsettled future, for religious rebels in the north had undermined the universal position of the Papacy from within Christendom. Thus the conquest of Egypt, which brought the weight of the classic Muslim religious community down on the side of the Ottomans, occurred during the same year that Martin Luther tacked his ninety-five theses on the door of the court church at Wittenberg. While Europe moved toward

large-scale internal religious warfare that involved a wide range of new cultural forms, the Islamic world experienced no such development. The sixteenth-

century expression of sectarianism in the Ottoman state was crushed, remained confined to regions where Persian cultural traditions predominated, or retreated to distant areas outside the reach of Orthodoxy. Shi'ism among the Turko- Muslims was not part of any broadly based economic change in urban areas but found its adherents among the lower classes, the villagers, and the social groups influenced by tribal institutions. General religious agreement between Muslim urban elites and the rulers of a Turkish military dynasty, now repeating a unified

expansion of Islam against the infidel, spread what had been northern border warfare into a world-wide religious war under Ottoman direction at the very time

European rulers and urban classes divided over fundamental religious issues.2 While Ottoman rulers both institutionalized the social stability desired by

Muslim society and at the same time ensured a flow of talent at the upper levels of the imperial structure by mobilizing frontiersmen, the sultans also obtained the loyalty of non-Muslim communities and border peoples. Through the millet

system3 the People of the Book accepted, albeit grudgingly, the political dominance of the Muslim empire in return for Ottoman protection. As social

unity in the Middle East grew under the law making of a Muslim sultan and the

cooperation of non-Muslim religious leaders, Europe pushed onward with a vast I European historians, however, emphasize what limited Ottoman expansion. H. G.

Koenigsberger and G. L. Mosse, Europe in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1968), pp. 174-96.

2 As an example of how Ottomans tried to take advantage of European religious difficulties see Andrew C. Hess, 'The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth Century Spain', The American Historical Review, vol. LXXIV/I (Oct. 1968), pp. I-25; for Eastern Europe consult S. A. Fischer-Galati, Ottoman Imperialism and German Pro- testantism, 1521-I555 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 38-56. C. R. Boxer, 'Portuguese and Spanish Projects for the Conquest of Southeast Asia 1580-1600', Journal of Asian History, vol. I I /2 (1969), pp. I 18-36, shows how the war between the Ottomans and the Iberians extended along religious lines into Southeast Asia.

3 The use of this term in Ottoman history is described by H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West: volume i, Islamic Society in the Eighteenth Century (vol. I in 2 parts to date, 1950-7), vol. 1/2, pp. 207-61.



74 Andrew C. Hess

unsettling movement in the middle ranges and at the fringes of its social order. The impact of these differences on European-Ottoman frontier history is two- fold. First, Ottoman sultans found it easier to turn the energies of their empire outward during the sixteenth century whereas European states, in the same

period, could not rely upon Crusades to solve deep antagonisms generated from new social movements. European leaders, therefore, had great difficulty main-

taining consistent imperial policies because, as in the case of the Austrian Haps- burgs, ruling authorities found it impossible to get contending social groups to

agree on major issues except under the most extreme circumstances. Secondly, the Ottomans were able to incorporate into their empire frontier peoples and non-Muslims from the borders in the Balkans- Albanians, Bogomils, and Orthodox Christians - while Christian states along the Mediterranean expelled Jews and Muslims and attacked heterodox Christians. That many of those who were excluded from Western European society aided the Ottomans, only showed how the Turko-Muslim dynasty profited from the negative side of Western social movements.'

Again in the economic area we know very little about the relative yield of

imperial expansion for Mediterranean states in the first half of the sixteenth

century. Both of the major opponents in the sixteenth-century world war - the

Hapsburgs and the Ottomans - added large territories to their respective empires while experiencing vastly different frontier histories. Whether or not these additions added significantly to the financial strength of the respective empires depended upon the degree to which the new lands were economically integrated into the framework of each state. For Spain, whose economic problems were continuous throughout the sixteenth century, the yield from] the exploitation of the New World played a very small role in Charles V's policies, averaging only 200,000 to 300,000 ducats a year until 1550; whereas the annual remittance to Istanbul from the Ottoman consolidation of Mamluk domains in I525, according to the Venetian historian Sanuto, started at 400,000 ducats and went

up dramatically, as Stanford J. Shaw has demonstrated in his studies of the Ottoman administration in Egypt. Furthermore, the conquest and organization of the New World had a centrifugal impact on the economic history of the Mediterranean, draining Spanish resources out of Iberia through the creation of yet another distant and unprotected frontier. The Ottomans, on the other hand, did not have to contend, in Syria and Egypt, with either great distance or the problems of organization that faced the Spanish in the New World; rather

they inherited already existing economic infrastructures that they quickly On the absorption of Orthodox Christians see Franz Babinger, Mahomet II, le

conquerant et son temps (1432-1481) (Paris, 1954), pp. I30-I. Halil Inalclk in 'Arna- wutlulk' EI2,vol. i, pp. 65I-8, discusses the Albanian case. Branislav Djurdjev, 'Bosna', EI2, vol. I, pp. I26x-75, describes the Ottoman conquest and absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Spanish Muslims and their impact on Mediterranean politics is developed in Hess, 'Moriscos', pp. 1-25. The activity of influential Jewish refugees from Iberia is the subject of P. Grunebaum-Ballin, Joseph Naci duc de Naxos (Paris, I968).




exploited.' Equally, the importance of the Ottoman economy stood out in relations between the empire and the commercial states of Venice and Portugal. In the sixteenth century the entrance of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean trading system in no way overwhelmed the existing economic structure despite the

attempts to block Muslim commercial operations. Not only was the long voyage from Lisbon to India expensive, but also the Portuguese could not transport either the kinds or quantity of goods in their ships sufficient to replace Muslim

cargoes that had been exchanged in India for eastern products. Gradually the costs of military competition with the Ottomans joined with economic problems of scale to impel the Portuguese to open peace negotiations with the Ottomans in I563. Meanwhile Venetian willingness to deal with the Ottoman empire led to an increase in the Mediterranean spice trade following the consolidation of

Egypt in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.2 In sum, the economic yield of the Ottoman expansion in 517 resulted in direct financial benefits that served to fuel further military expeditions. Spanish imperial growth in the early sixteenth

century, on the other hand, resulted in little immediate yield, and in the long run created economic conditions that encouraged Spain to disengage from warfare with the Turk. Meanwhile the economic interests of Venetians and Portuguese on the fringe of the now defunct Mamluk empire forced them to come to terms with the Grand Turk.

On the whole the doubling of the Ottoman empire in 1517 not only began the

sixteenth-century world war but it also tilted the balance of power in the Afro- Eurasian area toward Istanbul and not the Atlantic Ocean. Better than any ambassadorial report, the art of the frontiers expressed the sense of the times. One vivid miniature after another of successful military campaigns embellished Ottoman manuscripts through the end of the sixteenth century.3 For the main competitor of the Ottomans, for the old Christian order of the Mediterranean El Greco immortalized the profound internal and external challenges to that identity in the portrait of Cardinal Don Fernando Nifio de Guevara, Spanish Inquisitor.4 To the north and east all the tensions afflicting European society

I E. J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, Io0i-i650 (Cambridge, Mass., I934), pp. 32-4, provides the economic data; Elliot, Imperial Spain, pp. I79-204, 281-3i6, relates the financial condition of Spain to imperial adventures. Geoffrey Parker,' Spain, Her Enemies and the Netherlands, I559-I648 ', Past and Present, no. 49 (Nov., 1970), pp. 72-95, describes the economic consequences of northern frontier warfare for Spanish policy in the Mediterranean. On the Ottoman side see Shaw, Financial, pp. 283-5, and Sanuto, vol. XLI, cols. 534-5.

2 Godinho, L'?fconomie, pp. 573-4, 630-I, 7I3-834; and V. J. Parry, 'The Economy of Expanding Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (4 vols. to date, London, I966- ), vol. iv, pp. I55-200. C. R. Boxer, 'A Note on Portuguese Reactions to the Revival of the Red Sea Spice Trade and the Rise of Acheh, 1540-I600', JSEAH, vol. x/3 (Dec. I969), pp. 415-28, shows how Ottoman economic activities reached out as far as Indonesia.

3 Richard Ettinghausen, Turkish Miniatures (New York, I965), pp. 5-24. 4 Gianfrancesco Morosini, 'Venetian Ambassador's Report on Spain, I581 ', in Pursuit

of Power, ed. James C. Davis (New York, 1970), p. 73.



76 Andrew C. Hess

evoked a famous battle-cry from a man who not only stood on the border of the Ottoman-Austrian conflict but also on the frontier of a new human epoch. Twelve years after the conquest of Egypt, in the year of the first Ottoman siege of Vienna, Martin Luther produced his famous Protestant hymn, 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God'.I His use of a defensive metaphor accurately reflected the

position of a divided Europe now threatened by a fully matured Ottoman empire. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

I For the reflection of the Turkish menace in early sixteenth-century German hymns see Sydney H. Moore, 'The Turkish Menace in the Sixteenth Century', The Modern Language Review, vol. XL (1945), pp. 30-6.



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