But where did philosophers come from? If we try to describe the society of “archaic Greece” in one phrase, we can say that it was imbued with a “military” consciousness, and its best representatives were “noble warriors.” Chiron, who took over the baton of education from Phoenix

Where did you come from, “real people”? Europeans who encountered the Ainu in the 17th century were amazed by their appearance. Unlike the usual appearance of people of the Mongoloid race with yellow skin, a Mongolian fold of the eyelid, sparse facial hair, the Ainu had unusually thick

Where did the Westerners come from? At the beginning of the twentieth century. The Austro-Hungarian Empire included the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with its capital in Lemberg (Lviv), which, in addition to ethnic Polish territories, included Northern Bukovina (modern Chernivtsi region) and

Made inevitable the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries dominated large territories that fell victim to its insatiable military expansion. Forced to join the Central Powers, such as Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, it suffered the bitterness of defeat, unable to further establish itself as the world's leading empire.

Founder of the Ottoman Empire

At the end of the 13th century, Osman I Ghazi inherited from his father Bey Ertogrul power over the countless Turkish hordes inhabiting Phrygia. Having declared the independence of this relatively small territory and taking the title of Sultan, he managed to conquer a significant part of Asia Minor and thus found a powerful empire, named Ottoman in his honor. She was destined to play an important role in world history.

Already in the middle, the Turkish army landed on the coast of Europe and began its centuries-long expansion, which made this state one of the greatest in the world in the 15th-16th centuries. However, the beginning of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire began already in the 17th century, when the Turkish army, which had never known defeat before and was considered invincible, suffered a crushing blow near the walls of the Austrian capital.

First defeat from the Europeans

In 1683, hordes of Ottomans approached Vienna, besieging the city. Its inhabitants, having heard enough about the wild and ruthless morals of these barbarians, showed miracles of heroism, protecting themselves and their relatives from certain death. As historical documents testify, the success of the defenders was greatly facilitated by the fact that among the command of the garrison there were many prominent military leaders of those years who were able to competently and promptly take all the necessary defensive measures.

When the king of Poland arrived to help the besieged, the fate of the attackers was decided. They fled, leaving rich booty for the Christians. This victory, which began the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, had, first of all, psychological significance for the peoples of Europe. She dispelled the myth of the invincibility of the all-powerful Porte, as Europeans used to call Ottoman Empire.

Beginning of territorial losses

This defeat, as well as a number of subsequent failures, became the reason for the Peace of Karlowitz concluded in January 1699. According to this document, the Porte lost the previously controlled territories of Hungary, Transylvania and Timisoara. Its borders have shifted to the south by a considerable distance. This was already quite a significant blow to its imperial integrity.

Troubles in the 18th century

If the first half of the next, 18th century, was marked by certain military successes of the Ottoman Empire, which allowed it, albeit with the temporary loss of Derbent, to maintain access to the Black and Azov Seas, then the second half of the century brought a number of failures, which also predetermined the future collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The defeat in the Turkish War, which Empress Catherine II waged with the Ottoman Sultan, forced the latter to sign a peace treaty in July 1774, according to which Russia received the lands stretching between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug. The next year brings a new misfortune - the Porta loses Bukovina, which was transferred to Austria.

The 18th century ended in complete disaster for the Ottomans. The final defeat led to the conclusion of the very unfavorable and humiliating Peace of Iasi, according to which the entire Northern Black Sea region, including the Crimean Peninsula, went to Russia.

The signature on the document certifying that from now on and forever Crimea is ours was personally put by Prince Potemkin. In addition, the Ottoman Empire was forced to transfer to Russia the lands between the Southern Bug and the Dniester, as well as come to terms with the loss of its dominant positions in the Caucasus and the Balkans.

The beginning of a new century and new troubles

The beginning of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century was predetermined by its next defeat in the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812. The result of this was the signing in Bucharest of another agreement, essentially disastrous for the Porte. On the Russian side, the chief commissioner was Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, and on the Turkish side, Ahmed Pasha. The entire area from the Dniester to the Prut went to Russia and began to be called first the Bessarabia region, then the Bessarabia province, and now it is Moldova.

The attempt made by the Turks in 1828 to take revenge from Russia for past defeats turned into a new defeat and another peace treaty signed the following year in Andreapol, depriving Russia of its already rather scanty territory of the Danube Delta. To add insult to injury, Greece declared its independence at the same time.

Short-term success, again replaced by defeats

The only time luck smiled on the Ottomans was during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, which was mediocrely lost by Nicholas I. His successor on the Russian throne, Emperor Alexander II, was forced to cede a significant part of Bessarabia to the Porte, but the new war that followed in 1877-1878 returned everything to its place.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire continued. Taking advantage of the favorable moment, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro separated from it in the same year. All three states declared their independence. The 18th century ended for the Ottomans with the unification of the northern part of Bulgaria and the territory of the empire that belonged to them, called Southern Rumelia.

War with the Balkan Union

The final collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the Turkish Republic date back to the 20th century. This was preceded by a series of events, which began in 1908 when Bulgaria declared its independence and thereby ended the five hundred year Turkish yoke. This was followed by the war of 1912-1913, declared on the Porte by the Balkan Union. It included Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro. The goal of these states was to seize territories that belonged to the Ottomans at that time.

Despite the fact that the Turks fielded two powerful armies, Southern and Northern, the war, which ended in the victory of the Balkan Union, led to the signing of another treaty in London, which this time deprived the Ottoman Empire of almost the entire Balkan Peninsula, leaving it only Istanbul and a small part of Thrace. The bulk of the occupied territories were received by Greece and Serbia, which almost doubled their area. In those days, a new state was formed - Albania.

Proclamation of the Turkish Republic

You can simply imagine how the collapse of the Ottoman Empire occurred in subsequent years by following the course of the First World War. Wanting to regain at least part of the territories lost over recent centuries, the Porte took part in hostilities, but, to its misfortune, on the side of the losing powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. This was the final blow that crushed the once mighty empire that terrified the whole world. The victory over Greece in 1922 did not save it either. The process of decay was already irreversible.

The First World War for the Porte ended with the signing in 1920, according to which the victorious allies shamelessly stole the last territories remaining under Turkish control. All this led to its complete collapse and the proclamation of the Turkish Republic on October 29, 1923. This act marked the end of more than six hundred years of history of the Ottoman Empire.

Most researchers see the reasons for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, first of all, in the backwardness of its economy, the extremely low level of industry, and the lack of a sufficient number of highways and other means of communication. In a country at the level of medieval feudalism, almost the entire population remained illiterate. By many indicators, the empire was much less developed than other states of that period.

Objective evidence of the collapse of the empire

Speaking about what factors indicated the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, we should first of all mention the political processes that took place in it at the beginning of the 20th century and were practically impossible in earlier periods. This is the so-called Young Turk Revolution, which occurred in 1908, during which members of the Union and Progress organization seized power in the country. They overthrew the Sultan and introduced a constitution.

The revolutionaries did not last long in power, giving way to supporters of the deposed Sultan. The subsequent period was filled with bloodshed caused by clashes between warring factions and changes in rulers. All this irrefutably indicated that powerful centralized power was a thing of the past, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire began.

To briefly summarize, it should be said that Turkey has completed the path that from time immemorial was prepared for all states that left their mark in history. This is their origin, rapid flourishing and finally decline, which often led to their complete disappearance. The Ottoman Empire did not go away completely without a trace, having become today, although a restless, but by no means a dominant member of the world community.

Information about the life of one of the most famous Ottoman sultans, Suleiman the Magnificent (reigned 1520-1566, born in 1494, died in 1566). Suleiman also became famous for his relationship with the Ukrainian (according to other sources, Polish or Ruthenian) slave Roksolana - Khyurrem.

We will quote here several pages from the book of the English author Lord Kinross, very respected, including in modern Turkey, “The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire” (published in 1977), and also provide some excerpts from the broadcasts of the foreign Radio “Voice of Turkey”. Subheadings and specified notes in the text, as well as notes on illustrations Portalostranah.ru

The ancient miniature depicts Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the last year of his life and reign. On illus. it is shown how Suleiman in 1556 receives the ruler of Transylvania, the Hungarian John II (Janos II) Zapolyai. Here is the background to this event. John II Zápolyai was the son of Voivode Zápolyai, who in the last period of independent Hungary before the Ottoman invasion ruled the region of Transylvania, part of the Kingdom of Hungary, but with a large Romanian population. After the conquest of Hungary by the young Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1526, Zápolyai became a vassal of the Sultan, and his region, the only one of the entire former Hungarian kingdom, retained statehood. (Another part of Hungary then became part of the Ottoman Empire as the Pashalyk of Buda, and another part went to the Habsburgs). In 1529, during his unsuccessful campaign to conquer Vienna, Suleiman the Magnificent, visiting Buda, solemnly crowned the Hungarian kings in Zápolya. After the death of Janos Zápolyai and the end of his mother's regency, Zápolyai's son, John II Zápolyai, shown here, became the ruler of Transylvania. Even in the infancy of this ruler of Transylvania, Suleiman, during a ceremony with a kiss of this child, who was left without a father at an early age, blessed John II Zapolyai to the throne. On illus. the moment is shown as John II (Janos II) Zápolyai, who had already reached middle age by that time, kneels three times before the Sultan between the Sultan’s fatherly blessings. Suleiman was then in Hungary, fighting his last war against the Habsburgs. Returning from a campaign near Belgrade, the Sultan soon died. In 1570, John II Zápolyai would transfer his nominal crown of kings of Hungary to the Habsburgs, remaining Prince of Transylvania (he would die in 1571). Transylvania will remain autonomous for about 130 years. Weakening of the Turks Central Europe, will allow the Habsburgs to annex Hungarian lands. Unlike Hungary, Southeastern Europe, which had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire earlier, would remain under Ottoman rule for much longer—until the 19th century.

In the illustration: a fragment of the engraving “The Bath of the Turkish Sultan”. This engraving illustrates Kinross's book. The engraving for the book was taken from an ancient edition of de Osson's "The General Picture of the Ottoman Empire." Here (on the left) we see the Ottoman Sultan in a bathhouse, in the middle of a harem.

Lord Kinross writes: “Suleiman's rise to the top of the Ottoman sultanate in 1520 coincided with a turning point in the history of European civilization. The darkness of the late Middle Ages with its dying feudal institutions gave way to the golden light of the Renaissance. In the West it was to become an inseparable element of the Christian balance of power. In the Islamic East, great achievements were predicted for Suleiman. The tenth Turkish sultan, who ruled at the beginning of the 10th century Hijra, he was in the eyes of Muslims a living personification of the blessed number ten - the number of human fingers and toes; ten senses and ten parts of the Koran and its variants; the Ten Commandments of the Pentateuch; ten disciples of the Prophet, ten heavens of the Islamic paradise and ten spirits sitting on them and guarding them. Eastern tradition holds that at the beginning of every age a great man appears, destined to "take it by the horns", control it and become its embodiment. And such a man appeared in the guise of Suleiman - “the most perfect of the perfect,” therefore, the angel of heaven.
Since the fall of Constantinople and Mehmed's subsequent conquests, the Western powers were forced to draw serious conclusions from the advances of the Ottoman Turks. Seeing it as a constant source of concern, they prepared to resist this advance not only in the sense of defense by military means, but also by diplomatic action. During this period of religious ferment there were people who believed that a Turkish invasion would be God's punishment for the sins of Europe; there were places where “Turkish bells” called believers every day to repentance and prayer.

Crusader legends said that the conquering Turks would advance so far as to reach the holy city of Cologne, but that there their invasion would be repulsed by a great victory for the Christian emperor - but not the pope - and their forces driven back beyond Jerusalem...

Map showing the expansion of the Ottoman Empire (starting in 1359, when the Ottomans already had a small state in Anatolia). But the history of the Ottoman state began a little earlier. From a small beylik (principality) under the control of Ertogrul, and then Osman (ruled in 1281-1326, from his name the dynasty and the state received their name), which was under the vassalage of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia. The Ottomans came to Anatolia (today's Western Türkiye) to escape the Mongols. Here they came under the scepter of the Seljuks, who were already weakened and paid tribute to the Mongols. Then, in part of Anatolia, Byzantium still continued to exist, but in a reduced form, which was able to survive, having previously won several battles with the Arabs (the Arabs and Mongols later clashed with each other, leaving Byzantium alone). Against the background of the defeat of the Arab Caliphate by the Mongols with its capital in Baghdad, and the weakening of the Seljuks, the Ottomans gradually began to build their state. Despite the unsuccessful war with Tamerlane (Timur), representing the Central Asian ulus of the Mongolian Chingizid dynasty, Ottoman statehood in Anatolia survived. The Ottomans then subjugated all the other Turkic beyliks of Anatolia, and with the capture of Constantinople in 1453 (although the Ottomans initially maintained friendly relations with the Greek nation of the Byzantines) marked the beginning of the dramatic growth of the empire. The map also shows the conquests from 1520 to 1566 in a special color, i.e. during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.

History of the Ottomans:

“The first Ottoman rulers - Osman, Orhan, Murat, were as skilled politicians and administrators as they were successful and talented commanders and strategists. Besides, they were driven by the ardent impulse characteristic of Muslim leaders of that time. At the same time, the Ottoman state in the first period of its existence was not destabilized, unlike other Seljuk principalities and Byzantium, by the struggle for power and ensured internal political unity.

Among the factors that contributed to the success of the Ottoman cause, one can also point out the fact that even opponents saw in the Ottomans Islamic warriors, not burdened with purely clerical or fundamentalist views, which distinguished the Ottomans from the Arabs, with whom Christians had previously had to deal. The Ottomans did not convert the Christians under their control by force into the true faith; they allowed their non-Muslim subjects to practice their religions and cultivate their traditions. It should be said (and this is a historical fact) that the Thracian peasants, languishing under the unbearable burden of Byzantine taxes, perceived the Ottomans as their liberators.

The Ottomans united on a rational basis purely Turkic traditions of nomadism with Western standards of administration, created a pragmatic model of public administration.

Byzantium was able to exist due to the fact that at one time it filled the vacuum created in the region with the fall of the Roman Empire. The Seljuks were able to found their Turkish-Islamic state, taking advantage of the vacuum created by the weakening of the Arab caliphate. Well, the Ottomans strengthened their state, skillfully taking advantage of the fact that a political vacuum had formed both to the east and to the west of their area of ​​residence, associated with the weakening of the Byzantines, Seljuks, Mongols, and Arabs. And the territory that was part of this very vacuum was very, very significant, including all of the Balkans, the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa.”
Until the 16th century, Ottoman rulers were distinguished by pragmatism and rationalism, which at one time made it possible to transform a small principality into a huge empire. An example of this was shown in the 16th century by the famous Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who, after the failure of the first siege of Vienna (in 1529), realized that the Ottomans had already reached a point beyond which they would harm themselves. That is why he abandoned the idea of ​​​​a second siege of Vienna, seeing it as the very last point. However, his descendant, Sultan Mehmet IV and his commander Kara Mustafa Pasha forgot this lesson taught by Suleiman the Magnificent and decided to re-siege Vienna at the end of the century. But having suffered a heavy defeat, they retreated, suffering significant losses.”

Here is what the Venetian envoy Bartolomeo Contarini wrote about Suleiman a few weeks after Suleiman’s ascension to the throne:

“He is twenty-five years old. he is tall, strong, with a pleasant expression on his face. His neck is slightly longer than usual, his face is thin, and his nose is aquiline. He has a mustache and a small beard; nevertheless, the facial expression is pleasant, although the skin tends to be excessively pale. They say about him that he is a wise ruler who loves to learn, and all people hope for his good rule.”

Educated at the palace school in Istanbul, he spent most of his youth reading books and studying to develop his spiritual world, and came to be regarded with respect and affection by the people of Istanbul and Edirne (Adrianople).

Suleiman also received good training in administrative affairs as a young governor of three different provinces. He was thus to grow into a statesman who combined experience and knowledge, a man of action. At the same time, remaining a cultured and tactful person, worthy of the Renaissance era in which he was born.

Finally, Suleiman was a man of sincere religious convictions, which developed in him a spirit of kindness and tolerance, without any trace of his father's fanaticism. Most of all, he was inspired highly by the idea of ​​​​his own duty as "Leader of the Faithful." Following the traditions of the Ghazis of his ancestors, he was a holy warrior, obliged from the very beginning of his reign to prove his military strength in comparison to that of the Christians. He sought, with the help of imperial conquests, to achieve in the West the same thing that his father, Selim, managed to achieve in the East.

In achieving the first objective, he could take advantage of Hungary's current weakness as a link in the chain of Habsburg defensive positions. In a swift and decisive campaign, he surrounded Belgrade, then subjected it to heavy artillery fire from an island on the Danube. “The enemy,” he noted in his diary, “abandoned the defense of the city and set it on fire; they retreated to the quotetel.” Here the explosions of mines placed under the walls predetermined the surrender of the garrison, which did not receive any help from the Hungarian government. Leaving Belgrade with a garrison of Janissaries, Suleiman returned to the triumphal meeting in Istanbul, confident that the Hungarian plains and the upper Danube basin now lay defenseless against Turkish troops. However, another four years passed before the Sultan was able to resume his invasion.

His attention at this time was switched from Central Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean. Here, on the sea route between Istanbul and the new Turkish territories of Egypt and Syria, lay a securely fortified outpost of Christianity, the island of Rhodes. His Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, skilled and formidable sailors and warriors, notorious to the Turks as "professional cutthroats and pirates," now constantly threatened the Turks' trade with Alexandria; intercepted Turkish cargo ships carrying timber and other goods to Egypt, and pilgrims en route to Mecca via Suez; interfered with the operations of the Sultan's own corsairs; supported the uprising against the Turkish authorities in Syria.

Suleiman Fabulouscaptures the island of Rhodes

Thus, Suleiman decided to capture Rhodes at any cost. To this end he sent south an armada of nearly four hundred ships, while he himself led an army of one hundred thousand men overland through Asia Minor to a spot on the coast opposite the island.

The Knights had a new Grand Master, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a man of action, decisive and courageous, completely devoted in a militant spirit to the cause of the Christian faith. To the ultimatum from the Sultan, which preceded the attack and included the usual offer of peace prescribed by the Koranic tradition, the Grand Master responded only by accelerating the execution of his plans for the defense of the fortress, the walls of which had been further strengthened after the previous siege by Mehmed the Conqueror...

The Turks, when their fleet was assembled, landed engineers on the island, who spent a month scouting for suitable locations for their batteries. At the end of July 1522, reinforcements from the main forces of the Sultan arrived...

(The bombing) was only a prelude to the main operation to mine the fortress.

It involved sappers digging invisible trenches in the rocky soil through which batteries of mines could be pushed closer to the walls and then mines could be placed at selected points inside and under the walls.

This was an underground approach rarely used in siege warfare until this time.

The most thankless and dangerous work of digging mines fell on that part of the Sultan's troops, which was called up for military service mainly from the Christian origin of the peasants of such provinces as Bosnia, Bulgaria and Wallachia.

Only at the beginning of September it became possible to advance the necessary forces close to the walls to begin digging.

Soon most of The fortress rampart was pierced by almost fifty tunnels, going in different directions. However, the knights enlisted the help of an Italian no minam specialist from the Venetian service named Martinegro, and he also led the mines.

Martinegro soon created his own underground labyrinth of tunnels, intersecting with and opposing the Turkish ones at various points, often at a distance of little more than the thickness of a plank.

He had his own network of listening posts, equipped with mine detectors of his own invention - tubes of parchment that signaled with their reflected sounds any blow from an enemy pickaxe, and a team of Rhodians whom he trained to use them. Martinegro also installed countermines and "ventilated" discovered mines by drilling spiral vents to dampen the force of their explosion.

The series of attacks, costly to the Turks, reached their climax at dawn on September 24, during the decisive general assault announced the previous day by the explosions of several newly planted mines.

At the head of the assault against four separate bastions, under the cover of a curtain of black smoke and artillery bombardment, were the Janissaries, who hoisted their banners in several places.

But after six hours of fighting, as fanatical as any other fight in the history of wars between Christians and Muslims, the attackers were driven back with the loss of more than one thousand people.

In the next two months, the Sultan no longer risked new general attacks, but limited himself to mining operations, which penetrated deeper and deeper under the city and were accompanied by unsuccessful local assaults. The morale of the Turkish troops was low; besides, winter was approaching.

But the knights also became disheartened. Their losses, although only a tenth of those of the Turks, were quite heavy in relation to their numbers. Supplies and food supplies were dwindling.

Moreover, among the city’s defenders there were those who would prefer to surrender. It was quite reasonably argued that Rhodes was lucky that he was able to exist so long after the fall of Constantinople; that the Christian powers of Europe will now never resolve their opposing interests; that the Ottoman Empire, after its conquest of Egypt, became at present the only sovereign Islamic power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

After resuming the general assault, which failed, the Sultan, on December 10, raised a white flag from the tower of a church located outside the city walls, as an invitation to discuss terms of surrender on honorable terms.

But the Grand Master convened a council: the knights, in turn, threw out a white flag, and a three-day truce was declared.

Suleiman's proposals, which were now able to convey to them, included allowing the knights and inhabitants of the fortress to leave it along with the property they could carry away.

Those who chose to remain were guaranteed the preservation of their homes and property without any encroachment, complete religious freedom and tax exemption for five years.

After heated debate, the majority of the council agreed that "it would be a more acceptable thing for God to ask for peace and spare the lives of the common people, women and children."

So, on Christmas Day, after a siege that lasted 145 days, the capitulation of Rhodes was signed, the Sultan confirmed his promise and also offered ships for the inhabitants to sail. Hostages were exchanged and a small force of highly disciplined Janissaries was sent into the city. The Sultan scrupulously complied with the conditions he set, which were violated only once - and he did not know about it - by a small detachment of troops who disobeyed, rushed through the streets and committed a number of atrocities, before they were again called to order.

After the ceremonial entry of Turkish troops into the city, the Grand Master performed the formalities of surrender to the Sultan, who gave him the appropriate honors.

On January 1, 1523, De L'Isle-Adam left Rhodes forever, leaving the city together with the surviving knights, carrying banners waving in their hands, and fellow travelers. Shipwrecked in a hurricane near Crete, they lost much of their remaining property, but were able to continue their journey to Sicily and Rome.

For five years, the detachment of knights had no shelter. Finally they were given shelter in Malta, where they again had to fight the Turks. Their departure from Rhodes was a blow to Christendom, nothing now posed a serious threat to the Turkish naval forces in the Aegean Sea and in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Having established the superiority of his weapons in two successful campaigns, young Suleiman chose to do nothing. For three summers before embarking on the third campaign, he occupied himself with improvements in the internal organization of his government. For the first time after taking power, he visited Edirne (Adrianople), where he indulged in hunting fun. Then he sent troops to Egypt to suppress the uprising of the Turkish governor Ahmed Pasha, who renounced his allegiance to the Sultan. He appointed his grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, to command the suppression of the uprising in order to restore order in Cairo and reorganize the provincial administration.

Ibrahim Pasha andSuleiman: The Beginning

But upon returning from Edirne to Istanbul, the Sultan was faced with a Janissary rebellion. These warlike, privileged foot soldiers (recruited from Christian children aged 12-16 in Turkish, mainly European, provinces. Converted to Islam at a young age, given first to Turkish families and then to the army, losing contact with their first family. Note Portalostranah.ru) counted on annual campaigns to not only satisfy their thirst for battle, but also to provide themselves with additional income from robberies. So they were indignant at the prolonged inaction of the Sultan.

The Janissaries became noticeably stronger and more aware of their power, since they now constituted a quarter of the Sultan's standing army. In wartime they were generally loyal and faithful servants of their lord, although they might disobey his orders prohibiting the sack of captured cities, and on occasion they would limit his conquests to protest the continuation of overly strenuous campaigns. But in peacetime, languishing in inaction, no longer living under strict discipline, but living in relative idleness, the Janissaries increasingly acquired the quality of a threatening and insatiable mass - especially during the interval between the death of one sultan and the accession to the throne of another.

Now, in the spring of 1525, they began a rebellion, plundering customs houses, the Jewish quarter and the houses of high officials and other people. A party of Janissaries forced their way into the chamber of the Sultan, who is said to have killed three of them with his own hand, but was forced to retire when the others threatened his life by pointing their bows at him.

The mutiny was suppressed by the execution of their aga (commander) and several officers suspected of complicity, while other officers were dismissed from their posts. The soldiers were reassured by monetary offerings, but also by the prospect of a campaign for the following year. Ibrahim Pasha was recalled from Egypt and appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the empire, acting as second only to the Sultan...

Ibrahim Pasha is one of the most brilliant and powerful figures of the reign of Suleiman. He was a Greek Christian by birth - the son of a sailor from Parga, in the Ionian Sea. He was born in the same year - and even, as he claimed, in the same week - as Suleiman himself. Captured as a child by Turkish corsairs, Ibrahim was sold into slavery to a widow and Magnesia, who gave him a good education and taught him to play a musical instrument.

Some time later, during his youth, Ibrahim met Suleiman, at that time heir to the throne and governor of Magnesia, who was fascinated by him and his talents, and made him his property. Suleiman made Ibrahim one of his personal pages, then his confidant and closest favorite.

After Suleiman's accession to the throne, the young man was appointed to the post of senior falconer, then successively held a number of posts in the imperial chambers.

Ibrahim managed to establish unusually friendly relations with his master, spending the night in Suleiman’s apartment, dining with him at the same table, sharing leisure time with him, exchanging notes with him through dumb servants. Suleiman, withdrawn by nature, silent and prone to manifestations of melancholy, needed precisely such confidential communication.

Under his patronage, Ibrahim was married with emphatic pomp and splendor to a girl who was considered one of the Sultan’s sisters.

His rise to power was, in fact, so rapid that it caused Ibrahim himself some alarm.

Well aware of the vagaries of the rise and fall of officials at the Ottoman court, Ibrahim once went so far as to beg Suleiman not to place him in too high a position, since a fall would be his ruin.

In response, Suleiman is said to have praised his favorite for his modesty and vowed that Ibrahim would not be put to death while he reigned, no matter what charges might be brought against him. But, as the historian of the next century will note in the light of subsequent events: "The position of kings, who are men and subject to change, and the position of favorites who are proud and ungrateful, will cause Suleiman to break his promise, and Ibrahim will lose his faith and loyalty."

Hungary - Ottoman Empire:how Hungary disappearedfrom a world map, divided into three parts

The map from the publication “History of Hungary,” published in Russian in 2002 with the assistance of Hungary, shows Hungary divided into three parts after the Ottoman conquest in 1526. The darkest background is the Hungarian lands that went to the Habsburgs. The semi-independent Principality of Transylvania is also indicated, and the white background shows the territory that ceded to the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, at first Buda was under the control of the Transylvanian principality, but then the Ottomans annexed these lands directly to the Ottoman Empire. The intermediate border of Ottoman territory before the introduction of direct control of Buda is indicated on the map by a broken line.

After the conquest of Hungary by Suleiman the Magnificent, the state of the Hungarians, whose medieval kingdom was an integral part of Europe, completely disappeared from the world map for several centuries, turning into several stumps: one part of Hungary became a province of the Ottoman Empire, the other chopped off part became part of the Habsburg state, and was the third part is Transylvania, with a strong Romanian element, but ruled by Hungarian feudal lords and paying tribute to the Ottoman Empire. The Hungarians managed to return to the world map only in the 19th century, when the Habsburg Empire, gradually returning the lands of the old Hungarian Kingdom, became the so-called. the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. But only with the collapse of Austria-Hungary, at the beginning of the 20th century, was Hungary able to become independent again.

But back to Hungary during the era of Suleiman the Magnificent, Lord Kinross writes:

“The Janissary rebellion may have hastened Suleiman’s decision to march into Hungary. But he was also influenced by the defeat and capture of Francis I by the Habsburg Emperor at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Francis, from his prison in Madrid, sent a secret letter to Istanbul, hidden in the soles of his envoy's shoes, asking the Sultan for release, undertaking a general campaign against Charles, who would otherwise become "master of the sea." (Referring to the battle for Milan and Burgundy between France and Spain (Holy Roman Empire). And, accordingly, the French king Francis I, who was soon released by Charles V to France; and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor from the Habsburg dynasty.

The appeal coincided with Suleiman's personal plans at a time when Hungary, a country without patriotism and virtually without friends, was more than ever in disorder and division between the "palace party" of the weak king Louis II with his nobles (Louis, also known as Lajos II, represented the Central European dynasty of the Youngellons, who at different times ruled in the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary. Louis's father Wladislav was invited from Poland to Hungary after the interruption of the local dynasty by the Magyar nobility, without having any special connection with the country. the emperor but received little support from him and even less from the West; the "national party" (Hungarian) of Jan Zapolyai, the governor and effective ruler of (then a Hungarian province) of Transylvania, with a group of lesser magnates; And by the oppressed peasantry, which saw the Turks as liberators. Suleiman, therefore, could enter the country as an enemy of its king and emperor and at the same time a friend of the magnates and peasants.

Since the fall of Belgrade, border skirmishes between Turks and Hungarians have continued continuously with varying success...

By this point, the Hungarians had concentrated their troops on the Mohács Plain, about thirty miles to the north. The young King Louis arrived with an army of only four thousand men. But reinforcements of all kinds began to arrive until the total number of his troops, including Poles, Germans and Bohemians, reached twenty-five thousand people. The Emperor (i.e. Charles V - Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire - and also the ruler of Spain, and earlier of Austria. Note Portalostranah.ru) when it came to allocating troops for the war with the Turks, found himself dependent on the mercy of a number of Protestant diets. They were in no hurry, even resisted, to single out the soldiers, since among them there were pacifist-minded individuals who saw the principle enemy not in the Sultan, but in the Pope. At the same time, they were quick to exploit the age-old conflict between the Habsburgs and the Turks for their own religious purposes. As a result, in 1521 the Diet of Worms refused to provide assistance for the defense of Belgrade, and now, in 1526, the Diet of Speyer, after much deliberation, voted too late for reinforcements for the army at Mohács.

On the battlefield, the most astute of the Hungarian commanders discussed the question of a strategic retreat in the direction of Buda, thereby inviting the Turks to follow them and extend their communications; moreover, benefiting along the way from reinforcements from Zapolya's army, which at that moment was only a few days' march away, and from a contingent of Bohemians who had already appeared on the western border.

But most Hungarians, self-confident and impatient, harbored dreams of immediate military glory. Led by the warlike Magyar nobility, who both did not trust the king and were jealous of Zapolya, they noisily demanded immediate battle, taking up an offensive position right on this place. Their demands prevailed, and the battle took place on a marshy plain stretching for six miles and west of the Danube - a site chosen to allow the Hungarian cavalry to deploy, but offering the same opportunity to the more professional and more numerous Turkish cavalry. Upon learning of this reckless decision, the far-sighted and intelligent prelate predicted that “the Hungarian nation will have twenty thousand dead on the day of battle and it would be good for the pope to canonize them.”

Impatient in both tactics and strategy, the Hungarians opened the battle with a frontal charge of their heavily armed cavalry, led personally by King Louis and aimed directly at the center of the Turkish line. When it seemed that success was in sight, the attack was followed by a general advance of all Hungarian troops. However, the Turks, hoping in this way to mislead the enemy and defeat him, planned their defense in depth, placing their main line further to the rear, on the slope of the hill that covered it from behind. As a result, the Hungarian cavalry, still rushing forward at the moment, reached the main core of the Turkish army - the Janissaries, grouped around the Sultan and his banner. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting broke out, and at one point the Sultan himself found himself in danger when arrows and spears struck his shell. But the Turkish artillery, which was vastly superior to the enemy and, as usual, skillfully used, decided the outcome of the matter. It mowed down Hungarians by the thousands and gave the Turks the opportunity to encircle and defeat the Hungarian army in the center of the position, destroying and scattering the enemy until the survivors fled in complete disorder to the north and east. The battle was thus won in an hour and a half.

The King of Hungary died on the battlefield, trying to escape with a wound to the head. (Louis was 20 years old. Note Portalostranah.ru). His body, identified by the jewels on his helmet, was discovered in a swamp, where, crushed by the weight of his own armor, he drowned under his fallen horse. His kingdom died with him, for he had no heir; Most of the Magyar nobility and eight bishops also perished. It is said that Suleiman expressed knightly regret about the death of the king: “May Allah be merciful to him and punish those who were deceived by his inexperience: it was not in my desire that he would stop his path like that when he had barely tasted the sweetness of life and royal power."

More pragmatic and far from chivalrous was the Sultan’s order not to take prisoners. In front of his bright red imperial tent, a pyramid of a thousand heads of the Hungarian nobility was soon built, on August 31, 1526, the day after the battle, he wrote in his diary: “The Sultan, seated on a golden throne, receives expressions of respect from his viziers and beys; massacre of 2 thousand prisoners; It's pouring rain." September 2: “2 thousand Hungarian infantry and 4 thousand cavalry killed at Mohács were interred.” After this, Mohács was burned, and the surrounding area was set on fire. Potalostranah.ru).

Not without reason, the “ruins of Mohács,” as the site is still called, has been described as the “grave of the Hungarian nation.” To this day, when misfortune happens, the Hungarian says: “It doesn’t matter, the greater loss was on the Mohács field.”

After the Battle of Mohács, which established Turkey's position as the superior power in the heart of Europe for the next two centuries, organized resistance to Hungary virtually disappeared. Jan Zapolyai and his troops, who could have influenced the outcome of the battle, reached the Danube the next day, but hastened to retreat as soon as they received news of the defeat of their compatriots. On September 10, the Sultan and his army entered Buda. On the way there: “September 4. He ordered the killing of all the peasants in the camp. Exception for women. Akıncı is prohibited from engaging in robbery.” This was a prohibition that they constantly ignored. (About Jan Zapolya and the situation of Hungary under the Ottomans - from a modern Hungarian point of view will be available later).

The city of Buda was burned to the ground, and only the royal palace remained, where Suleiman set up his residence. Here, in the company of Ibrahim, he collected a collection of palace valuables, which was transported by river to Belgrade, and from there further to Istanbul. These riches included the large library of Matthias Corvinus, known throughout Europe, along with three bronze sculptures from Italy depicting Hercules, Diana and Apollo. The most valuable trophies, however, were two huge cannons, which (Suleiman's great-grandfather, who conquered Constantinople. Note Portalostranah.ru) Mehmed the Conqueror was obliged to destroy after the failed siege of Belgrade and which the Hungarians proudly displayed from then on as proof of their heroism.

The Sultan, now immersed in the pleasures of regular and falconry, in the world of music and palace balls, meanwhile wondered what he would do with this country, which he had conquered with such unexpected ease. It was assumed that he would occupy Hungary and leave his garrisons there, adding it to the empire, as he did with Belgrade and Rhodes. But for the moment he chose to be content with the fruits of his limited victory. His army, essentially fit for combat only in the summer, suffered from the harsh, rainy weather of the Danube Valley.

Moreover, winter was approaching, and his army was not able to exercise control over the entire country. Moreover, the presence of the Sultan was required in the capital in order to deal with the unrest in Anatolia, where it was necessary to suppress the uprisings in Cilicia and Karaman. The communication routes between Buda and Istanbul were very long. According to the historian Kemalpashi-zade: “The time when this province should be annexed to the domains of Islam has not yet come. The matter was postponed until a more appropriate occasion."

Therefore, Suleiman built a bridge of boats across the Danube to Pest and, after setting the city on fire, led his troops home along the left bank of the river.

His departure left a political and dynastic vacuum in Hungary. Two rival claimants sought to fill it by challenging the crown of the deceased King Louis. The first was Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg, brother of Emperor Charles V and brother-in-law of the childless King Louis, to whose throne he had a legitimate claim. His rival challenger was Jan Zapolyai, the ruling prince of Transylvania, who, as a Hungarian, could win over the law excluding the participation of foreigners in the struggle for the throne of his country, and who, with his still fresh and not battle-worn army, practically controlled most of the kingdom.

The Diet, consisting mainly of Hungarian nobility, elected Zápolyai, and he entered Budapest to be crowned. This suited Suleiman, who could count on Zapolyai to keep his promise, while Zapolyai himself received material support from Francis I and his anti-Habbsburg allies.

However, a few weeks later, a rival Diet, supported by the pro-German part of the family nobility, elected Ferdinand, who had already been elected King of Bohemia, as King of Hungary. This led to a civil war, in which Ferdinand, at his own peril and risk, went on a campaign against Zapolyai, defeated him and sent him into exile in Poland. Ferdinand in turn was crowned King of Hungary, occupied Buda and began making plans for the creation of a central European Habsburg state formed from Austria, Bohemia and Hungary.

Such plans, however, had to depend on the Turks, whose diplomacy henceforth influenced the course of European history. From Poland, Zapolyai sent an ambassador to Istanbul, seeking an alliance with the Sultan. At first he received an arrogant reception from Ibrahim and his fellow viziers. But in the end the Sultan agreed to give Zápolya the title of king, effectively giving him the lands that his armies had conquered and promising him protection from Ferdinand and all his enemies.

An agreement was signed under which Zápolyai undertook to pay the Sultan an annual tribute, allocate at his disposal every ten years a tenth of the population of Hungary of both sexes, and forever grant the right of free passage through his territory to the armed forces of the Turks. This turned Jan Zapolyai into a vassal of the Sultan, and his part of Hungary into a satellite kingdom under Turkish protectorate.

Ferdinand, in turn, sent envoys to Istanbul in the hope of achieving a truce. The Sultan refused their presumptuous demands and they were thrown into prison.

Suleiman was now preparing plans for a third campaign in the upper Danube valley, the purpose of which was to defend Zapolya from Ferdinand and challenge the Emperor Charles V himself. As the German folk song about the Turks:
“He will soon leave Hungary,
In Austria it will be by dawn,
Bayern is almost in control.
From there he will reach another land,
Soon, perhaps, he will come to the Rhine"

Suleiman the Magnificenttrying to take the city of Vienna.

The first siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529. In the foreground is the tent of Sultan Suleiman. From an antique miniature.

On May 10, 1529, he left Istanbul with an army even larger than before, again under the command of Ibrahim Pasha. The rains fell even more heavily than before, and the expedition reached the outskirts of Vienna a month later than planned. Meanwhile, Zapolyai came to greet his master on the field of Mohacs with six thousand people. The Sultan received him with appropriate ceremony, crowning him with the sacred crown of St. Stephen... (For the background story about the conquest of Hungary by Suleiman, and about the Hungarian Zapolya, who received him, see the previous page. Note Portalostranah.ru).

Fortunately for the defenders (at Vienna), Suleiman was forced by the rains to leave behind him the bulk of his heavy siege artillery, so effective in Rhodes. He had only light guns, capable of causing only minor damage to the fortified walls, and could therefore rely mainly on laying mines. However, the Sultan underestimated the task before him when he invited the garrison to surrender, stating that he only sought to pursue and discover King Ferdinand.

He boasted that if there was resistance, he would have breakfast in Vienna three days later, on the feast day of St. Michael, and so destroy the city that it would never exist again, and not leave a single person alive. But two weeks passed, and the crowns still held on. St. Michael's Day brought only new, unseasonal rains, from which the Turks suffered in their light tents.

The released prisoner was sent to the Sultan with a note saying that his breakfast was already cold and that he should be content with the food that the cannons from the city walls could bring him.

The musket fire of the Turks was so accurate and constant that it made it impossible for any defender to appear on these walls without the risk of being wounded or killed; their archers, hiding among the ruins of the suburbs, fired an endless hail of arrows, so deadly that they fell into the loopholes and embrasures in the walls, preventing the townspeople from going out into the street. Arrows flew in all directions, and the Viennese took some of them, wrapped in expensive fabrics and even decorated with pearls - apparently fired by noble Turks - as souvenirs.

Turkish sappers exploded mines and, despite active counter-mining through the city cellars, large gaps began to form in the city walls as a result. The constantly renewed attacks of the Turks were repelled by the courageous defenders of the city, who celebrated their success with the loud sound of trumpets and military music. They themselves periodically made forays, sometimes returning with prisoners - with trophies, which in one case amounted to eighty people and five camels.

Suleiman watched the military operations from a tent, raised high above the Turks' camp, covered with carpets, hung from the inside with fine expensive fabrics and furnished with sofas decorated with precious stones and numerous turrets with pinnacles of gold. Here the Sultan interrogated the captured Christians and sent them back to the city with threats and promises, loaded with gifts of clothes and Turkish ducats. But this made no impression on the defenders. Ibrahim Pasha, leading the siege, sought to inspire the attackers by distributing handfuls of gold as a reward for the head of an enemy or for the capture of an important prisoner. But, since the morale of the troops was falling, they had to be forced into battle with blows of sticks, whips and sabers.

On the evening of October 12, the Divan, a military council, was convened at the Sultan's headquarters to decide whether to continue or end the siege. Ibrahim, expressing the views of the majority, would prefer to remove it; The army's morale was low, winter was approaching, supplies were dwindling, the Janissaries were dissatisfied, and the enemy was expecting imminent reinforcements. After discussion, it was decided to attempt a fourth and final main assault, offering the troops exceptional monetary rewards for success. On October 14, the assault was launched by the Janissaries and selected units of the Sultan's army. The assault encountered desperate resistance that lasted hour after hour. The attackers failed to storm a 150-foot-wide breach in the walls. The Turkish losses were so heavy that they created widespread disappointment.

The army of the Sultan, capable of fighting only in summer time, could not endure a winter campaign without losing its horses, and was therefore limited to a season of warfare lasting scarcely more than six months. But the Sultan himself and the ministers accompanying him could not be absent from Istanbul for such a long time. Now, when it was already mid-October and the last attack ended in failure, Suleiman lifted the siege and gave the order for a general retreat. The Turkish troops set their camp on fire, killing or burning alive prisoners captured in the Austrian province, excluding those of both sexes who were younger and who could be sold in the slave markets. The army began its long journey to Istanbul, disturbed by skirmishes with enemy cavalry and exhausted by bad weather.

The bells of Vienna, which had been silent throughout the siege, now rang triumphantly amid the roar of gunfire, while St. Stephen's Cathedral echoed with the mighty sound of "Te Deum" ("We praise You, God") in gratitude for the great victory. Hans Sachs, the Mastersinger, composed his own thanksgiving ballad with the words “If God does not protect the city, all the efforts of the guard are in vain.”

The heart of Christian Europe was not given into the hands of the Turks. Sultan Suleiman suffered his first defeat, being driven from the walls of the great capital by a force which his own outnumbered three to one. In Buda, his vassal Zapolyai greeted him with a compliment about his “successful campaign.”

This was precisely the kind of sultan who tried to present her to his subjects, who celebrated his return with public festivities in the name of the lavish and magnificent celebration of the circumcision of his five sons. The Sultan sought to maintain his authority by presenting everything as if he had no intention of taking Vienna, but only wanted to fight Archduke Ferdinand, who did not dare to oppose him and who, as Ibrahim later put it, was just a small Viennese philistine, not worthy of serious attention "

In the eyes of the whole world, the Sultan's authority was saved by the arrival in Istanbul of ambassadors from Ferdinand, who offered a truce and an annual "boarding" to the Sultan and the Grand Vizier if they recognized him as King of Hungary, ceded Buda and refused support to Zapolya.

The Sultan still expressed his determination to cross arms with Emperor Charles. Therefore, on April 26, 1532, he once again moved up the Danube with his army and river fleet. Before reaching Belgrade, Suleiman was greeted by Ferdinand's new envoys, who now offered peace on even more conciliatory terms, increasing the size of the proposed "boarding house" and expressing a willingness to recognize Zapolya's individual claims.

But the Sultan, having received Ferdinand’s ambassadors in a luxuriously furnished room and letting them feel humiliated by the fact that they were placed below the French envoy, only emphasized that his enemy was not Ferdinand, but Charles: “The King of Spain,” he said defiantly, “for for a long time declared his desire to go against the Turks; but I, by the grace of God, go with my army against the no. If he has a brave heart, let him wait for me on the battlefield, and then it will be God's will. If, however, he does not want to wait for me, let him send tribute to my imperial majesty.”

This time the Emperor, returning to his German possessions while temporarily on peaceful terms with France, fully aware of the seriousness of the Turkish threat and his obligation to defend Europe against it, assembled the largest and most powerful Imperial army that had ever before confronted the Turks. Inspired by the knowledge that this was a decisive, turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam, soldiers flocked in droves to the theater of operations from all corners of its possessions. From beyond the Alps came contingents of Italians and Spaniards. An army was assembled that had never before been assembled in Western Europe.

In order to raise such an army, Charles was forced to come to an agreement with the Lutherans, who had hitherto rendered in vain all efforts to defend the empire by their reluctance to allocate adequate funds, military equipment and supplies for that purpose. Now, in June 1532, a truce was reached at Nuremberg, according to which the Catholic emperor, in exchange for such support, made important concessions to the Protestants and postponed the final solution to the religious question for an indefinite period. Thus, the Ottoman Empire paradoxically became, in fact, an “ally of the Reformation.”

Moreover, by its nature, the alliance turned out to be one of those that directly entailed in the conquered Christian territories the support of the Protestant Turks as opposed to the Catholic communities; it even entailed some approval on the part of the Turks of the faith that the reformers adhered to, not just politically, but religiously, taking into account the worship of images prohibited by Protestantism, which was also characteristic of Islam.

Now Suleiman, instead of marching, as before, along the Danube valley directly to Vienna, sent forward irregular cavalry to demonstrate his presence in front of the city and devastate its surroundings. He himself led his main army somewhat to the south, into the open country, perhaps with the intention of luring the enemy out of the city and giving him battle on terrain more favorable to his regular cavalry. About sixty miles south of the city he was stopped in front of the small fortress of Guns, the last Hungarian city before the Austrian border. Here the Sultan encountered unexpected and heroic resistance from a small garrison, which, under the leadership of a Croatian aristocrat named Nikolai Jurisic, held out steadfastly to the end, delaying Suleiman's advance for almost the entire month of August...

Eventually Ibrahim came up with a compromise. The defenders were told that the Sultan, given their bravery, had decided to spare them. The military leader was received with honor by Ibrahim, who agreed to the terms of surrender “on paper,” handing over the keys to the city as a sign of nominal Turkish ownership. After this, only a small number of Turkish soldiers were allowed to go inside the city in order to place people at the holes in the walls and prevent massacres and looting.

Valuable time for the Turks was wasted, and the weather was getting worse. Nevertheless, Suleiman could still march on Vienna. Instead, perhaps in the last hope of luring his enemies out of the city into the open, he made it known that he did not covet the city, that he wanted the emperor himself, who, he hoped, would come with his army to confront him on the battlefield . In fact, Charles was two hundred miles away up the Danube, at Ratisbon, with no intention of being drawn into any decisive confrontation with the Turks. So the Sultan, lacking heavy artillery and knowing that the garrison of Vienna was now stronger than that which had previously defeated him, turned away from the city in a southerly direction and began his march home, limiting himself to significant destructive raids through the valleys and mountains Styria, where he, avoiding the main fortresses, destroyed villages, ruined the peasantry and turned large sections of the Lower Austrian countryside into deserts.

Two months later in Istanbul, the Sultan wrote in his diary: “Five days of festivities and illuminations... The bazaars are open all night, and Suleiman visits them incognito...” - no doubt trying to find out whether his subjects viewed this second campaign against Vienna as a defeat or like a victory. The official version, intended for public opinion, was that the Sultan was again going to give battle to his enemy, the Emperor of the Christians, who did not dare to appear before his eyes and preferred to hide somewhere.

So the main forces of the Turkish army returned to Istanbul unharmed, so as to be ready to fight at any moment.

The time had come for peace negotiations, for which the Habsburgs were no less ready than the Ottomans. An agreement was reached with Ferdinand, who, in the wording dictated by Ibrahim, addressed Suleiman as a son to his father and thereby satisfied the pride and prestige of the Ottomans. For his part, Suleiman promised to treat Ferdinand as a son and granted him peace “not for seven years, not for twenty-five years, not for a hundred years, but for two centuries, three centuries in fact forever, if Ferdinand himself does not break it " Hungary was to be divided between two sovereigns, Ferdinand and Zapolyai.

In reality, agreement turned out to be difficult to achieve. Suleiman, on the one hand, pitted Zápolyai, “my slave,” against Ferdinand and insisted that “Hungary is mine”; Ibrahim insisted that everyone should have what they had. In the end, to the complete confusion of Suleiman, in addition, behind his back. Ferdinand and Zapolyai entered into an independent agreement, each to rule as king in his part of the country until Zapolya's death, after which Ferdinand would rule the entire country.

Thus it was that, at one of the turning points of history, Suleiman ultimately failed to penetrate the heart of Europe, just as the Muslims from Spain had failed eight centuries earlier at the Battle of Tours. The failure of the Ottomans was primarily due to the heroic resistance of well-trained and skillfully led European troops, experienced participants in battles, whose discipline and professional training exceeded the level of the soldiers of the feudal armies that had previously opposed the Turks in the Balkans and Hungary. In this case, Suleiman met an equal opponent.

But his failure was equally explained by geographical features - the super-extended communications of the Sultan's troops, which amounted to over seven hundred miles between the Bosphorus and Central Europe, and the unusually difficult climatic conditions of the Danube Valley with its prolonged rains, storms and floods.

Active combat operations for the army, which did not carry food supplies with it, had to procure fodder for horses and cavalry, which was excluded in winter and in devastated areas. Thus, Suleiman now understood that there was a city in Central Europe for which it was unprofitable to conduct military campaigns. Vienna, in the context of the military events of the century, was essentially beyond the reach of the Sultan, who was in Istanbul.

However, Europe's fear of the Turkish danger was constantly present. There were no barbarian hordes from the Asian steppes here, there was a highly organized, modern army, the like of which had not yet been encountered in the West in this century. Speaking about its soldiers, an Italian observer noted:

“Their military discipline is so just and strict that it easily surpasses that of the ancient Greeks and Romans; The Turks are superior to our soldiers for three reasons: they quickly obey the commands of their commanders; in battle they never show the slightest fear for their lives; they can go without bread and wine for a long time, limiting themselves to barley and water.”

Ottoman Empire and

Europe: a Western view of Suleiman

At one time, when Suleiman inherited the Ottoman throne (English), Cardinal Wolsey said about him to the Venetian ambassador at the court of King Henry VIII: “This Sultan Suleiman is twenty-six years old, he is not devoid of common sense; it is to be feared that he will act in the same way as his father.”

The (Venetian) Doge wrote to his ambassador: “The Sultan is young, very strong and exceptionally hostile to Christianity.” The Great Turk, “Signor Turco” for the Venetians, inspired the rulers of Western Europe only with fear and distrust of himself as a “strong and formidable enemy” of the Christian world.

Apart from such militant definitions, at first there was little else that created a different reputation for Suleiman. But soon his military operations began to be more and more balanced by diplomatic battles. Until this time, foreign representation at the court of the Sultan was limited mainly to representatives of Venice, which, since the defeat inflicted by the Turks at sea at the beginning of the century and the subsequent loss of superiority in the Mediterranean, “learned to kiss the hand that it could not cut off.” Venice thus cultivated close diplomatic relations with the Porte, which it came to regard as its leading diplomatic post, sending frequent missions to Istanbul and having a permanent residence there as a bailo, or minister, who was usually a man of the highest circle.

Venetian diplomats constantly sent reports to the Doge and his governments and thus indirectly helped to keep Europe as a whole well informed regarding developments in the Sultan's court. King Francis I once said of them: “Nothing true comes from Constantinople except through Venice.”

But now foreign contacts increased with the arrival in the city from other countries of new missions of influential foreigners, among whom were the French, Hungarians, Croats and, above all, representatives of King Ferdinand and Emperor Charles V with his vast cosmopolitan possessions, accompanied by numerous retinues. Thanks to them, and to a growing number of foreign travelers and writers, Western Christendom was constantly discovering new details about the Great Turk, his way of life, the institutions by which he ruled, the character of his court with its elaborate ceremonial, and the lives of his subjects. with their outlandish, but far from barbaric traditions, manners and customs. The image of Suleiman now presented to the West was, in comparison with his Ottoman ancestors, that of a civilized monarch in the Eastern, if not the Western, sense. It was obvious that he raised eastern civilization, coming from tribal, nomadic and religious roots, to its peak. Having enriched it with new features of magnificence, it was not by chance that he was called “Magnificent” by the West.

Suleiman's daily life in the palace - from the morning exit to the evening reception - followed a ritual comparable in its detailed precision to that of the French kings at Versailles.

When the Sultan got up from the couch in the morning, people from among his closest courtiers had to dress him: in outer clothing, worn only once, with twenty gold ducats in one pocket and a thousand silver coins in the other, and a caftan, and undistributed coins at the end of the day became a “tip” for the bed keeper.

The food for his three meals throughout the day was brought to him by a long procession of pages, to be eaten alone from excellent china and silver dishes placed on a low silver table, with sweetened and flavored water (and occasionally wine) for drinking, in the presence of a doctor standing nearby in as a precaution against possible poisoning.

The Sultan slept on three crimson velvet mattresses - one made of down and two of cotton - covered with sheets made of expensive fine fabric, and in winter - wrapped in the softest sable fur or black fox fur with his head resting on two green pillows with twisted ornament. Above his couch rose a gilded canopy, and around him were four tall wax candles on silver candlesticks, at which throughout the night there were four armed guards who extinguished the candles on the side in which the Sultan could turn, and guarded him until he woke up.

Each night, as a precaution, he would, at his own discretion, sleep in a different room, which his bed-mates would have to prepare in the meantime.

Most of his day was occupied by official audiences and consultations with officials. But when there were no meetings of the Diwan, he could devote his time to leisure, perhaps reading the Book of Alexander, the Persian writer's legendary account of the exploits of the great conqueror; or by studying religious and philosophical treatises; or listening to music; or laughing at the antics of dwarfs; or watching the writhing bodies of the wrestlers; or perhaps amused by the witticisms of the court jokers.

In the afternoon, after a siesta, on two mattresses - one of brocade, embroidered with silver, and the other, embroidered with gold, he could often cross the strait to the Asian shore of the Bosphorus to relax in the local gardens. Or, on the contrary, the palace itself could offer him rest and recuperation in the garden of the third courtyard, planted with palms, cypresses and laurel trees, decorated with a glass-topped pavilion over which cascades of sparkling water flowed.

His public entertainments justified his reputation as an admirer of splendor. When, in an effort to divert attention from his first defeat at Vienna, he celebrated the circumcision of his five sons in the summer of 1530, the festivities lasted three weeks.

The Hippodrome was transformed into a city of brightly draped tents with a majestic pavilion in the center in which the Sultan sat before his people on a throne with columns of lapis lazuli. Above him shone a stole of gold, inlaid with precious stones; under it, covering the entire ground around, lay soft, expensive carpets. Around there were tents of the most varied colors, but all of them were surpassed in their brightness by the pavilions captured from the rulers who were defeated by the weapons of the Ottomans. Between official ceremonies with their magnificent processions and luxurious banquets, the hippodrome offered a variety of entertainment for the people. There were games, tournaments, exhibition wrestling and demonstrations of horsemanship; dances, concerts, shadow theater and productions of battle scenes and great sieges; circus performances with clowns, magicians, an abundance of acrobats, with hissing, explosions and cascades of fireworks in the night sky - and all this on a scale never before seen in the city...

The Venetians, who gave (the vizier) the nickname "Ibrahim the Magnificent", were inclined to mistake for genuine Ibrahim's boasts about his ability to make the Sultan do what he wanted, his boastful assertion that "it is I who rules." Sarcasm and contempt, intimidation and bluster, bombast and inaccessibility were simply tricks in Ibrahim's diplomatic arsenal, designed to impress, undercut prices and intimidate the ambassadors of hostile states. The art of manipulating them in this context of Ottoman victories required a hard rather than a soft approach. But Suleiman never objected to the high-born claims of his vizier. Ibrahim’s arrogance corresponded in openly expressed form to the Sultan’s own arrogance, who, due to his position, was forced to hide it behind a mask of complete detachment...

Suleiman's foreign policy, its general long-term direction, was a policy of expanding his power in Europe at the expense of the Habsburgs in alliance with France...

(Vezir) Ibrahim's final achievement was to negotiate, draft and sign a treaty with his "good friend" Francis I in 1535. This allowed the French to trade throughout the Ottoman Empire, paying the same duties to the Sultan as the Turks themselves paid. The Turks, for their part, could enjoy mutual privileges in France. The treaty recognized the jurisdiction of the French consular courts as valid in the empire, with the obligation for the Turks to carry out the orders of the consulates, even by force if necessary.

The treaty granted the French in the Ottoman Empire complete religious freedom with the right to maintain guards in holy places and in reality amounted to a French protectorate over all Catholics of the Levant. He put an end to Venice's commercial supremacy in the Mediterranean and obliged all Christian ships—except those of the Venetians—to fly the French flag as a guarantee of protection.

This treaty was significant in that it marked the beginning of a system of privileges for foreign powers known as capitulations.

Cleverly negotiated by the French and allowing for the exchange of permanent representatives between the two countries, the treaty allowed France to become, and for a long time remain, a country of predominant foreign influence with the Sublime Porte. The Franco-Turkish alliance could indeed, under the guise of trade cooperation, stabilize in favor of the Sultan the European balance of political and military forces between the king and the emperor, the axis of which was now shifting to the Mediterranean. But by giving a foreign power recognized status as such within the borders of the empire, this alliance set a precedent that would pose problems for centuries to come.

Meanwhile, this was Ibrahim's last diplomatic act. For his fall was already near.

Suleiman as Lawgiver

“Magnificent” for the West, Sultan Suleiman for his own Ottoman subjects was the “Lawgiver” (In Turkish historiography, Suleiman is known as Suleiman Kanuni, i.e. Suleiman the Lawgiver. Note Portalostranah.ru). For he was not only a great commander, a man of the sword, as his father and grandfather were before him. He differed from them in the extent to which he was also a man of the pen. Suleiman was a great legislator who acted in the eyes of his own people as a wise sovereign and a generous dispenser of justice, which he personally carried out on horseback during many military campaigns. A devout Muslim, as the years passed he became more committed than anyone to the ideas and institutions of Islam. In this spirit, the Sultan had to show himself as a wise, humane dispenser of justice.

The first legislator of the empire was Mehmed the Conqueror. It was on the foundation laid by the Conqueror that Suleiman now launched his activities.

In a country so conservative, already possessing an extensive body of laws and, moreover, over time involved in the process of adopting more and more written or other decrees and orders by the predecessor sultans, he was not required to be a radical reformer or innovator. Suleiman did not strive to create a new legal structure, but to modernize the old one...

The institution of government consisted, along with the Sultan and his family, of the officials of his court, the leading officers of his government, the standing army and a large number of young men who were being prepared for service in one or another of the above-mentioned places. They were almost exclusively men or sons of men born to parents of Christian origin, and thus slaves of the Sultan.

As the Venetian bailo Morosini characterized them, they “were very proud that they could say: “I am the slave of the Great Master,” because they knew that this was the domain of the master or the republic of slaves, where they would command.”

As another bailo, Barbaro, notes: “It is indeed a fact worthy of separate study that the rich strata, the armed forces, the government and, in short, the entire state of the Ottoman Empire are founded on and placed in the hands of persons, one and all, born in the faith of Christ.”

Parallel to this administrative structure there was the institution of Islam, which consisted only of persons born Muslims. Judges and lawyers, theologians, priests, professors - they constituted, as guardians of traditions and executors of the sacred law of Islam, the ulema, that class of learned men who were responsible for maintaining the entire structure of education, religion and law throughout the empire.

The Sultan had no power to change or ignore the principles of Sharia, the sacred law given by God and sent through the prophet, which thereby served as a limit to his divine sovereign power. But, as a devout Muslim, he never had such intentions.

But if his own subjects were also to remain good Muslims in a world undergoing rapid change, he saw the need to make changes in the way the law was applied. For one simple reason - the Ottoman Empire, having captured territories that were predominantly Christian at the beginning of the century, has since enormously expanded its expanses thanks to widespread conquests in Asia, including such cities of the former Islamic caliphate as Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, along with a protectorate over holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Four-fifths of the entire population of the empire - which at the end of Suleiman's reign numbered fifteen million people and consisted of representatives of twenty-one nationalities, under the control of twenty-one governments - were now residents of the Asiatic part of it. Since this gave him the rights of the Sultan-Caliph, Suleiman was at the same time the patron of the Islamic world, the defender of its faith and the defender, interpreter and executor of its sacred law. The entire Muslim world looked at Suleymap as the leader of a holy war...

Suleiman entrusted the preparation of a code of laws to the highly knowledgeable judge Mullah Ibrahim from Aleppo. The resulting code - whimsically named Multeka-ul-user, "The Confluence of the Seas" because of the oceanic size of the latter - remained in actual force until the legislative reforms of the twentieth century. At the same time, a new legislative code, equal in importance to the new constitution, was drawn up for the Egyptian administration. In all his studies related to the creation of new legislation, Suleiman scrupulously followed the rule of working in close cooperation with Muslim jurists and theologians...

And during the transformation, Suleiman developed a new position regarding the rayats, those of his Christian subjects who cultivated the lands (soldiers) of the sipahis. His Kanun Raya, or "Code of Raya", regulated the taxation of their tithes and per capita tax, making these taxes both more onerous and more productive, raising them from the level of serfdom, or serfdom, to a status approaching, under Ottoman conditions, that of European tenant with fixed rights.

In fact, the lot of the region under the evil “Turkish yoke” turned out to be so much higher, compared with the position of serfs in the Christian world under some Christian masters, that residents of neighboring countries could often prefer, and as a modern author wrote, to flee abroad: “I saw many Hungarian peasants who set fire to their homes and fled with their wives and children, livestock and work equipment to Turkish territories, where, as they knew, except for the surrender of one tenth of the harvest, they would not be subjected to any other taxes or oppression”...

Penalties such as death and mutilation became less frequent, although perjury, forgery, and counterfeit money continued to be subject to amputation of the right hand...

The durability of Suleiman's reforms, for all their liberal intentions and principles, was inevitably limited by the fact that he introduced laws from above, based on the advice of a very narrow circle of senior officials and jurists. Being in the capital, far from the bulk of his subjects scattered over large areas, having no direct connections with them and having no personal idea of ​​​​their needs and circumstances of life, the Sultan was not unable to directly consult with them about the likely consequences for them of the aspects of the legislation he creates, and monitor its implementation and strict execution...

Suleiman strengthened state power throughout the country, and in relation to the institution of Islam. He confirmed and expanded the powers and privileges of the head of the ulema, the grand mufti, or sheikh-ul-Islam, making him virtually equal to the grand vizier and thereby establishing a balance between the powers of the legislative and executive branches of government... By expanding the educational system created by Mehmed the Conqueror, Suleiman distinguished himself a generous founder of schools and colleges, during his reign the number of primary schools, or mektebs, present in the capital increased to fourteen. They gave the children practice in learning to read, write and the fundamental principles of Islam, and when school was over, the children were led through the streets of the city in joyful processions, just as on the days of circumcision.

If they wished and had the ability, children could continue their studies in one of eight colleges (madrassas), built in the aisles of the eight main mosques and known as the “eight paradises of knowledge.” The colleges offered courses in ten subjects based on the liberal humanities of the West: grammar, syntax, logic, metaphysics, philosophy, geography, stylistics, geometry, astronomy and astrology...

As Suleiman's conquests and income multiplied, there was a constant architectural evolution of rounded domes and pointed minarets, the unique silhouette of which still adorns the Sea of ​​Marmara four centuries after him. Under Suleiman, there was a full flowering of the architectural style that Mehmed the Conqueror was the first to extract from the Byzantine school and which in a tangible form glorified Islam and the spread of its civilization throughout the world, in which up to that time Christianity had played a predominant role.

Having appeared link Between two contrasting civilizations, this new oriental architectural style, thanks to the talent of outstanding architects, reached its peak. Among them was Mimar Sinan (architect), the son of a Christian stone craftsman, who in his youth was recruited into the ranks of the Janissaries and served as a military engineer during military campaigns...

In the interior decoration of religious or civil buildings, designers of this period attracted more eastern than western. The walls they erected were decorated with ceramic tiles with floral patterns in bright colors. This method of decorating temples was borrowed by the Ottomans from early Persia, but now ceramic tiles were made in the workshops of Iznik (ancient Nicaea) and Istanbul by Persian artisans brought from Tabriz specifically for this purpose. The cultural influence of Persia still prevailed in the field of literature, as it had done since the time of Mehmed the Conqueror. Under the reign of Suleiman, who especially encouraged poetry, literary creativity reached a significant level. Under the active patronage of the Sultan, classical Ottoman poetry in the Persian tradition reached a degree of perfection such as had never been seen before. Suleiman introduced the official post of imperial rhythmic chronicler, a type of Ottoman poet laureate whose duty was to reflect current events in poetic form in imitation of the manner of Ferdowsi and other similar Persian chroniclers of historical events.

Pirate Barbarossa in the service of Suleiman:

The struggle to transform the Mediterranean into"Ottoman Lake"

Now Sultan Suleiman had to change his form in offensive strategy. Having stretched his military resources throughout Europe so much that they were insufficient under the walls of Vienna, he no longer plotted territorial expansion. Suleiman limited himself to a stable possession of the empire in South-Eastern Europe, which now extended far to the north of the Danube, including a large part of Hungary, slightly short of the borders of Austria. The Sultan turned his land operations away from Europe to continue his expansion into Asia, where he would wage three long campaigns against Persia.

His military operations against the Habsburgs, still aimed at opposing the “King of Spain,” continued as purposefully as before, but in a different element, namely the Mediterranean Sea, over the waters of which the Ottoman fleet, rising on the foundations previously laid by Mehmed the Conqueror, should was soon to begin to dominate.

Until now, the Emperor had not dared to penetrate into the Eastern Mediterranean, just as the Sultan had not attempted to penetrate into the Western. But now he intended to meet the emperor in the latter’s internal waters, around Italy, Sicily and Spain...

This is how the ghazis of the Asian continent turned into the ghazis of the Mediterranean Sea. The time was perfect for this. The fall of the Fatimid caliph (an Arab dynasty in Egypt. Note by Portalostranah.ru) was accompanied by the decline of the Muslim dynasties dependent on him. As a result, the Berber coast of North Africa fell into the hands of small tribal leaders who did not control them, who used the local harbors for piracy.

They found strong support from the Moors, who fled to North Africa after the Muslim kingdom of Grenada fell to Spanish Christians in 1492. These Muslims, in their thirst for revenge, stimulated widespread hostility towards Christians and carried out persistent pirate raids on the southern shores of Spain.

The Spanish, ruled by Queen Isabella, were forced to retaliate by taking the war to North Africa and establishing their own control over a number of its ports. The Moors found effective leaders in two seafaring brothers, Oruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa.

Brave, red-bearded sons of a potter, a Christian apostate, retired from the Janissary Corps, and married to the widow of a Greek priest, they were Turkish subjects from the island of Lesbos, the notorious center of Christian piracy, which commanded the entrance to the Dardanelles. Having become both corsairs and traders, they established their headquarters on the island of Djerba, between Tunis and Tripoli, a convenient springboard from which they could cruise the shipping routes and carry out raids on the coasts of Christian states. Having guarantees of protection from the ruler of Tunisia, Oruj subjugated many local tribal leaders and, along with other ports, liberated Algeria from the Spaniards. However, when he tried to establish an armed presence inland, in Tlemcen, he was defeated and died at the hands of the Spaniards - fighting, as the chronicle says, "like a lion, until his last breath."

After his death in 1518, Hayreddin Barbarossa, as if confirming that he was the more capable of the two corsair brothers, became a major naval commander in the service of the Turks in the Mediterranean. He first strengthened his garrisons along the coast and formed alliances with the Arab tribes of the interior. He then established contacts with Sultan Selim, who had completed his conquest of Syria and Egypt and whose right flank could be covered to his advantage by the forces of his fellow Ottomans along the North African coast. Barbarossa, so the record goes, sent a ship to Istanbul with rich gifts to the Sultan, who made him Beylerbey of Africa, sending to Algeria the traditional symbols of the office - a horse, a Turkish saber and a banner of two tails - along with weapons and a detachment of soldiers, permission to tax others and privileges given to the Janissaries.

Until 1533, Selim's successor Suleiman, hitherto occupied with his land campaigns in Europe, did not come into direct contact with Barbarossa, whose exploits in the clashes with the emperor's forces in the Western Mediterranean were well known to him. The Sultan was now concerned by the fact that Christian naval forces had penetrated in the previous year from the western to the eastern part of the Mediterranean. They were commanded by the able Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, who swapped his allegiance to the King of France for allegiance to the Habsburg Emperor.

After passing the Strait of Messina, Doria entered Turkish inland waters to capture Coron on the northwestern tip of Greece. He undertook in a similar way to create a tactical counterbalance at a time when the Sultan was laying siege to Guns, not far from Vienna. The Sultan sent ground forces and a navy, which, despite being outnumbered, were unable to recapture Coron. Although the Christians were later forced to evacuate the port, Suleiman was puzzled by this failure, realizing that while he was strengthening his land forces, the naval forces had been allowed to deteriorate to the point where they were no longer equal to those of the West. Decisive, and even more urgent, measures for reorganization were required, since the Sultan was on the eve of leaving for a campaign against Persia and needed to ensure the protection of the inland seas in his absence.

As a result, Suleiman sent a convoy to Algeria, ordering Barbarossa to report to him in Istanbul. Without the haste that befitted his status as a ruler, Barbarossa in due course carried out the majestic passage of the forty brightly colored vessels of his Berber fleet through the Dardanelles, around Cape Seraglio (where the Sultan's palace was located. Note Portalostranah.ru) and into the harbor of Zolotoe. Horns. He brought gifts to the Sultan at the royal level, including an abundance of gold, precious stones and expensive fabrics in volumes that a camel could carry; a roving menagerie of lions and other African animals; also a large group of young Christian women, each of whom was adorned with a gift of gold or silver.

With a beard whitening as he aged, fierce bushy eyebrows, but still healthy and physically strong, Barbarossa paid his respects to the Sultan during an audience at the Divan, accompanied by the captains of eighteen galleys, seasoned sea wolves, who were granted honorary clothes and monetary benefits, while Barbarossa was appointed kapudan pasha, or chief admiral. Instructed by the Sultan to “show their skill in shipbuilding,” they headed to the imperial shipyards to supervise, speed up, and make adjustments to ongoing construction work. Thanks to the efforts of this winter, the Sultan's sea power soon began to spread throughout all the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and most of the North African coast.

Barbarossa was a strong supporter of active cooperation between Turkey and France in the Mediterranean. He saw this alliance as an effective counterbalance to Spain's naval power. This corresponded to the plans of the Sultan, who now intended to continue the fight against Emperor Charles at sea rather than on land, and to similar plans of King Francis himself, to whom it promised assistance at sea against the Italian possessions of the emperor... This policy led to the Turkish-French treaty of 1536 with his secret articles on joint defense.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1534, shortly after the Sultan's departure for Persia, Barbarossa sailed with his fleet through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean. The fleets of this time, typified by Barbarossa's fleet, consisted mainly of large galleys, the "battleships" of their time, propelled by oarsmen, predominantly slaves captured in battle or otherwise; oared galleons, or "destroyers", smaller and faster, propelled by free men more professional level; galleons, "ships of the line" propelled only by sails; in addition, galleasses propelled partly by sails and partly by rowers.

Barbarossa decided to advance to westward, to devastate the coasts and ports of Italy along the Strait of Messina and further north, in the possessions of the Kingdom of Naples. But his more pressing goal was Tunisia - a kingdom now weakened by bloody splits in the local Hafsid dynasty, which he promised to the Sultan (the Hafsids are an Arabized Berber dynasty that broke away from the Arab dynasties that previously ruled Spain and Morocco. Note Portalostranah.ru).

Hayreddin began to think about creating an Ottoman possession under his own effective management, which would extend in the form of a chain of ports along the entire coast of disputed Africa, starting from the Strait of Gibraltar to Tripoli. Under the pretext of restoring the power of the fugitive prince of the dynasty, he landed his Janissaries at La Gollette, at the narrowest point of the canal that led to the lake harbor of Tunis.

Here, as pirates free to act, he and his brother Oruj in the past had permission to shelter their galleys. Barbarossa was ready to attack. But his reputation and power were now such that the ruler Moulay Hassan fled the city, a claimant to his throne was rejected and Tunisia was annexed by the Ottoman Empire...

Emperor Charles (Charles V) immediately realized that Sicily would be impossible to hold. At first he tried to resist through intrigue. He sent the Genoese ambassador, who knew North Africa well, as a spy to Tunisia, giving him instructions to raise a rebellion against the Turks with the support of the dethroned ruler Moulay Hassan. In case the rebellion failed, the envoy had to either, by bribery, persuade Barbarossa to betray the Sultan in favor of the emperor, or organize his murder. However, Barbarossa uncovered the plot, and the Genoese spy was sentenced to death.

As a result, the emperor, forced to take action, assembled with the help of Spain and Italy an impressive fleet of four hundred ships under the command of Andrea Doria, together with a detachment of imperial troops consisting of Spaniards, Germans and Italians. In the summer of 1535 they landed near the ruins of Carthage. Before reaching Tunis proper, they had to capture the twin towers of the fortress of La Gollette, which guarded the "throat of the stream" leading to the city. The emperor's troops besieged the fortress for twenty-four days, suffering huge losses amid fierce resistance from the Turks. The fortress was skillfully defended under the leadership of a capable commander, a corsair from Smyrna (now the city of Izmir in Turkey, Note by Portalostranah.ru), a Jew by nationality, with the help of artillery taken from the ships located in the lake harbor.

But in the end the fortress fell, mainly due to breaches in the walls, which appeared as a result of shelling from the guns of the ship of the Knights of St. John - an eight-deck galleon of enormous size, which was perhaps the most armed warship of all that existed at that time.

The path to Tunisia was thus opened for the imperial troops. Having captured the lake, they captured the bulk of Barbarossa's fleet. Barbarossa, however, as a guarantee against possible defeat, sent a squadron of his galleys as a reserve to Bon, between Tunisia and Algeria. He was now preparing to meet the emperor's ground army, which was advancing along the shore of the lake in terrible heat. Having failed in an attempt to block her advance to the wells route, Barbarossa retreated to the walls of Tunis, where he prepared to give battle the next day at the head of his army consisting of Turks and Berbers.

But at this time, in the city itself, several thousand captured Christians, supported by defectors and led by one of the knights of St. John, broke free upon the approach of their coreligionists, captured the arsenal and, armed, attacked the Turks, for whom the Berbers refused to fight. The Emperor entered the city, meeting only slight resistance, and after three days of massacres, plunders and rapes by his Christian soldiers - acts as heinous as any in the annals of Muslim barbarity - restored Moulay Hassan to the throne as his vassal, leaving a Spanish garrison to guard La Gollette. Throughout the Christian world, Charles was proclaimed victorious, and a new order was established for the knighted nobility, the Tunisian Cross, with the motto “Barbaria”...

Experienced in the mastery of strategy and tactics, he (Barbarossa) immediately sailed from Beaune with (reserve) galleys and troops, but not in retreat, not for the defense of Algeria, as his opponents might have assumed, but in order to replenish the fleet and head to to the Balearic Islands and strike back directly at the Emperor's own territory.

Here he achieved the effect of complete surprise. Barbarossa's squadron, with Spanish and Italian flags flying from the tops of the masts, appeared suddenly and was initially greeted with honors, as if it were part of the returning armada of the victorious emperor... It entered the port of Mago (now Mahon) on the island. Minorca. Turning defeat into victory, Barbarossa's troops plundered the city, captured and enslaved thousands of Christians, destroyed the port's defenses and took the wealth and supplies of the Spaniards with them to Algeria. The capture of Tunisia - absolutely regardless of the fact that it created internal political problems - gave the emperor little benefit as long as Barbarossa had freedom of action at sea...

In 1536, Barbarossa was again in Istanbul, “touching his face to the royal stirrup” (as was said in the chronicle about his expression of unquestioning submission and devotion to his master). The Sultan, recently returned from recapturing Baghdad, ordered Hayreddin to build a new fleet of two hundred ships for a decisive campaign against Italy. The city's shipyards and arsenals came to life again after actively earning money. This was a reaction to the actions of Andre Doria, who planned to block the communication lines of Messina with his raid, during which he captured ten Turkish merchant ships; then moved east, crossed the Ionian Sea and defeated the Turkish naval squadron off the coast of the island of Paxos. Drawing a conclusion from what happened, Barbarossa gave the Sultan wise, far-sighted advice: to establish his naval presence in the western central parts of the Mediterranean basin, which would strengthen it on a more solid basis and closer to home, in the eastern basin...

In 1537, Barbarossa set sail with his new fleet. Golden Horn for an attack on the south-eastern coast of Italy, which was to be followed by an advance up the Adriatic. The whole thing was planned as a combined operation, supported by a large Turkish land army under the command of the Sultan, which was to be transported by sea from Albania and pass through Italy from south to north.

The plan called for an invasion from the north by (French) King Francis I, supported by Turkish galleys, whose presence in the port of Marseille throughout the winter openly demonstrated Franco-Turkish cooperation. Barbarossa landed at Otranto and "left the coast of Apulia desolate like the bubonic plague", so impressing Andrea Doria with the size of his new armada that he did not dare to intervene from Messina; the land campaign did not materialize, partly because Francis, with his usual ambivalence, chose to fight with the emperor negotiates a truce.

As a result, the Sultan, while in Albania, decided to transfer troops to Venice. The Venetian-owned islands of the Ionian Sea had long been a source of tension between the two powers; Moreover, later, jealous of the commercial advantages now demonstrated by the Turks over the French, the Venetians did not hide their hostility towards Turkish shipping. Near Corfu, they captured a ship carrying the governor of Gallipoli and killed those on board the ship, except for one young man who managed to escape and, holding on to a plank, swim to the shore, and then report this violence to the Grand Vizier. Suleiman immediately ordered the siege of Corfu. His army was landed on the island along a pontoon bridge made up of boats from the Albanian coast... However, the fortress held firm and with the approach of winter the siege had to be abandoned. Filled with a sense of retribution for this defeat, Barbarossa and his command sailed down the Ionian and up into the Aegean Sea, mercilessly plundering and devastating the Venetian islands, which had so long contributed to the prosperity of the republic. The Turks enslaved many local residents, captured their ships and forced them to pay extortionate annual tribute to the Porte under the threat of new raids.

Barbarossa then returned in triumph to Istanbul, loaded, according to the Turkish historian Haji Khalif, with “clothes, money, a thousand girls and fifteen hundred boys”...

Now the Turkish fleet posed a threat to the Christian world, which for once united the Christian states, the papacy and the emperor in alliance with Venice to repel the enemy...

This reluctance to fight in 1538 was tantamount to absolute defeat for the Christians. It stemmed in part from the problems of managing an unusually large mixed fleet, composed of both rowing and sailing ships, galleys and galleons, in which Andrea Doria clearly did not succeed. It was also explained by the political difficulties of reconciling the commanders and interests of various powers - especially the Venetians, who always preferred the attack, and the Spaniards, who were primarily interested in how to avoid losses. For the Emperor Charles (Charles V), whose interests lay in the Western Mediterranean, could gain little from a war in its eastern waters...

(The Eastern Mediterranean became an “Ottoman lake” over the course of a generation).

Venice... terminated the alliance with the empire and, with the support of French diplomacy, concluded a separate treaty with the Turks. Nothing could now prevent the Ottoman Armada from transferring military operations from the eastern to the western part of the Mediterranean basin. Their fleet triumphantly sailed through the Strait of Sicily all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, carrying out a brutal attack on Gibraltar from their corsair stronghold in Algiers...

Panic reigned in Rome; officers with torches patrolled the streets of the city at night, preventing the escape of terror-stricken citizens. The Turkish fleet eventually reached the shores of the French Riviera. Having landed in Marseilles, Barbarossa was received by the young Bourbon, Duke of Enghien.

As a place to house the Turkish naval headquarters, he was given the port of Toulon, from where some of the inhabitants were evacuated and which the French already called the second Constantinople, full of “San Jacobs” (otherwise, the sanjak of beys).

The port indeed presented a curious spectacle, humiliating for French Catholics, with turbaned Muslims walking about the decks, and Christian slaves - Italians, Germans and sometimes even French - chained to the benches of the galleys. To replenish their crews after death or fever epidemics, the Turks began to raid French villages, kidnapping peasants there for galley service, while Christian captives were sold openly in the market. Meanwhile, as if in a Muslim city, the muezzins freely chanted their calls to prayer and their imams quoted the Koran.

(French King) Francis I, who asked for support from the Turks, was extremely concerned about their actions and open dissatisfaction with their presence among his subjects. Evasive as always, he did not want to commit himself to a decisive action at sea with an ally against the emperor, for whom, in any case, his naval resources were insufficient. Instead, to the irritation of Barbarossa, whose thirst for conquest was growing, he settled on a limited goal - an attack on the port of Nice, the gateway to Italy, which was held by the emperor's ally, the Duke of Savoy.

Although the castle of Nice, under the leadership of a formidable knight of the Order of St. John, held out, the city was soon taken after Turkish artillery blew a large hole in the walls and the city's governor formally surrendered. The port was then sacked and burned to the ground, a violation of the terms of surrender, for which the French blamed the Turks and the Turks blamed the French.

In the spring of 1554, Francis I rid himself of an annoying ally through bribery, making significant payments for the maintenance of Turkish troops and making expensive gifts to the admiral himself. For he was again ready to come to terms with Charles V. Barbarossa and his fleet sailed back to Istanbul.

This was his last campaign. Two years later, Hayreddin Barbarossa died of fever at an old age in his palace in Istanbul, and the entire Islamic world mourned him: “The Chief of the Sea is dead!”

Ottoman Empire and Persia

Suleiman constantly waged a war on two fronts. Turning his land forces to Asia, while his naval forces increasingly strengthened their position in the Mediterranean, he personally led three successive campaigns against Persia in 1534-1535. Persia was the traditional hereditary enemy, not only in a national but also in a religious sense, since the Turks were orthodox Sunnis and the Persians orthodox Shiites. But since the victory ... won by his father, Sultan Selim, over Shah Ismail, relations between the countries were relatively calm, although no peace was signed between them and Suleiman continued to behave threateningly (In Iran, its Persian-speaking subjects at that time were ruled by the Safavid dynasty, the former like the Ottomans, the Safavids came from Iranian Azerbaijan, from the city of Tabriz.

When Shah Ismail died, his ten-year-old son and heir, Tahmasp, also faced threats of invasion. But ten years passed before this threat was carried out. Meanwhile, Tahmasp, taking advantage of the absence of the Turks, bribed into his service the governor of Bitlis, located in the Turkish border region, while the governor of Baghdad, who had promised loyalty to Suleiman, was killed and replaced by a supporter of the Shah. Suleiman ordered the execution of a number of Persian prisoners still being held at Gallipoli. He then sent the Grand Vizier Ibrahim ahead of him to prepare the ground for military action in Asia.

Ibrahim - and this campaign, by the will of fate, was to be the last in his career - succeeded in preparing the surrender of several Persian border fortresses to the Turkish side. Then, in the summer of 1534, he entered Tabriz, from which the Shah preferred to quickly leave rather than engage in a defensive battle for the city, which his father had so recklessly done. After four months of marching through arid and mountainous terrain, the Sultan's army linked up with the Grand Vizier's at Tabriz, and in October their combined forces began a very difficult march south to Baghdad, battling exceptionally harsh winter conditions in the mountainous terrain.

In the end, in last days On November 1534, Suleiman made his proud entry into the Holy City of Baghdad, liberating it as leader of the faithful from the Shiite domination of the Persians. The heretics who inhabited the city were treated with emphatic tolerance, just as Ibrahim treated the inhabitants of Tabriz, and as the Christian Emperor Charles V clearly could not make do with the Muslims of Tunisia.

Suleiman impressed his orthodox followers by discovering the remains of the great Sunni Imam Abu Hanifa, a renowned jurist and theologian of the time of the Prophet, which the orthodox Persians were said to have destroyed, but which were identified by the odor they gave off as musk. A new grave for the holy man was immediately equipped, and has since become a place of worship for pilgrims. Here, after the liberation of Baghdad from Muslim heretics, the miraculous discovery of the relics of Eyub, a companion of the prophet, took place, which happened during the capture of Constantinople from the “infidels.” (Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, who in his early years was the standard bearer of the Prophet Muhammad, already in old age, and years after the death of Muhammad, died during an unsuccessful attempt to storm the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople, by the Arabs in 674. The Arabs were never able to take the city and win over Byzantium, unlike the Ottomans several centuries later. Note Portalostranah.ru).

In the spring of 1535, Suleiman left Baghdad, taking an easier route than before to Tabriz, where he stayed for several months, asserting the power and prestige of the Ottomans, but sacking the city before leaving. For he realized that, being at such a great distance from his capital, he had no hope of being able to control this city. Indeed, on the long journey home, Persian troops repeatedly and unsuccessfully attacked his rearguard before he reached Istanbul and triumphantly entered the city in January 1536.

Execution of Ibrahim Pasha

(For the beginning of Ibrahim Pasha’s career, see the beginning of this review, on page 1. Note Portalostranah.ru).

This first campaign in Persia marked the fall of Ibrahim, who had served the Sultan as Grand Vizier for thirteen years and who was now commander of the field armies. Over the years, Ibrahim could not help but acquire enemies among those who hated him for his rapid rise to power for his excessive influence and the resulting phenomenal wealth. There were also those who hated him for his Christian bias and disrespect for the feelings of Muslims.

In Persia he apparently exceeded his authority. Upon the capture of Tabriz from the Persians before the arrival of Suleiman, he allowed himself to be given the title of sultan, adding it to the title of serasker, commander-in-chief. He liked to be addressed as Sultan Ibrahim.

In these parts, such an address was a fairly familiar style, usually applied to minor Kurdish tribal leaders. But the Ottoman Sultan himself would hardly consider this In a similar way, if such a form of address to Ibrahim was presented to Suleiman as an act of disrespect towards him.

It happened that Ibrahim was accompanied during this campaign by his old personal enemy, Iskander Çelebi, the defterdar, or chief treasurer, who objected to Ibrahim's use of the title and tried to persuade him to renounce it.

The result was a quarrel between the two husbands, which turned into a war of life and death. It ended with the humiliation of Iskander, accused of intrigues against the Sultan and abuse of public money, and his death on the gallows. Before his death, Iskander asked to be given a pen and paper and in what he wrote accused Ibrahim himself of conspiring against his master.

Since this was his dying word, then, according to the holy scriptures of Muslims, the Sultan believed in Ibrahim’s guilt. His conviction of this was reinforced, according to Turkish chronicles, by a dream in which a dead man with a halo around his head appeared to the Sultan and tried to strangle him.

An undoubted influence on the Sultan's opinion was also exerted in his own harem by his new and ambitious concubine of Russian-Ukrainian origin, known as Roksolana. She felt jealous of the close relationship between Ibrahim and the Sultan and of the influence of the vizier, which she herself would like to have.

In any case, Suleiman decided to act secretly and quickly.

One evening upon his return in the spring of 1536, Ibrahim Pasha was invited to dine with the Sultan in his apartments in the Grand Seraglio and stay after dinner, according to his habit, to spend the night. The next morning his body was discovered at the gates of the Seraglio, with signs of violent death showing that he had been strangled. When this happened, he was obviously desperately fighting for his life. A horse covered with a black blanket carried the body away, and it was immediately buried in the dervish monastery at Galata, without any stone marking the grave.

The enormous wealth, as was customary in the event of the death of the Grand Vizier, was confiscated and went to the crown. Thus came true the premonitions that Ibrahim once expressed at the beginning of his career, begging Suleiman not to exalt him too high, suggesting that this would cause his downfall.

New campaign in Hungary

(The beginning of the story about the first years of Hungary under Ottoman rule on page 2,page 3 of this review Note. Portalostranah.ru).

More than ten years had to pass before the Sultan decided to subject himself for the second time to the hardships of the second military campaign against Persia. The reason for the break was events in Hungary, which once again attracted his attention to the West. In 1540, Jan Zapolyai, who had been King of Hungary together with Ferdinand since the conclusion of a recent secret agreement between them on the division of territory, died unexpectedly.

The agreement stipulated that if Zapolyai died childless, his ownership of the country would have to go to the Habsburgs. At this point he was not married, therefore, had no children. But before that, soon after the signing of the treaty, probably at the prompting of a crafty adviser, the monk Martinuzzi, who was an ardent Hungarian nationalist and opponent of the Habsburgs, he married Isabella, daughter of the King of Poland. On his deathbed in Buda, he received news of the birth of a son, who in his dying will, along with the command to turn to the Sultan for support, was proclaimed King of Hungary by the name of Stephen (became known as John II (Janos II) Zápolyai. Note Portalostranah.ru)

Ferdinand's immediate reaction to this was to march on Buda with whatever funds and troops he could mobilize. As King of Hungary he now claimed Buda as his rightful capital. However, his troops were not enough to besiege the city, and he retreated, leaving a garrison in Pest, as well as holding several other small towns. In response to this, Martinuzzi and his group of opponents of the Habsburgs turned on behalf of the infant king to Suleiman, who, being angry about the secret treaty, remarked: “These two kings are not worthy to wear crowns; They are not trustworthy." The Sultan received the Hungarian ambassadors with honor. They asked for his support in favor of King Stephen. Suleiman guaranteed recognition in principle in exchange for the payment of an annual tribute.

But first he wanted to be sure that Isabella had really given birth to a son, and sent a high-ranking official to her to confirm his existence. She received the Turk with the infant in her arms. Isabella then gracefully exposed her breasts and nursed the baby in his presence. The Turk fell to his knees and kissed the feet of the newborn, like the son of King John...

In the summer of 1541 (the Sultan) entered Buda, which was again attacked by the troops of Ferdinand, against which Martinuzzi led a vigorous and successful defense, donning armor over his ecclesiastical vestments. Here, after crossing the Danube in order to occupy Pest and thereby put to flight the unstable soldiers of his enemy, the Sultan received Martinuzzi with his nationalist supporters.

Then, citing the fact that Muslim law allegedly did not allow him to receive Isabella in person, he sent for the child, who was brought to his tent in a golden cradle and accompanied by three nannies and the queen's chief advisers. Having carefully examined the child, Suleiman ordered his son Bayezid to take him in his arms and kiss him. After this, the child was sent back to his mother.

She was later assured that her son, now given the names of his ancestors, John Sigismund, would rule Hungary upon reaching the proper age. But at the moment he was offered to retire with him to Lippu, to Transylvania.

In theory, the young king should have had tributary status as a vassal of the Sultan. But in practice, all the signs of permanent Turkish occupation of the country soon appeared. Buda and the surrounding area were transformed into a Turkish province under the Pasha, with an entirely Turkish administration, and churches began to be converted into mosques.

This worried the Austrians, who had renewed concerns about the security of Vienna. Ferdinand sent envoys to the Sultan's camp with peace proposals. Their gifts included large, elaborate clocks that not only showed the time, but also the days and months of the calendar, as well as the movements of the sun, moon and planets, and were thus intended to appeal to Suleiman's interests in astronomy, space and movements of celestial bodies. However, the gift did not persuade him to accept the excessive demands of the ambassadors, whose master still aspired to become king of all Hungary. Asking his vizier: “What are they saying?” - he interrupted their opening speech with the order: “If they have nothing more to say, let them go.” The vizier, in turn, reproached them: “You think that the padishah is out of his mind. that he should leave what he won for the third time with the sword?

Ferdinand returned to action in an attempt to recapture Pest. But the siege he attempted failed, and his troops fled. Then Suleiman, in the spring of 1543, once again made a trip to Hungary. Having captured Gran after a short siege and turned Cathedral city ​​into a mosque, he assigned it to the Turkish pashalyk of Buda and strengthened it in the swing of his northwestern outpost in Europe. After this, his armies began, through a series of sieges and field battles, to recapture several important strongholds from the Austrians.

The Turks also brought under Turkish rule an area of ​​territory so vast that the Sultan was able to divide it into twelve sanjaks. Thus, the main part of Hungary, bound together by the orderly system of Turkish rule - simultaneously military, civil and financial - was immediately included in the Ottoman Empire. She was to remain in this state for the next century and a half.

This was the culmination of Suleiman's victories on the Danube. In the interests of all rival parties, the time has come for peace negotiations...

The emperor himself wanted this in order to free his hands to resolve his affairs with the Protestants. As a result, the Habsburg brothers - Charles and Ferdinand - once again united in their attempt to come to an agreement with the Sultan, if not by sea, then on land. After the truce reached with the Pasha of Buda, they sent several embassies to Istanbul. Three years passed before they bore fruit, in 1547, in the signing of the Truce of Adrianople, which was based on maintaining the status quo. Under its terms, Suleiman retained his conquests, with the exception of a small part of Hungary, which Ferdinand continued to hold and with which he now agreed to pay tribute to the Porte. Not only the Emperor, who added the signature in Augsburg, but also the King of France, the Republic of Venice and Pope Paul III - although he was in bad relations with the Emperor due to the latter's position towards the Protestants (Suleiman treated Protestants better than Catholics. Note Portalostranah .ru) became parties to the agreement.

The signing of the truce agreement turned out to be very timely for Suleiman, who was already ready in the spring of 1548 for his second campaign in Persia. The Persian campaign remained unfinished, apart from the capture of the city of Van, which remained in Turkish hands.

After this campaign, with the usual oscillation between East and West, Suleiman found himself again involved in the events of Hungary. The Adrianople truce did not last for five years; Ferdinand did not long remain satisfied with his share of what was essentially one-third of Hungary, for the Turkish pashalik of Buda separated his lands from Transylvania.

Here in Lippe, the Dowager Queen Isabella was preparing her son to inherit this small but prosperous state. Within it, the ambitious monk Martinuzzi enjoyed the dominant influence. Isabella complained about this to Suleiman, who demanded that the monk be removed from power and taken in chains to Porto. Now plotting secretly against the Sultan in Ferdinand's interests as well as his own, Martinuzzi secretly persuaded Isabella in 1551 to cede Transylvania to Ferdinand in exchange for a certain amount of land elsewhere, thus making it part of the Austrian dominions. For this he was rewarded with the cardinal's headdress. But the Sultan, having received this news, immediately imprisoned the Austrian ambassador in the Black Tower of the Anadolu Hisar fortress, a notorious prison on the banks of the Bosphorus, where he was to languish for two years. In the end, the ambassador came out of there barely alive. Then, on the orders of Suleiman, the highly trusted commander, the future Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokol, at the end of summer, made a trip to Transylvania, where he captured Lip and left, leaving a garrison...

In 1552, Turkish troops again invaded Hungary. They captured a number of fortresses, significantly expanding the Hungarian territory under Turkish control. The Turks also defeated the army that Ferdinand put on the battlefield, capturing half of its soldiers and sending the prisoners to Buda, where they were sold at the lowest prices in the crowded “goods” market. However, in the autumn the Turks were stopped by the heroic defense of Eger, northeast of Buda, and after a long siege were forced to retreat.

Negotiating a truce, the Sultan began his third and final war with Persia in 1553. Taking advantage of the fact that Suleiman's attention was focused on Hungary, the Shah of Persia, perhaps at the instigation of the emperor, took active steps against the Turks. His son, appointed commander-in-chief of the Persian army, captured Erzurum, whose pasha fell into a trap and was completely defeated...

After a winter in Aleppo, the Sultan and his army marched out in the spring, recaptured Erzurum, then crossed the Upper Euphrates at Kars to devastate Persian territory with scorched earth tactics, the most barbaric of any used in previous campaigns. Skirmishes with the enemy brought success either to the Persians or to the Turks. The superiority of the Sultan's army was ultimately confirmed by the fact that the Persians could neither resist his forces in open battle nor recapture the lands they had conquered. The Turks, on the other hand, could not hold on to these distant conquests...Finally, with the arrival of the Persian ambassador in Erzurum in the fall of 1554, a truce was concluded, which was to be confirmed by a peace treaty the following year.

Such were the military campaigns of the Sultan in Asia. Ultimately, they were unsuccessful. Having renounced claims to Tabriz and the surrounding territory under the agreement, Suleiman admitted the inconsistency of attempts to make constant incursions into the interior regions of Persia itself. A similar situation arose in Central Europe, into the heart of which the Sultan was never able to penetrate. But he extended the frontiers of his empire eastward, including on a guaranteed basis Baghdad, lower Mesopotamia, the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates, and a foothold in the Persian Gulf—a prominent domain that now stretched from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean.

Ottomans in India Ocean

and in the Persian Gulf, as well as an attempt to capture Malta

Suleiman's eastern conquests on land expanded the possible scope of expansion at sea beyond the waters of the Mediterranean. In the summer of 1538, while Barbarossa and his fleet from the Golden Horn were fighting against the forces of Charles V in the Mediterranean, a second naval front was opened with the exit of another Ottoman fleet from Suez into the Red Sea.

The commander of this fleet was Suleiman al-Khadim ("Eunuch"), Pasha of Egypt. His destination was the Indian Ocean, in whose waters the Portuguese had achieved an alarming degree of dominance. Their plans included turning the trade of the East from the ancient routes of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to a new route around the Cape of Good Hope.

As with his father, this was a matter of concern for Suleiman, and he was now ready to take action in response to the appeal of his fellow Shah Bahadur, the Muslim ruler of Gujarat, located on the Malabar coast north of Bombay. Bahadur was thrown into the arms of the Portuguese by pressure from the troops of the Mughal Emperor Humayun, who invaded his lands along with the lands of the Sultan of Delhi. He allowed them to build a fortress on the island of Diu, from where he now sought to expel them.

Suleiman listened kindly to the ambassador of Shah Bahadur as a Muslim to a Muslim. As the head of the faithful, it seemed to him his duty was to help the Crescent wherever it came into conflict with the Cross. Accordingly, Christian enemies must be driven out of the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the Portuguese aroused the hostility of the Sultan by their resistance to Ottoman trade. The Portuguese captured the island of Hormuz, which dominates the entrance to the Persian Gulf, and similarly tried to capture Aden, which dominates the Red Sea. Moreover, they sent a detachment of ships to help the Christian emperor during his capture of Tunisia. All this served as a serious reason for the Sultan to undertake an expedition to Asia, which he had been considering for several years.

Suleiman Pasha the Eunuch, who commanded the expedition, was a man of advanced age and of such a corpulent physique that he could hardly stand on his feet even with the help of four people. But his fleet consisted of almost seventy ships, well armed and equipped, and had on board a significant land force, the core of which were the Janissaries. Suleiman Pasha now followed down the Red Sea, the Arab shores of which, held by ungovernable sheikhs, had previously been devastated by a corsair ship in the course of their pacification by the Sultan of Egypt.

Having reached Aden, the admiral hanged the local sheikh from the yard of his flagship, plundered the city and turned its territory into a Turkish sanjak. Thus, the entrance to the Red Sea was now in the hands of the Turks. Since their Muslim ally in India, Bahadur, had died in the meantime, Suleiman Pasha sent a large cargo of gold and silver to Istanbul as a gift to the Sultan, which Bahadur left for safekeeping in the holy city of Mecca.

Further, however, instead of searching for the Portuguese fleet and, in accordance with the Sultan’s orders, engaging them in battle in Indian Ocean, in which, thanks to superior firepower, one could count on success, the pasha, preferring to take advantage of a favorable tailwind, sailed in a straight line across the ocean to the western coast of India. Suleiman Pasha landed troops on the island of Diu and, armed with several large-caliber guns that were transported across the Isthmus of Suez, laid siege to the Portuguese fortress located on the island. The soldiers of the garrison, assisted by the female part of the population, courageously defended themselves.

In Gujarat, Bahadur's successor, mindful of the fate of Sheikh Aden, was inclined to view the Turks as a greater threat than the Portuguese. As a result, he refused to board Suleiman's flagship and did not provide him with the promised supplies.

After this, rumors reached the Turks that the Portuguese were gathering a large fleet in Goa to help Diu. Pasha safely retreated, crossed the ocean again and took refuge in the Red Sea. Here he killed the ruler of Yemen, just as he had previously killed the ruler of Aden, and brought his territory under the authority of the Turkish governor.

Finally, hoping, despite his defeat in the Indian Ocean, to confirm his status as a "warrior of faith" in the eyes of the Sultan, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca before proceeding through Cairo to Istanbul. Here the Pasha was indeed rewarded for his loyalty with a place in the Divan among the Sultan's viziers. But the Turks no longer tried to extend their dominance so far to the east.

The Sultan, however, continued to challenge the Portuguese by being active in the Indian Ocean.

Although the Turks dominated the Red Sea, they faced obstacles in the Persian Gulf, from which the Portuguese, thanks to their control of the Strait of Hormuz, did not allow Turkish ships to leave. In terms of shipping opportunities, this neutralized the fact that the Sultan had captured Baghdad and the port of Basra in the Tigris-Euphrates delta.

In 1551, the Sultan sent Admiral Piri Reis, who commanded the naval forces in Egypt, with a fleet of thirty ships down the Red Sea and around the Arabian Peninsula to drive the Portuguese from Hormuz.

Piri Reis was an outstanding sailor born in Gallipoli (a city in the European part of Turkey on the Dardanelles Strait., Now the city is known as Gelibolu. Note Potralostranah.ru), the port children “who (according to the Turkish historian) “grew up in the water like alligators . Their cradles are boats. Day and night they are rocked to sleep by the lullaby of the sea and ships.” Using the experiences of his youth spent on pirate raids, Piri Reis became an outstanding geographer, writing informative books on navigation - one of them on navigation conditions in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas - and compiled one of the first maps of the world, which included part of the Americas.

The admiral now captured Muscat and the Gulf of Oman, which lay opposite the hostile strait, and ravaged the lands around Hormuz. But he was unable to capture the fortress that protected the bay. Instead, the admiral sailed northwest, up the Persian Gulf, laden with the wealth he had collected from the locals, then further up the estuary to Basra, where he anchored his ships.

The Portuguese pursued Reis, hoping to bottle up his fleet in this refuge.

In response to this advance of the "vile infidels," Piri Reis basely departed with three richly laden galleys, avoiding the Portuguese in order to slip through the strait, and abandoned his fleet to the enemy. Upon returning to Egypt, having lost one galley, the admiral was immediately arrested by the Turkish authorities and, upon receiving the Sultan's order, was beheaded in Cairo. His riches, including large porcelain urns full of gold, were sent to the Sultan in Istanbul.

Piri's successor, the corsair Murad Bey, received instructions from Suleiman to break through the Strait of Hormuz from Basra and lead the remnants of the fleet back to Egypt. After he failed, the task was entrusted to an experienced sailor named Sidi Ali Reis, whose ancestors were managers of the naval arsenal in Istanbul. Under the false name Katiba Rumi he was an outstanding writer, as well as a mathematician, an expert in navigation and astronomy, and even a theologian. In addition, he also enjoyed some fame as a poet. After refitting fifteen ships at Basra, Sidi Ali Reis put to sea to encounter a Portuguese fleet that outnumbered his own. In two clashes outside Hormuz, more brutal, as he later wrote, than any battle between Barbarossa and Andrea Doria in the Mediterranean, he lost a third of his ships, but broke through with the rest into the Indian Ocean.

Here the ships of Sidi Ali Reis were hit by a storm, in comparison with which “a storm in the Mediterranean is as insignificant as a grain of sand; day cannot be distinguished from night, and the waves rise like high mountains.” Eventually he drifted to the coast of Gujarat. Here, being now defenseless against the Portuguese, the experienced sailor was forced to surrender to the local sultan, to whose service some of his comrades went. Personally, he and a group of associates headed inland, where he undertook a long journey home through India, Uzbekistan, Transoxiana and Persia, writing an account, half in verse, half in prose, about his travels, and was rewarded by the Sultan with an increase in his salary with significant benefits for himself and his comrades. He should also have written detailed work and the seas adjacent to India, based on his own experience and on Arab and Persian sources.

But Sultan Suleiman did not have the chance to sail these seas again. His naval operations in this area served the purpose of maintaining Turkish dominance over the Red Sea and containing the Portuguese military contingent, which was constantly located at the entrance and the Persian Gulf. But he had stretched his resources beyond measure and could no longer support military operations on two such different sea fronts. Likewise, Emperor Charles V, although he held Oran as Suleiman held Aden, was unable, due to conflicting commitments, to maintain his position in the western Mediterranean basin.

Another short-term campaign was imposed on Suleiman east of Suez. It centered around the isolated mountain kingdom of Abyssinia. Since the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, its Christian rulers had sought help from the Portuguese against the Turkish threat, which took the form of Ottoman support for Muslim leaders along the Red Sea coast and inland, who periodically renewed hostilities against Christians, and were eventually taken by force from Egypt. them all of Eastern Abyssinia.

To this, in 1540, the Portuguese responded by invading the country with an armed detachment under the command of the son of Vasco da Gama. The arrival of the party coincided with the ascension to the Abyssinian throne of an energetic young ruler (or negus) named Claudius, otherwise known as Galaudeos. He immediately went on the offensive and, in cooperation with the Portuguese, kept the Turks in a state of combat readiness for fifteen years. Having won over the tribal chiefs who had previously supported them, the Sultan eventually took active action in the war to conquer Nubia, intended to serve as a threat to Abyssinia from the north. In 1557, the Sultan captured the Red Sea port of Massawa, which served as the base for all Portuguese operations within the country, and Claudius was forced to fight in isolation, dying in battle two years later. After this, Abyssinian resistance came to naught; and this mountainous Christian country, although retaining its independence, no longer posed a threat to its Muslim neighbors.

In the Mediterranean, after the death of Barbarossa, the mantle of chief corsair fell on the shoulders of his protégé Dragut (or Torgut). An Anatolian with an Egyptian education, he served the Mamluks as an artilleryman, becoming an expert in the use of artillery in warfare before taking up sailing in search of adventure and fortune. His valiant deeds attracted the attention of Suleiman, who appointed Dragut as commander of the Sultan's galleys...

The enemy they opposed in 1551 was the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, expelled from Rhodes but now established on the island of Malta. Dragut first recaptured Tripoli from the knights to be appointed its official governor.

When Emperor Charles V died in 1558, his son and heir Philip II assembled a large Christian fleet at Messina in 1560 to retake Tripoli, first occupying and fortifying with land forces the island of Djerba, once one of Barbarossa's first strongholds. But then he was awaited by a sudden attack by a large Turkish fleet arriving from the Golden Horn. This caused panic among the Christians, forcing them to rush back to the ships, many of which were sunk, while the survivors sailed back to Italy. The garrison of the fortress was then reduced by famine to complete submission, largely thanks to the ingenious decision of Dragut, who captured the walls of the fortress and stationed his troops on them.

The scale of the defeat was a catastrophe for Christendom greater than any other in these waters since the failure of Emperor Charles to seize Algeria. Turkish corsairs supplemented this by establishing control over most of the North African coast, with the exception of Oran, which remained in Spanish hands. Having accomplished this, they ventured out into the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar to reach the Canary Islands and hunt the huge Spanish merchant ships with their rich cargo coming from the New World.

Fight for Malta

As a result, the way was opened to the last famous Christian stronghold - the fortified island of Malta. A strategic base for the Knights south of Sicily, it commanded the straits between east and west and thus represented the main barrier to the Sultan's establishment of complete control over the Mediterranean. As Suleiman well understood, the time had come, in the words of Dragut, “to smoke out this nest of vipers.”

The Sultan's daughter Mihrimah, Roksolana's child and Rustem's widow, who consoled and influenced him in the last years of his life, persuaded Suleiman to undertake a campaign as a sacred duty against the "infidels".

Her voice echoed loudly among the inhabitants of the Seraglio after the knights captured a large merchant ship sailing from Venice to Istanbul. The ship belonged to the chief of the black eunuchs, it was carrying a valuable cargo of luxury goods, in which the main ladies of the harem had their shares.

Seventy-year-old Suleiman did not intend to personally lead an expedition against Malta, as he had done in the years against Rhodes. He divided command equally between his chief admiral, the young Piale Pasha, who headed the naval forces, and his old general, Mustafa Pasha, who headed the ground forces.

Together they fought under the personal banner of the Sultan, with the usual disc with a golden ball and a crescent crowned with horse tails. Knowing their hostility towards each other, Suleiman urged them to cooperate, obliging Piale to treat Mustafa as a respected father, and Mustafa to treat Piale as a beloved son. His Grand Vizier Ali Pasha, as he accompanied the two commanders on board the ship, cheerfully remarked: “Here we have two gentlemen with a sense of humor, always ready to enjoy coffee and opium, about to embark on a pleasant trip to the islands. I bet their ships are fully loaded with Arabic coffee, beans and henbane extract.”

But in terms of waging war in the Mediterranean, the Sultan had special respect for the skill and experience of Dragut, as well as the corsair Uluj-Ali, who was currently with him in Tripoli. He also used the expedition as consultants, instructing both commanders Mustafa and Piala to trust them and not do anything without consent and approval.

Suleiman's enemy, the Grand Master of the Knights, Jean de la Valette, was a tough, fanatical fighter for the Christian faith. Born in the same year as Suleiman, he fought against him during the siege of Rhodes and from then on devoted his entire life to serving his order. La Valette combined the skill of a seasoned warrior with the devotion of a religious leader. When it became clear that a siege was imminent, he addressed his knights with a final sermon: “Today our faith is at stake and it is being decided whether the Gospel must yield to the Koran. God asks for our lives, which we promised him according to the cause we serve. Happy are those who can sacrifice their lives."

(Then, in 1565, the Great Siege of Malta was unsuccessful. The above-mentioned Ottoman commander Draguta died from the consequences of a head wound from cannonball fragments during the siege. Malta survived as a bastion of Christians in the Mediterranean, and continued to be under the control of the Order of Malta until 1798 , when it was occupied by Napoleon, who was moving to Egypt. Since 1814, Malta has become a British colony. Since 1964, it has been independent.

(After an unsuccessful siege) the Turkish armada was already sailing away in an easterly direction, beginning its thousand-mile march to the Bosphorus. Hardly one fourth of its total composition survived.

Fearing the reception that the Sultan would give them, the two Turkish commanders took the precaution of sending a fast galley ahead of them with dispatches to convey the news and give his temperament time to cool. Having reached inland waters, they received orders that the fleet should under no circumstances enter Istanbul harbor before nightfall. Suleiman was truly enraged by the news of this inglorious defeat at the hands of Christians. At one time, he found a way to save the dignity of the Turkish army after the retreat from Vienna. But in the case of Malta, no attempt was made to hide the humiliating fact that he received a decisive rebuff. Here was the beginning of the end of the Sultan's attempts to establish Ottoman dominance over the Mediterranean.

Regarding this failure, Suleiman bitterly remarked: “Only with me do my armies achieve triumph!” This was not empty boasting. Malta was indeed lost for lack of the same strong, unified command that had won him the island of Rhodes in his youth, from the same implacable Christian enemy.

Only the Sultan himself, holding in his hands unchallenged personal power over his troops, could achieve the desired goal. Only in this way did Suleiman, with his special rights to judgment in council, decision in leadership and inflexibility in action, achieve his goal during forty-five years of almost continuous victories. But Suleiman was already approaching the end of his life.

The last years of Suleiman's life

and his last campaign in Hungary

Lonely in his personal life after the death of Roksolana, the Sultan withdrew into himself, becoming more and more silent, with a more melancholy expression on his face and eyes, more distant from people.

Even success and applause stopped touching him. When, under more favorable circumstances, Piale Pasha returned with a fleet to Istanbul after his historic victories at Djerba and Tripoli, which had established Islamic dominance over the Central Mediterranean, Busbeck writes that “those who saw the face of Suleiman in that hour of triumph could not detect there is not even the slightest trace of joy on him.

...The expression of his face remained unchanged, his hard features had lost nothing of their usual gloom... all the celebrations and applause of that day did not evoke in him a single sign of satisfaction.”

For a long time, Busbeck had noted the unusual pallor of the Sultan's face - perhaps due to some hidden illness - and the fact that when ambassadors came to Istanbul, he hid this pallor "under rouge, believing that foreign powers would be more afraid him if they think he’s strong and feeling good.”

“His Highness was for many months of the year very weak in body and close to death, suffering from dropsy, with swollen legs, lack of appetite and a swollen face of a very bad color. In the last month, March, he had suffered four or five fainting spells, and after that another, during which his attendants doubted whether he was alive or dead, and hardly expected that he would be able to recover from them. The general consensus is that his death is near."

As Suleiman grew older, he became increasingly suspicious. “He loved,” writes Busbeck, “to enjoy listening to a choir of boys who sang and played for him; but this came to an end due to the intervention of a certain prophetess (that is, an old woman known for her monastic holiness), who declared that punishment would await him in the future if he did not give up this entertainment.

As a result, the instruments were broken and set on fire. In response to similar ascetic doubts, he began to eat using earthenware instead of silver, and, moreover, prohibited the import into the city of any wine - the consumption of which had been prohibited by the prophet. “When the non-Muslim communities objected, arguing that such a drastic change in diet would cause illness or even death among them, the Diwan relented so much as to allow them to have a weekly ration landed for them at the Sea Gate.”

But the humiliation of the Sultan in the naval operation in Malta could hardly be mitigated by such gestures of mortification. Regardless of his age and poor health, Suleiman, who spent his life in wars, could only save his wounded pride with one more final victorious campaign to prove the invincibility of the Turkish warrior. He initially vowed to personally attempt to capture Malta the following spring. Now, instead, he decided to return to his usual theater of operations - land. He would go once again against Hungary and Austria, where Ferdinand's Habsburg successor, Maximilian II, not only did not want to pay the tribute due to him, but also launched raids into Hungary. In the case of Hungary, the Sultan was still eager to take revenge for the earlier repulse to the Turkish troops at Szigetvár and Eger.

As a result, on May 1, 1566, Suleiman set out from Istanbul for the last time at the head of the largest army he had ever commanded, on his thirteenth personal campaign - and seventh in Hungary.

His Sultan's tent was destroyed in front of Belgrade during one of the floods so common in the Danube basin, and the Sultan was forced to move to the tent of his Grand Vizier. He could no longer sit on a horse (except on special occasions), but instead traveled in a covered palanquin. The Semlin Sultan ceremoniously received the young John Sigismund (Zapolyai), whose legitimate claims to the Hungarian throne Suleiman recognized when he was still an infant. As an obedient vassal, Sigismund now knelt three times before his master, each time receiving an invitation to rise, and upon kissing the Sultan's hand was greeted by him like a dear beloved son.

Offering his help as an ally, Suleiman made it clear to young Sigismund that he fully agreed with such modest territorial claims as those put forward by the Hungarian king.

From Semlin, the Sultan turned to the Szigetvár fortress, trying to mark it with the Croat commandant, Count Nikolai Zrinyi. The worst enemy of the Turks since the siege of Vienna, Zrinyi had just attacked the bey of the sanjak and the Sultan's favorite, killing him along with his son, taking away all his property as trophies and a large amount money.

The expedition to Szigetvar, thanks to the untimely zeal of the quartermaster, was completed, contrary to orders, in one day instead of two, which completely exhausted the Sultan, who was in bad condition, and so angered him that he ordered the man to be beheaded. But the Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokollu begged not to execute him. The enemy, as the Vizier astutely proved, would be terrified by the proof that the Sultan, despite his advanced age, could still double the length of a day's march, as in the energetic days of his youth. Instead, the still enraged and bloodthirsty Suleiman ordered the execution of the governor of Buda for incompetence in his line of work.

Then, despite the stubborn and costly resistance of Zrinya, who installed a cross in the center of the fortress, Szigetvar was encircled. After the loss of the city itself, it closed itself in the citadel with a garrison who raised a black flag and declared their determination to fight until last person. Admired by such heroism, but nevertheless upset by the delay in capturing such a minor fortress, Suleiman offered generous terms of surrender, seeking to entice Zrinyi with the prospect of serving in the Turkish army as the de facto ruler of Croatia (i.e. Croatia. Zrinyi was the military leader of Croatia under Habsburg rule. He died in this battle. His great-grandson and full namesake was the ban (ruler) of Croatia under the rule of Austria-Hungary a hundred years later and also fought with the Turks. However, all proposals were rejected with contempt. After this, in preparation for the decisive assault on the orders of the Sultan, Turkish sappers placed a powerful mine under the main bastion within two weeks. On September 5, the mine was detonated, causing devastating destruction and fire, rendering the citadel powerless to defend.

But Suleiman was not destined to see this his last victory. He died that night in his tent, perhaps from apoplexy, perhaps from a heart attack resulting from extreme stress.

A few hours before his death, the Sultan remarked to his Grand Vizier: “The great drum of victory should not yet be heard.”

Sokollu initially hid the news of the Sultan's death, allowing the soldiers to think that the Sultan had taken refuge in his tent due to an attack of gout, which prevented him from appearing in public. It was alleged that in the interests of secrecy, the Grand Vizier even strangled the doctor Suleiman.

So the battle went to its victorious conclusion. The Turkish batteries continued their bombardment for several more days, until the citadel was completely destroyed, with the exception of one tower, and its garrison was killed except for six hundred survivors. For the last battle, Zrinyi led them out, luxuriously dressed and adorned with jewels, as if on a holiday, to die in the spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of glory and to be included in the number of Christian martyrs. When the Janissaries broke into their ranks with the aim of capturing Zrinyi, he fired such a powerful charge from a large mortar that hundreds of Turks fell dead; then, with a saber in their hands, Zrinyi and his comrades fought heroically until Zrinyi himself fell and hardly any of these six hundred were still alive. His last act was to plant a land mine under an ammunition depot, which exploded, killing approximately three thousand Turks.

Grand Vizier Sokollu wished more than anything that the succession to the throne by Selim, to whom he had sent news of his father's death by express courier to Kütahya in Anatolia, would be peaceful. He didn't reveal his secret for several more weeks. The government continued to conduct its affairs as if the Sultan was still alive. Orders came out of his tent as if under his signature. Appointments to vacant positions were made, promotions and awards were distributed in the usual manner. The Divan was convened and the traditional victory reports were sent on behalf of the Sultan to the governors of the provinces of the empire. After the fall of Szigetvár, the campaign continued as if the Sultan was still in command, with the army gradually withdrawing towards the Turkish border, en route carrying out a small siege, which the Sultan allegedly ordered. Suleiman's internal organs were buried and his body was embalmed. Now it was on its way home in his buried palanquin, accompanied, as when he was on the march, by his guard and the appropriate expressions of respect due to a living Sultan.

It was only when Sokollu received news that Prince Selim had reached Istanbul to formally take the throne that the Grand Vizier allowed himself to inform the marching soldiers that their Sultan was dead. They stopped for the night at the edge of a forest near Belgrade. The Grand Vizier summoned the reciters of the Koran to stand around the Sultan's palanquin, glorifying the name of God, and read the due prayer for the deceased. The army was awakened by the call of the muezzins, singing solemnly around the Sultan's tent. Recognizing in these sounds a familiar notification of death, the soldiers gathered in groups, making mournful sounds.

At dawn, Sokollu walked around the soldiers, saying that their padishah, a friend of the soldiers, was now resting with the one God, reminded them of the great deeds committed by the Sultan in the name of Islam, and called on the soldiers to show respect for the memory of Suleiman not by lamentation, but by law-abiding submission to his son, to the glorious Sultan Selim, who now rules in his father's place. Softened by the vizier's words and the prospect of tributes from the new sultan, the troops resumed their march in marching order, escorting the remains of their late great ruler and commander to Belgrade, the city that witnessed Suleiman's first victory. The body was then taken to Istanbul, where it was placed in a tomb, as the Sultan himself had bequeathed, within the boundaries of his great Sulaymaniyah Mosque.

Suleiman died the same way he essentially lived - in his tent, among the troops on the battlefield. In the eyes of Muslims, this deserved the holy warrior to be canonized. Hence the final elegiac lines of Baki (Mahmud Abdulbaki - Ottoman poet, lived in Istanbul Note Portalostranah.ru), the great lyric poet of that time:

The farewell drum sounds for a long time, and you

from that time on he went on a journey;

Look! Your first stop is in the middle of the Valley of Paradise.

Praise God, for he has blessed in every world

you and inscribed in front of your noble name

"Saint" and "Ghazi"

Given his advanced age and death at the moment of victory, it was a happy end for the Sultan, who ruled a huge military empire.

Suleiman the Conqueror, a man of action, expanded and preserved it;

Suleiman the Lawgiver, a man of order, justice and prudence, transformed it, by the force of his statutes and the wisdom of his policy, into an enlightened structure of government;

History of the Ottoman Empire

History of the Ottoman Empire dates back more than one hundred years. The Ottoman Empire existed from 1299 to 1923.

Rise of an Empire

Expansion and fall of the Ottoman Empire (1300–1923)

Osman (reigned 1288–1326), son and heir of Ertogrul, in the fight against the powerless Byzantium annexed region after region to his possessions, but, despite his growing power, recognized his dependence on Lycaonia. In 1299, after the death of Alaeddin, he accepted the title "Sultan" and refused to recognize the power of his heirs. After his name, the Turks began to be called Ottoman Turks or Ottomans. Their power over Asia Minor spread and strengthened, and the sultans of Konya were unable to prevent this.

From that time on, they developed and rapidly increased, at least quantitatively, their own literature, although it was very little independent. They take care of maintaining trade, agriculture and industry in the conquered areas and create a well-organized army. A powerful state is developing, military, but not hostile to culture; in theory it is absolutist, but in reality the commanders to whom the Sultan gave different areas to govern often turned out to be independent and reluctant to recognize the Sultan's supreme power. Often the Greek cities of Asia Minor voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of the powerful Osman.

Osman's son and heir Orhan I (1326–59) continued his father's policies. He considered it his calling to unite all the faithful under his rule, although in reality his conquests were directed more to the west, to countries inhabited by Greeks, than to the east, to countries inhabited by Muslims. He very skillfully took advantage of internal discord in Byzantium. More than once the disputing parties turned to him as an arbitrator. In 1330 he conquered Nicaea, the most important of the Byzantine fortresses on Asian soil. Following this, Nicomedia and the entire northwestern part of Asia Minor to the Black, Marmara and Aegean Seas fell into the power of the Turks.

Finally, in 1356, a Turkish army under the command of Suleiman, son of Orhan, landed on the European shore of the Dardanelles and captured Gallipoli and its environs.

Bâb-ı Âlî, Haute Porte

In Orhan’s activities in the internal administration of the state, his constant adviser was his elder brother Aladdin, who (the only example in the history of Turkey) voluntarily renounced his rights to the throne and accepted the post of grand vizier, especially established for him, but preserved even after him. To facilitate trade, coinage was regulated. Orhan minted a silver coin - akche in his own name and with a verse from the Koran. He built himself a luxurious palace in the newly conquered Bursa (1326), from whose high gates the Ottoman government received the name “High Porte” (literal translation of the Ottoman Bab-ı Âlî - “high gate”), often transferred to the Ottoman state itself.

In 1328, Orhan gave his domains new, largely centralized administration. They were divided into 3 provinces (pashalik), which were divided into districts, sanjaks. Civil administration was connected to the military and subordinated to it. Orhan laid the foundation for the Janissary army, which was recruited from Christian children (at first 1000 people; later this number increased significantly). Despite a significant amount of tolerance towards Christians, whose religion was not persecuted (even though taxes were taken from Christians), Christians converted to Islam in droves.

Conquests in Europe before the capture of Constantinople (1306–1453)

• 1352 - capture of the Dardanelles.
• 1354 - capture of Gallipoli.
• From 1358 to Kosovo field

After the capture of Gallipoli, the Turks fortified themselves on the European coast of the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles and the Sea of ​​Marmara. Suleiman died in 1358, and Orhan was succeeded by his second son, Murad (1359-1389), who, although he did not forget about Asia Minor and conquered Angora in it, moved the center of gravity of his activities to Europe. Having conquered Thrace, he moved his capital to Adrianople in 1365. Byzantine Empire was reduced to one to Constantinople with its immediate surroundings, but continued to resist conquest for almost another hundred years.

The conquest of Thrace brought the Turks into close contact with Serbia and Bulgaria. Both states went through a period of feudal fragmentation and could not consolidate. In a few years, they both lost a significant part of their territory, were obliged to pay tribute and became dependent on the Sultan. However, there were periods when these states managed, taking advantage of the moment, to partially restore their positions.

Upon the accession of successive sultans, starting with Bayazet, it became customary to kill close relatives to avoid family rivalry over the throne; This custom was observed, although not always, but often. When the relatives of the new Sultan did not pose the slightest danger due to their mental development or for other reasons, they were left alive, but their harem was made up of slaves made infertile through surgery.

The Ottomans clashed with the Serbian rulers and won victories at Chernomen (1371) and Savra (1385).

Battle of Kosovo Field

In 1389, the Serbian prince Lazar began a new war with the Ottomans. On Kosovo Field on June 28, 1389, his army of 80,000 people. clashed with Murad's army of 300,000 people. The Serbian army was destroyed, the prince was killed; Murad also fell in the battle. Formally, Serbia still retained its independence, but it paid tribute and pledged to supply auxiliary troops.

Murad Murad

One of the Serbs who took part in the battle (that is, from Prince Lazar's side) was the Serbian prince Miloš Obilic. He understood that the Serbs had little chance of winning this great battle, and decided to sacrifice his life. He came up with a cunning operation.

During the battle, Milos snuck into Murad's tent, pretending to be a defector. He approached Murad as if to convey some secret and stabbed him. Murad was dying, but managed to call for help. Consequently, Milos was killed by the Sultan's guards. (Miloš Obilic kills Sultan Murad) From this moment on, the Serbian and Turkish versions of what happened began to differ. According to the Serbian version, having learned about the murder of their ruler, the Turkish army succumbed to panic and began to scatter, and only the taking of control of the troops by Murad's son Bayezid I saved the Turkish army from defeat. According to the Turkish version, the murder of the Sultan only angered the Turkish soldiers. However, the most real option The version seems to be that the main part of the army learned about the death of the Sultan after the battle.

Early 15th century

Murad's son Bayazet (1389-1402) married Lazar's daughter and thereby acquired the formal right to intervene in the solution of dynastic issues in Serbia (when Stefan, Lazar's son, died without heirs). In 1393, Bayazet took Tarnovo (he strangled the Bulgarian king Shishman, whose son saved himself from death by accepting Islam), conquered all of Bulgaria, obliged Wallachia with tribute, conquered Macedonia and Thessaly and penetrated into Greece. In Asia Minor, his possessions expanded far to the east beyond the Kyzyl-Irmak (Galis).

In 1396, near Nicopolis, he defeated a Christian army gathered for a crusade by the king Sigismund of Hungary.

The invasion of Timur at the head of the Turkic hordes into the Asian possessions of Bayazet forced him to lift the siege of Constantinople and personally rush towards Timur with significant forces. IN Battle of Ankara in 1402 he was completely defeated and captured, where a year later (1403) he died. A significant Serbian auxiliary detachment (40,000 people) also died in this battle.

The captivity and then death of Bayazet threatened the state with disintegration into parts. In Adrianople, Bayazet's son Suleiman (1402-1410) proclaimed himself sultan, seizing power over the Turkish possessions on the Balkan Peninsula, in Brousse - Isa, in the eastern part of Asia Minor - Mehmed I. Timur received ambassadors from all three applicants and promised his support to all three, obviously wanting to weaken the Ottomans, but he did not find it possible to continue its conquest and went to the East.

Mehmed soon won, killed Isa (1403) and reigned over all of Asia Minor. In 1413, after the death of Suleiman (1410) and the defeat and death of his brother Musa, who succeeded him, Mehmed restored his power over the Balkan Peninsula. His reign was relatively peaceful. He tried to maintain peaceful relations with his Christian neighbors, Byzantium, Serbia, Wallachia and Hungary, and concluded treaties with them. Contemporaries characterize him as a fair, meek, peace-loving and educated ruler. More than once, however, he had to deal with internal uprisings, which he dealt with very energetically.

The reign of his son, Murad II (1421-1451), began with similar uprisings. The brothers of the latter, in order to avoid death, managed to flee to Constantinople in advance, where they met with a friendly reception. Murad immediately moved to Constantinople, but managed to gather only a 20,000-strong army and was therefore defeated. However, with the help of bribes, he managed to capture and strangle his brothers soon after. The siege of Constantinople had to be lifted, and Murad turned his attention to the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula, and later to the south. In the north, a thunderstorm gathered against him from the Transylvanian governor Matthias Hunyadi, who won victories over him at Hermannstadt (1442) and Nis (1443), but due to the significant superiority of the Ottoman forces, he was completely defeated on the Kosovo field. Murad took possession of Thessalonica (previously conquered three times by the Turks and again lost to them), Corinth, Patras and a large part of Albania.

His strong opponent was the Albanian hostage Iskander Beg (or Skanderbeg), who was brought up at the Ottoman court and was Murad’s favorite, who converted to Islam and contributed to its spread in Albania. Then he wanted to make a new attack on Constantinople, which was not dangerous for him militarily, but was very valuable due to its geographical position. Death prevented him from carrying out this plan, carried out by his son Mehmed II (1451-81).

Capture of Constantinople

Mehmed II enters Constantinople with his army

The pretext for the war was that Konstantin Paleolog, the Byzantine emperor, did not want to hand over to Mehmed his relative Orkhan (son of Suleiman, grandson of Bayazet), whom he was saving to stir up troubles, as a possible contender for the Ottoman throne. The Byzantine emperor had only a small strip of land along the shores of the Bosphorus; the number of his troops did not exceed 6,000, and the nature of the administration of the empire made it even weaker. There were already quite a few Turks living in the city itself; The Byzantine government, starting in 1396, had to allow the construction of Muslim mosques next to Orthodox churches. Only the extremely convenient geographical position of Constantinople and strong fortifications made it possible to resist.

Mehmed II sent an army of 150,000 people against the city. and a fleet of 420 small sailing ships blocking the entrance to the Golden Horn. The armament of the Greeks and their military art were somewhat higher than the Turkish, but the Ottomans also managed to arm themselves quite well. Murad II also established several factories for casting cannons and making gunpowder, which were run by Hungarian and other Christian engineers who converted to Islam for the benefits of renegadeism. Many of the Turkish guns made a lot of noise, but did no real harm to the enemy; some of them exploded and killed a significant number of Turkish soldiers. Mehmed began preliminary siege work in the fall of 1452, and in April 1453 he began a proper siege. The Byzantine government turned to Christian powers for help; the pope hastened to respond with a promise to preach a crusade against the Turks, if only Byzantium agreed to unite the churches; the Byzantine government indignantly rejected this proposal. Of the other powers, Genoa alone sent a small squadron with 6,000 men. under the command of Giustiniani. The squadron bravely broke through the Turkish blockade and landed troops on the shores of Constantinople, which doubled the forces of the besieged. The siege continued for two months. A significant part of the population lost their heads and, instead of joining the ranks of the fighters, prayed in churches; the army, both Greek and Genoese, resisted extremely courageously. At its head was the emperor Konstantin Paleolog, who fought with the courage of despair and died in the skirmish. On May 29, the Ottomans opened the city.

Conquests

The era of power of the Ottoman Empire lasted more than 150 years. In 1459, all of Serbia was conquered (except Belgrade, taken in 1521) and turned into an Ottoman pashalyk. Conquered in 1460 Duchy of Athens and after him almost all of Greece, with the exception of some coastal cities, which remained in the power of Venice. In 1462, the islands of Lesbos and Wallachia were conquered, and in 1463, Bosnia.

The conquest of Greece brought the Turks into conflict with Venice, which entered into a coalition with Naples, the Pope and Karaman (an independent Muslim khanate in Asia Minor, ruled by Khan Uzun Hasan).

The war lasted 16 years in the Morea, the Archipelago and Asia Minor simultaneously (1463-79) and ended in victory for the Ottoman state. According to the Peace of Constantinople of 1479, Venice ceded to the Ottomans several cities in the Morea, the island of Lemnos and other islands of the Archipelago (Negropont was captured by the Turks back in 1470); Karaman Khanate recognized the power of the Sultan. After the death of Skanderbeg (1467), the Turks captured Albania, then Herzegovina. In 1475, they waged war with the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray and forced him to recognize himself as dependent on the Sultan. This victory was of great military importance for the Turks, since the Crimean Tatars supplied them with auxiliary troops, at times numbering 100 thousand people; but later it became fatal for the Turks, as it pitted them against Russia and Poland. In 1476, the Ottomans devastated Moldavia and made it a vassal state.

This ended the period of conquest for some time. The Ottomans owned the entire Balkan Peninsula to the Danube and Sava, almost all the islands of the Archipelago and Asia Minor to Trebizond and almost to the Euphrates; beyond the Danube, Wallachia and Moldavia were also very dependent on them. Everywhere was ruled either directly by Ottoman officials or by local rulers who were approved by the Porte and were completely subordinate to it.

Reign of Bayazet II

None of the previous sultans did as much to expand the borders of the Ottoman Empire as Mehmed II, who remained in history with the nickname “Conqueror”. He was succeeded by his son Bayazet II (1481-1512) in the midst of unrest. The younger brother Cem, relying on the great vizier Mogamet-Karamaniya and taking advantage of Bayazet's absence in Constantinople at the time of his father's death, proclaimed himself sultan.

Bayazet gathered the remaining loyal troops; The hostile armies met at Angora. Victory remained with the elder brother; Cem fled to Rhodes, from there to Europe and after long wanderings found himself in the hands of Pope Alexander VI, who offered Bayazet to poison his brother for 300,000 ducats. Bayazet accepted the offer, paid the money, and Cem was poisoned (1495). Bayazet's reign was marked by several more uprisings of his sons, which ended (except for the last one) successfully for the father; Bayazet took the rebels and executed them. However, Turkish historians characterize Bayazet as a peace-loving and meek man, a patron of art and literature.

Indeed, there was a certain halt in the Ottoman conquests, but more due to failures than to the peacefulness of the government. The Bosnian and Serbian pashas repeatedly raided Dalmatia, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola and subjected them to cruel devastation; Several attempts were made to take Belgrade, but without success. The death of Matthew Corvinus (1490) caused anarchy in Hungary and seemed to favor Ottoman designs against that state.

The long war, waged with some interruptions, ended, however, not particularly favorably for the Turks. According to the peace concluded in 1503, Hungary defended all its possessions and although it had to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s right to tribute from Moldavia and Wallachia, it did not renounce the sovereign rights to these two states (more in theory than in reality). In Greece, Navarino (Pylos), Modon and Coron (1503) were conquered.

The first relations of the Ottoman state with Russia date back to the time of Bayazet II: in 1495, ambassadors of Grand Duke Ivan III appeared in Constantinople to ensure unhindered trade in the Ottoman Empire for Russian merchants. Other European powers also entered into friendly relations with Bayazet, especially Naples, Venice, Florence, Milan and the Pope, seeking his friendship; Bayazet skillfully balanced between everyone.

At the same time, the Ottoman Empire waged war with Venice over the Mediterranean, and defeated it in 1505.

His main attention was directed to the East. He started a war with Persia, but did not have time to end it; in 1510, his youngest son Selim rebelled against him at the head of the Janissaries, defeated him and overthrew him from the throne. Soon Bayazet died, most likely from poison; Selim's other relatives were also exterminated.

Reign of Selim I

The war in Asia continued under Selim I (1512–20). In addition to the usual desire of the Ottomans for conquest, this war also had a religious reason: the Turks were Sunnis, Selim, as an extreme zealot of Sunnism, passionately hated the Shia Persians, and on his orders, up to 40,000 Shiites living on Ottoman territory were destroyed. The war was fought with varying success, but the final victory, although far from complete, was on the side of the Turks. In the peace of 1515, Persia ceded to the Ottoman Empire the regions of Diyarbakir and Mosul, which lie along the upper reaches of the Tigris.

The Egyptian Sultan of Kansu-Gavri sent an embassy to Selim with a peace offer. Selim ordered to kill all members of the embassy. Kansu stepped forward to meet him; the battle took place in the Dolbec valley. Thanks to his artillery, Selim achieved a complete victory; The Mamelukes fled, Kansu died during the escape. Damascus opened the gates to the winner; after him, all of Syria submitted to the Sultan, and Mecca and Medina came under his protection (1516). The new Egyptian Sultan Tuman Bey, after several defeats, had to cede Cairo to the Turkish vanguard; but at night he entered the city and destroyed the Turks. Selim, not being able to take Cairo without a stubborn fight, invited its inhabitants to surrender with the promise of their favors; the inhabitants surrendered - and Selim carried out a terrible massacre in the city. Tuman Bey was also beheaded when, during the retreat, he was defeated and captured (1517).

Selim reproached him for not wanting to obey him, the Commander of the Faithful, and developed a theory, bold in the mouth of a Muslim, according to which he, as the ruler of Constantinople, is the heir of the Eastern Roman Empire and, therefore, has the right to all the lands ever included in its composition.

Realizing the impossibility of ruling Egypt solely through his pashas, ​​who would inevitably eventually become independent, Selim retained next to them 24 Mameluke leaders, who were considered subordinate to the pasha, but enjoyed a certain independence and could complain about the pasha to Constantinople. Selim was one of the most cruel Ottoman sultans; besides his father and brothers, besides countless captives, he executed seven of his great viziers during the eight years of his reign. At the same time, he patronized literature and himself left a significant number of Turkish and Arabic poems. In the memory of the Turks he remained with the nickname Yavuz (unyielding, stern).

Reign of Suleiman I

Tughra Suleiman the Magnificent (1520)

Selim's son Suleiman I (1520-66), nicknamed the Magnificent or Great by Christian historians, was the direct opposite of his father. He was not cruel and understood the political value of mercy and formal justice; He began his reign by releasing several hundred Egyptian captives from noble families who were kept in chains by Selim. European silk merchants, robbed in Ottoman territory at the beginning of his reign, received generous monetary rewards from him. More than his predecessors, he loved the splendor with which his palace in Constantinople amazed Europeans. Although he did not renounce conquests, he did not like war, only on rare occasions personally becoming the head of an army. He especially highly valued the art of diplomacy, which brought him important victories. Immediately after ascending the throne, he began peace negotiations with Venice and concluded an agreement with it in 1521, recognizing the Venetians' right to trade in Turkish territory and promising them protection of their safety; Both sides pledged to hand over fugitive criminals to each other. Since then, although Venice did not keep a permanent envoy in Constantinople, embassies were sent from Venice to Constantinople and back more or less regularly. In 1521, Ottoman troops took Belgrade. In 1522, Suleiman landed a large army on Rhodes. Six month siege The main stronghold of the Knights of St. John ended with its capitulation, after which the Turks began to conquer Tripoli and Algeria in North Africa.

Battle of Mohacs (1526)

In 1527, Ottoman troops under the command of Suleiman I invaded Austria and Hungary. At first, the Turks achieved very significant successes: in the eastern part of Hungary they managed to create a puppet state that became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, they captured Buda, and ravaged vast territories in Austria. In 1529, the Sultan moved his army to Vienna, intending to capture the Austrian capital, but he failed. Started on September 27 siege of Vienna, the Turks outnumbered the besieged by at least 7 times. But the weather was against the Turks - on the way to Vienna, due to bad weather, they lost many guns and pack animals, and illnesses began in their camp. But the Austrians did not waste time - they strengthened the city walls in advance, and Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria brought German and Spanish mercenaries to the city (his older brother Charles V of Habsburg was both the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Spain). Then the Turks relied on blowing up the walls of Vienna, but the besieged constantly made forays and destroyed all Turkish trenches and underground passages. Due to the approaching winter, disease and mass desertion, the Turks had to leave just 17 days after the start of the siege, on October 14.

Union with France

The closest neighbor of the Ottoman state and its most dangerous enemy was Austria, and entering into a serious fight with it without enlisting anyone’s support was risky. France was the natural ally of the Ottomans in this struggle. The first relations between the Ottoman Empire and France began in 1483; Since then, both states have exchanged embassies several times, but this has not led to practical results.

In 1517, King Francis I of France proposed to the German Emperor and Ferdinand the Catholic an alliance against the Turks with the aim of expelling them from Europe and dividing their possessions, but this alliance did not take place: the interests of these European powers were too opposed to each other. On the contrary, France and the Ottoman Empire did not come into contact with each other anywhere and they had no immediate reasons for hostility. Therefore France, which once took such an ardent part in crusades, decided to take a bold step: a real military alliance with a Muslim power against a Christian power. The final impetus was given by the unfortunate Battle of Pavia for the French, during which the king was captured. Regent Louise of Savoy sent an embassy to Constantinople in February 1525, but it was beaten by the Turks in Bosnia in spite of [source not specified 466 days] the Sultan's wishes. Not embarrassed by this event, Francis I sent an envoy from captivity to the Sultan with a proposal for an alliance; the Sultan was supposed to attack Hungary, and Francis promised war with Spain. At the same time, Charles V made similar proposals to the Ottoman Sultan, but the Sultan preferred an alliance with France.

Soon after, Francis sent a request to Constantinople to allow the restoration of at least one Catholic church in Jerusalem, but received a decisive refusal from the Sultan in the name of the principles of Islam, along with a promise of all protection for Christians and protection of their safety (1528).

Military successes

According to the truce of 1547, the entire southern part of Hungary up to and including Ofen became an Ottoman province, divided into 12 sanjaks; the northern one came into the hands of Austria, but with the obligation to pay the Sultan 50,000 ducats of tribute annually (in the German text of the treaty, the tribute was called an honorary gift - Ehrengeschenk). The supreme rights of the Ottoman Empire over Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania were confirmed by the peace of 1569. This peace could only take place because Austria spent huge sums of money bribing Turkish commissioners. The Ottoman war with Venice ended in 1540 with the transfer to the power of the Ottoman Empire of the last possessions of Venice in Greece and the Aegean Sea. In the new war with Persia, the Ottomans occupied Baghdad in 1536, and Georgia in 1553. With this they reached the apogee of their political power. The Ottoman fleet sailed freely throughout the Mediterranean Sea to Gibraltar and often plundered the Portuguese colonies in the Indian Ocean.

In 1535 or 1536, a new treaty “on peace, friendship and trade” was concluded between the Ottoman Empire and France; France now had a permanent envoy in Constantinople and a consul in Alexandria. Subjects of the Sultan in France and subjects of the king in the territory of the Ottoman state were guaranteed the right to travel freely throughout the country, buy, sell and exchange goods under the protection of local authorities at the beginning of equality. Litigations between the French in the Ottoman Empire were to be dealt with by French consuls or envoys; in case of litigation between a Turk and a Frenchman, the French were provided with protection by their consul. During the time of Suleiman, some changes took place in the order of internal administration. Previously, the Sultan was almost always personally present in the divan (ministerial council): Suleiman rarely appeared in it, thus providing more space for his viziers. Previously, the positions of vizier (minister) and grand vizier, and also governor of the pashalyk were usually given to people more or less experienced in administration or military affairs; under Suleiman, the harem began to play a noticeable role in these appointments, as well as monetary gifts given by applicants for high positions. This was caused by the government's need for money, but soon became, as it were, a rule of law and was main reason the decline of the Porte. Government extravagance has reached unprecedented proportions; True, government revenues also increased significantly due to the successful collection of tribute, but despite this, the Sultan often had to resort to damaging coins.

Reign of Selim II

The son and heir of Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II (1566-74), ascended the throne without having to beat his brothers, since his father took care of this, wanting to ensure the throne for him to please his beloved last wife. Selim reigned prosperously and left his son a state that not only did not decrease territorially, but even increased; for this, in many respects, he owed the mind and energy of the vizier Mehmed Sokoll. Sokollu completed the conquest of Arabia, which had previously been only loosely dependent on the Porte.

Battle of Lepanto (1571)

He demanded the cession of the island of Cyprus from Venice, which led to a war between the Ottoman Empire and Venice (1570-1573); the Ottomans suffered a heavy naval defeat at Lepanto (1571), but despite this, at the end of the war they captured Cyprus and were able to hold it; in addition, they obliged Venice to pay 300 thousand ducats of war indemnity and pay tribute for the possession of the island of Zante in the amount of 1,500 ducats. In 1574, the Ottomans took possession of Tunisia, which had previously belonged to the Spaniards; Algeria and Tripoli had previously recognized their dependence on the Ottomans. Sokollu conceived two great things: connecting the Don and Volga with a canal, which, in his opinion, was supposed to strengthen the power of the Ottoman Empire in Crimea and again subordinate it to Khanate of Astrakhan, already conquered by Moscow, - and digging Isthmus of Suez. However, this was beyond the power of the Ottoman government.

Under Selim II took place Ottoman expedition to Aceh, which led to the establishment of long-term ties between the Ottoman Empire and this remote Malay Sultanate.

Reign of Murad III and Mehmed III

During the reign of Murad III (1574-1595), the Ottoman Empire emerged victorious from a stubborn war with Persia, capturing all of Western Iran and the Caucasus. Murad's son Mehmed III (1595-1603) executed 19 brothers upon his accession to the throne. However, he was not a cruel ruler, and even went down in history under the nickname Fair. Under him, the state was largely controlled by his mother through 12 grand viziers, often replacing each other.

Increased deterioration of coins and increased taxes more than once led to uprisings in various parts of the state. Mehmed's reign was filled with war with Austria, which began under Murad in 1593 and ended only in 1606, already under Ahmed I (1603-17). It ended with the Peace of Sitvatorok in 1606, marking a turn in the mutual relations between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. No new tribute was imposed on Austria; on the contrary, she freed herself from the previous tribute for Hungary by paying a one-time indemnity of 200,000 florins. In Transylvania, Stefan Bocskai, hostile to Austria, and his male offspring were recognized as the ruler. Moldova, repeatedly trying to get out from vassalage, managed to defend during border conflicts with Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Habsburgs. From this time on, the territory of the Ottoman state was no longer expanded except for a short period. The war with Persia of 1603-12 had sad consequences for the Ottoman Empire, in which the Turks suffered several serious defeats and had to cede the Eastern Georgian lands, Eastern Armenia, Shirvan, Karabakh, Azerbaijan with Tabriz and some other areas.

Decline of the Empire (1614–1757)

The last years of the reign of Ahmed I were filled with rebellions that continued under his heirs. His brother Mustafa I (1617-1618), a protege and favorite of the Janissaries, to whom he made gifts of millions from state funds, after three months of control, was overthrown by the mufti's fatwa as insane, and Ahmed's son Osman II (1618-1622) ascended the throne. After the unsuccessful campaign of the Janissaries against the Cossacks, he made an attempt to destroy this violent army, which every year became less and less useful for military purposes and more and more dangerous for the state order - and for this he was killed by the Janissaries. Mustafa I was re-enthroned and again dethroned a few months later, and a few years later he died, probably from poisoning.

Osman's younger brother, Murad IV (1623-1640), seemed intent on restoring the former greatness of the Ottoman Empire. He was a cruel and greedy tyrant, reminiscent of Selim, but at the same time a capable administrator and an energetic warrior. According to estimates, the accuracy of which cannot be verified, up to 25,000 people were executed under him. Often he executed rich people solely in order to confiscate their property. He again conquered Tabriz and Baghdad in the war with the Persians (1623-1639); he also managed to defeat the Venetians and conclude a profitable peace with them. He pacified the dangerous Druze uprising (1623-1637); but the uprising of the Crimean Tatars almost completely freed them from Ottoman power. The devastation of the Black Sea coast carried out by the Cossacks remained unpunished for them.

In internal administration, Murad sought to introduce some order and some economy in finances; however, all his attempts turned out to be impracticable.

Under his brother and heir Ibrahim (1640-1648), under whom state affairs again in charge of the harem, all the acquisitions of his predecessor were lost. The Sultan himself was overthrown and strangled by the Janissaries, who elevated his seven-year-old son Mehmed IV (1648-1687) to the throne. The true rulers of the state during the first time of the latter’s reign were the Janissaries; all government positions were filled by their proteges, management was in complete disarray, finances reached an extreme decline. Despite this, the Ottoman fleet managed to inflict a serious naval defeat on Venice and break the blockade of the Dardanelles, which had been held with varying success since 1654.

Russo-Turkish War 1686–1700

Battle of Vienna (1683)

In 1656, the post of grand vizier was seized by an energetic man, Mehmet Köprülü, who managed to strengthen the discipline of the army and inflict several defeats on the enemies. Austria was supposed to conclude a peace in Vasvara that was not particularly beneficial for it in 1664; in 1669 the Turks conquered Crete, and in 1672, by peace in Buchach, they received Podolia and even part of Ukraine from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This peace caused the indignation of the people and the Sejm, and the war began again. Russia also took part in it; but on the side of the Ottomans stood a significant part of the Cossacks, led by Doroshenko. During the war, the Grand Vizier Ahmet Pasha Köprülü died after ruling the country for 15 years (1661–76). The war, which had been going on with varying degrees of success, ended Bakhchisarai truce, concluded in 1681 for 20 years, at the beginning of the status quo; Western Ukraine, which was a real desert after the war, and Podolia remained in the hands of the Turks. The Ottomans easily agreed to peace, since they had a war with Austria on their agenda, which was undertaken by Ahmet Pasha's successor, Kara-Mustafa Köprülü. The Ottomans managed to penetrate Vienna and besiege it (from July 24 to September 12, 1683), but the siege had to be lifted when the Polish king Jan Sobieski entered into an alliance with Austria, rushed to the aid of Vienna and won near it brilliant victory over the Ottoman army. In Belgrade, Kara-Mustafa was met by envoys from the Sultan, who had orders to deliver him to Constantinople the head of an incapable commander, which was done. In 1684, Venice, and later Russia, also joined the coalition of Austria and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Ottoman Empire.

During the war, in which the Ottomans had to defend rather than attack on their own territory, in 1687 the Grand Vizier Suleiman Pasha was defeated at Mohács. The defeat of the Ottoman forces irritated the Janissaries, who remained in Constantinople, rioting and plundering. Under the threat of an uprising, Mehmed IV sent them the head of Suleiman, but this did not save him: the Janissaries overthrew him with the help of a fatwa from the mufti and forcibly elevated his brother, Suleiman II (1687-91), a man devoted to drunkenness and completely incapable of governing, to the throne. The war continued under him and under his brothers, Ahmed II (1691–95) and Mustafa II (1695–1703). The Venetians took possession of the Morea; the Austrians took Belgrade (soon again falling to the Ottomans) and all the significant fortresses of Hungary, Slavonia, and Transylvania; the Poles occupied a significant part of Moldova.

In 1699 the war was over Treaty of Karlowitz, which was the first according to which the Ottoman Empire did not receive either tribute or temporary indemnity. Its value significantly exceeded the value World of Sitvatorok. It became clear to everyone that the military power of the Ottomans was not at all great and that internal turmoil was shaking their state more and more.

In the empire itself, the Peace of Karlowitz aroused awareness among the more educated part of the population of the need for some reforms. Köprülü, a family that gave the state during the 2nd half of the 17th and early 18th centuries, already had this consciousness. 5 great viziers who belonged to the most remarkable statesmen of the Ottoman Empire. Already in 1690 he led. vizier Köprülü Mustafa issued the Nizami-ı Cedid (Ottoman: Nizam-ı Cedid - “New Order”), which established the maximum standards for poll taxes levied on Christians; but this law did not have practical application. After the Peace of Karlowitz, Christians in Serbia and Banat were forgiven a year's taxes; The highest government in Constantinople began from time to time to take care of protecting Christians from extortions and other oppression. Insufficient to reconcile Christians with Turkish oppression, these measures irritated the Janissaries and Turks.

Participation in the Northern War

Ambassadors at Topkapi Palace

Mustafa's brother and heir, Ahmed III (1703-1730), elevated to the throne by the Janissary uprising, showed unexpected courage and independence. He arrested and hastily executed many officers of the Janissary army and removed and exiled the Grand Vizier (Sadr-Azam) Ahmed Pasha, whom they had installed. The new Grand Vizier Damad Hassan Pasha pacified uprisings in different parts of the state, patronized foreign merchants, and founded schools. He was soon overthrown as a result of intrigue emanating from the harem, and viziers began to change with amazing speed; some remained in power for no more than two weeks.

The Ottoman Empire did not even take advantage of the difficulties experienced by Russia during Northern War. Only in 1709 did she accept Charles XII, who had fled from Poltava, and, under the influence of his convictions, began a war with Russia. By this time, in the Ottoman ruling circles there already existed a party that dreamed not of a war with Russia, but of an alliance with it against Austria; At the head of this party was the leader. Vizier Numan Keprilu, and his fall, former business Charles XII, served as a signal for war.

The position of Peter I, surrounded on the Prut by an army of 200,000 Turks and Tatars, was extremely dangerous. Peter's death was inevitable, but the Grand Vizier Baltaji-Mehmed succumbed to bribery and released Peter for the comparatively unimportant concession of Azov (1711). The war party overthrew Baltaci-Mehmed and exiled him to Lemnos, but Russia diplomatically achieved the removal of Charles XII from the Ottoman Empire, for which it had to resort to force.

In 1714-18 the Ottomans waged war with Venice and in 1716-18 with Austria. By Peace of Passarowitz(1718) The Ottoman Empire received back the Morea, but gave Austria Belgrade with a significant part of Serbia, Banat, and part of Wallachia. In 1722, taking advantage of the end of the dynasty and the subsequent unrest in Persia, the Ottomans began religious war against the Shiites, with which they hoped to reward themselves for their losses in Europe. Several defeats in this war and the Persian invasion of Ottoman territory caused a new uprising in Constantinople: Ahmed was deposed, and his nephew, the son of Mustafa II, Mahmud I, was elevated to the throne.

Reign of Mahmud I

Under Mahmud I (1730-54), who was an exception among the Ottoman sultans with his gentleness and humanity (he did not kill the deposed sultan and his sons and generally avoided executions), the war with Persia continued, without definite results. The war with Austria ended with the Peace of Belgrade (1739), according to which the Turks received Serbia with Belgrade and Orsova. Russia acted more successfully against the Ottomans, but the conclusion of peace by the Austrians forced the Russians to make concessions; Of its conquests, Russia retained only Azov, but with the obligation to demolish the fortifications.

During the reign of Mahmud, the first Turkish printing house was founded by Ibrahim Basmaji. The Mufti, after some hesitation, gave a fatwa, with which, in the name of the interests of enlightenment, he blessed the undertaking, and the Sultan Gatti Sherif authorized it. Only the printing of the Koran and holy books was prohibited. During the first period of the printing house’s existence, 15 works were printed there (Arabic and Persian dictionaries, several books on the history of the Ottoman state and general geography, military art, political economy, etc.). After the death of Ibrahim Basmaji, the printing house closed, a new one arose only in 1784.

Mahmud I, who died of natural causes, was succeeded by his brother Osman III (1754-57), whose reign was peaceful and who died in the same way as his brother.

Attempts at reform (1757–1839)

Osman was succeeded by Mustafa III (1757–74), son of Ahmed III. Upon his accession to the throne, he firmly expressed his intention to change the policy of the Ottoman Empire and restore the shine of its weapons. He conceived quite extensive reforms (by the way, digging channels through Isthmus of Suez and through Asia Minor), openly did not sympathize with slavery and released a significant number of slaves.

General discontent, which had not previously been news in the Ottoman Empire, was especially strengthened by two incidents: by someone unknown, a caravan of the faithful returning from Mecca was robbed and destroyed, and a Turkish admiral's ship was captured by a detachment of sea robbers of Greek nationality. All this testified to the extreme weakness of state power.

To regulate finances, Mustafa III began by saving in his own palace, but at the same time he allowed the coins to be damaged. Under the patronage of Mustafa, the first public library, several schools and hospitals were opened in Constantinople. He very willingly concluded a treaty with Prussia in 1761, which granted Prussian merchant ships free navigation in Ottoman waters; Prussian subjects in the Ottoman Empire were subject to the jurisdiction of their consuls. Russia and Austria offered Mustafa 100,000 ducats for the abolition of the rights given to Prussia, but to no avail: Mustafa wanted to bring his state as close as possible to European civilization.

Attempts at reform did not go any further. In 1768, the Sultan had to declare war on Russia, which lasted 6 years and ended Peace of Kuchuk-Kainardzhiy 1774. Peace was already concluded under Mustafa's brother and heir, Abdul Hamid I (1774-1789).

Reign of Abdul Hamid I

The Empire at this time was almost everywhere in a state of ferment. The Greeks, excited by Orlov, were worried, but, left by the Russians without help, they were quickly and easily pacified and cruelly punished. Ahmed Pasha of Baghdad declared himself independent; Taher, supported by Arab nomads, took the title of Sheikh of Galilee and Acre; Egypt under the rule of Muhammad Ali did not even think of paying tribute; Northern Albania, which was ruled by Mahmud, Pasha of Scutari, was in a state of complete rebellion; Ali, Pasha of Yanin, clearly sought to establish an independent kingdom.

The entire reign of Adbul Hamid was occupied with pacifying these uprisings, which could not be achieved due to the lack of money and disciplined troops from the Ottoman government. This has been joined by a new war with Russia and Austria(1787-91), again unsuccessful for the Ottomans. It's over Peace of Jassy with Russia (1792), according to which Russia finally acquired Crimea and the space between the Bug and the Dniester, and the Treaty of Sistov with Austria (1791). The latter was comparatively favorable for the Ottoman Empire, since its main enemy, Joseph II, had died and Leopold II was directing all his attention to France. Austria returned to the Ottomans most of the acquisitions it made during this war. Peace was already concluded under Abdul Hamid's nephew, Selim III (1789-1807). In addition to territorial losses, the war brought one significant change to the life of the Ottoman state: before it began (1785), the empire entered into its first public debt, first internal, guaranteed by some state revenues.

Reign of Selim III

Sultan Selim III was the first to recognize the deep crisis of the Ottoman Empire and began to reform the military and government organization of the country. By energetic measures the government cleared the Aegean Sea of ​​pirates; it patronized trade and public education. His main attention was paid to the army. The Janissaries proved themselves almost completely useless in war, while at the same time keeping the country in a state of anarchy during periods of peace. The Sultan intended to replace their formations with a European-style army, but since it was obvious that it was impossible to immediately replace the entire old system, the reformers paid some attention to improving the position of traditional formations. Among the Sultan's other reforms were measures to strengthen the combat effectiveness of the artillery and navy. The government was concerned with translating the best foreign works on tactics and fortification into Ottoman; invited French officers to teaching positions at the artillery and naval schools; under the first of them, it founded a library of foreign works on military sciences. Workshops for casting guns have been improved; military ships of a new type were ordered from France. These were all preliminary measures.

Sultan Selim III

The Sultan clearly wanted to move on to reorganizing the internal structure of the army; he set it for her new uniform and began to introduce stricter discipline. He hasn’t touched the Janissaries yet. But then, firstly, the uprising of the Viddin Pasha, Pasvan-Oglu (1797), who clearly neglected the orders coming from the government, stood in his way, and secondly - Egyptian expedition Napoleon.

Kuchuk-Hussein moved against Pasvan-Oglu and waged a real war with him, which did not have a definite result. The government finally entered into negotiations with the rebellious governor and recognized his lifelong rights to rule the Viddinsky pashalyk, in fact on the basis of almost complete independence.

In 1798, General Bonaparte made his famous attack on Egypt, then on Syria. Great Britain took the side of the Ottoman Empire, destroying the French fleet in Battle of Abukir. The expedition did not have any serious results for the Ottomans. Egypt remained formally in the power of the Ottoman Empire, in fact - in the power of the Mamluks.

The war with the French had barely ended (1801) when the uprising of the Janissaries began in Belgrade, dissatisfied with the reforms in the army. Their oppression sparked a popular movement in Serbia (1804) under the leadership of Karageorge. The government initially supported the movement, but it soon took the form of a real popular uprising, and the Ottoman Empire was forced to take military action (see below). Battle of Ivankovac). The matter was complicated by the war started by Russia (1806-1812). Reforms had to be postponed again: the Grand Vizier and other senior officials and military personnel were at the theater of military operations.

Coup attempt

Only the kaymakam (assistant to the grand vizier) and deputy ministers remained in Constantinople. Sheikh-ul-Islam took advantage of this moment to plot against the Sultan. The ulema and janissaries took part in the conspiracy, among whom rumors were spread about the Sultan’s intention to distribute them among the regiments of the standing army. The Kaimaks also joined the conspiracy. On the appointed day, a detachment of Janissaries unexpectedly attacked the garrison of the standing army stationed in Constantinople and carried out a massacre among them. Another part of the Janissaries surrounded Selim's palace and demanded that he execute people they hated. Selim had the courage to refuse. He was arrested and taken into custody. Abdul Hamid's son, Mustafa IV (1807-1808), was proclaimed Sultan. The massacre in the city continued for two days. Sheikh-ul-Islam and Kaymakam ruled on behalf of the powerless Mustafa. But Selim had his followers.

During the coup of Kabakçı Mustafa (Turkish: Kabakçı Mustafa isyanı), Mustafa Bayraktar(Alemdar Mustafa Pasha - Pasha of the Bulgarian city of Ruschuk) and his followers began negotiations regarding the return of Sultan Selim III to the throne. Finally, with an army of sixteen thousand, Mustafa Bayraktar went to Istanbul, having previously sent there Haji Ali Aga, who killed Kabakci Mustafa (July 19, 1808). Mustafa Bayraktar and his army, having destroyed a fairly large number of rebels, arrived in the Sublime Porte. Sultan Mustafa IV, having learned that Mustafa Bayraktar wanted to return the throne to Sultan Selim III, ordered the death of Selim and the Shah-Zadeh's brother Mahmud. The Sultan was killed immediately, and Shah-Zade Mahmud, with the help of his slaves and servants, was freed. Mustafa Bayraktar, having removed Mustafa IV from the throne, declared Mahmud II sultan. The latter made him sadrasam - grand vizier.

Reign of Mahmud II

Not inferior to Selim in energy and in understanding the need for reforms, Mahmud was much tougher than Selim: angry, vindictive, he was more guided by personal passions, which were tempered by political foresight, than by a real desire for the good of the country. The ground for innovation was already somewhat prepared, the ability not to think about the means also favored Mahmud, and therefore his activities still left more traces than the activities of Selim. He appointed Bayraktar as his grand vizier, who ordered the beating of the participants in the conspiracy against Selim and other political opponents. The life of Mustafa himself was temporarily spared.

As the first reform, Bayraktar outlined the reorganization of the Janissary corps, but he had the imprudence to send part of his army to the theater of war; he only had 7,000 soldiers left. 6,000 Janissaries made a surprise attack on them and moved towards the palace in order to free Mustafa IV. Bayraktar, who locked himself in the palace with a small detachment, threw out Mustafa’s corpse, and then blew up part of the palace into the air and buried himself in the ruins. A few hours later, an army of three thousand, loyal to the government, led by Ramiz Pasha, arrived, defeated the Janissaries and destroyed a significant part of them.

Mahmud decided to postpone the reform until after the war with Russia, which ended in 1812. Peace of Bucharest. Congress of Vienna made some changes to the position of the Ottoman Empire or, more correctly, defined more precisely and confirmed in theory and on geographical maps what had already taken place in reality. Dalmatia and Illyria were assigned to Austria, Bessarabia to Russia; seven Ionian Islands received self-government under an English protectorate; English ships received the right of free passage through the Dardanelles.

Even in the territory remaining with the empire, the government did not feel confident. An uprising began in Serbia in 1817, ending only after Serbia was recognized by Peace of Adrianople 1829 as a separate vassal state, with its own prince at its head. An uprising began in 1820 Ali Pasha of Yaninsky. As a result of the treason of his own sons, he was defeated, captured and executed; but a significant part of his army formed cadres of Greek rebels. In 1821, an uprising that developed into war of independence, started in Greece. After the intervention of Russia, France and England and unfortunate for the Ottoman Empire Navarino (sea) battle(1827), in which the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were lost, the Ottomans lost Greece.

Military losses

Getting rid of the Janissaries and Dervishes (1826) did not save the Turks from defeat both in the war with the Serbs and in the war with the Greeks. These two wars, and in connection with them, were followed by the war with Russia (1828–29), which ended Treaty of Adrianople 1829 The Ottoman Empire lost Serbia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Greece, and the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

Following this, Muhammad Ali, Khedive of Egypt (1831-1833 and 1839), broke away from the Ottoman Empire. In the fight against the latter, the empire suffered blows that put its very existence at stake; but she was saved twice (1833 and 1839) by the unexpected intercession of Russia, caused by the fear of a European war, which would probably be caused by the collapse of the Ottoman state. However, this intercession also brought real benefits to Russia: around the world in Gunkyar Skelessi (1833), the Ottoman Empire granted Russian ships passage through the Dardanelles, closing it to England. At the same time, the French decided to take Algeria from the Ottomans (since 1830), which had previously, however, been only nominally dependent on the empire.

Civil reforms

Mahmud II begins modernization in 1839

The wars did not stop Mahmud's reform plans; private reforms in the army continued throughout his reign. He also cared about raising the level of education among the people; under him (1831), the first newspaper in the Ottoman Empire that had an official character (“Moniteur ottoman”) began to be published in French. At the end of 1831, the first official newspaper in Turkish, Takvim-i Vekayi, began to be published.

Like Peter the Great, perhaps even consciously imitating him, Mahmud sought to introduce European morals among the people; he himself wore a European costume and encouraged his officials to do so, prohibited the wearing of a turban, organized festivities in Constantinople and other cities with fireworks, with European music and generally according to the European model. He did not live to see the most important reforms of the civil system conceived by him; they were already the work of his heir. But even the little he did went against the religious feelings of the Muslim population. He began to mint coins with his image, which is directly prohibited in the Koran (the news that previous sultans also removed portraits of themselves is subject to great doubt).

Throughout his reign, Muslim riots caused by religious feelings incessantly occurred in different parts of the state, especially in Constantinople; the government dealt with them extremely cruelly: sometimes 4,000 corpses were thrown into the Bosphorus in a few days. At the same time, Mahmud did not hesitate to execute even the ulema and dervishes, who were generally his bitter enemies.

During the reign of Mahmud there were especially many fires in Constantinople, some of which occurred from arson; the people explained them as God's punishment for the sins of the Sultan.

Results of the board

The extermination of the Janissaries, which at first damaged the Ottoman Empire, depriving it of a bad, but still not useless army, after several years turned out to be extremely beneficial: the Ottoman army rose to the level of European armies, which was clearly proven in the Crimean campaign and even more so in the war of 1877-1878 and in the Greek war of 1897. Territorial reduction, especially the loss of Greece, also turned out to be more beneficial than harmful for the empire.

The Ottomans never allowed Christians to serve in military service; regions with a solid Christian population (Greece and Serbia), without increasing the Turkish army, at the same time required significant military garrisons from it, which could not be put into action in a moment of need. This applies especially to Greece, which, due to its extended maritime border, did not even represent strategic benefits for the Ottoman Empire, which was stronger on land than at sea. The loss of territories reduced the state revenues of the empire, but during the reign of Mahmud, trade between the Ottoman Empire and European states somewhat revived, and the country's productivity increased somewhat (bread, tobacco, grapes, rose oil, etc.).

Thus, despite all external defeats, despite even the terrible Battle of Nisib, in which Muhammad Ali destroyed a significant Ottoman army and was followed by the loss of an entire fleet, Mahmud left Abdülmecid a state strengthened rather than weakened. It was also strengthened by the fact that from now on the interest of the European powers was more closely connected with the preservation of the Ottoman state. The importance of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles has increased enormously; The European powers felt that the capture of Constantinople by one of them would deal an irreparable blow to the others, and therefore they considered the preservation of the weak Ottoman Empire more profitable for themselves.

In general, the empire was still decaying, and Nicholas I rightly called it a sick person; but the death of the Ottoman state was delayed indefinitely. Starting from the Crimean War, the empire began to intensively make foreign loans, and this gained it the influential support of its numerous creditors, that is, mainly the financiers of England. On the other hand, internal reforms that could raise the state and save it from destruction became increasingly important in the 19th century. It's getting more and more difficult. Russia was afraid of these reforms, since they could strengthen the Ottoman Empire, and through its influence at the court of the Sultan tried to make them impossible; Thus, in 1876-1877, she destroyed Midhad Pasha, who was capable of carrying out serious reforms that were not inferior in importance to the reforms of Sultan Mahmud.

Reign of Abdul-Mecid (1839-1861)

Mahmud was succeeded by his 16-year-old son Abdul-Mejid, who was not distinguished by his energy and inflexibility, but was a much more cultured and gentle person in character.

Despite everything Mahmud did, the Battle of Nizib could have completely destroyed the Ottoman Empire if Russia, England, Austria and Prussia had not entered into an alliance to protect the integrity of the Porte (1840); They drew up a treaty, by virtue of which the Egyptian viceroy retained Egypt on a hereditary basis, but undertook to immediately cleanse Syria, and in case of refusal he had to lose all his possessions. This alliance caused indignation in France, which supported Muhammad Ali, and Thiers even made preparations for war; however, Louis-Philippe did not dare to take it. Despite the inequality of power, Muhammad Ali was ready to resist; but the English squadron bombarded Beirut, burned the Egyptian fleet and landed a corps of 9,000 people in Syria, which, with the help of the Maronites, inflicted several defeats on the Egyptians. Muhammad Ali conceded; The Ottoman Empire was saved, and Abdulmecid, supported by Khozrev Pasha, Reshid Pasha and other associates of his father, began reforms.

Gulhanei Hutt Sheriff

At the end of 1839, Abdul-Mecid published the famous Gulhane Hatti Sheriff (Gulhane - “home of roses”, the name of the square where the Hatti Sheriff was declared). This was a manifesto that defined the principles that the government intended to follow:

• providing all subjects with perfect security regarding their life, honor and property;
• the correct way to distribute and collect taxes;
• an equally correct way of recruiting soldiers.

It was considered necessary to change the distribution of taxes in the sense of their equalization and abandon the system of farming them out, determine the costs of land and naval forces; publicity was established legal proceedings. All these benefits applied to all subjects of the Sultan without distinction of religion. The Sultan himself took an oath of allegiance to the Hatti Sheriff. All that remained was to actually fulfill the promise.

Gumayun

After the Crimean War, the Sultan published a new Gatti Sherif Gumayun (1856), which confirmed and developed in more detail the principles of the first; especially insisted on the equality of all subjects, without distinction of religion or nationality. After this Gatti Sheriff, the old law on the death penalty for converting from Islam to another religion was abolished. However, most of these decisions remained only on paper.

The highest government was partly unable to cope with the willfulness of lower officials, and partly itself did not want to resort to some of the measures promised in the Gatti Sheriffs, such as, for example, the appointment of Christians to various positions. Once it made an attempt to recruit soldiers from Christians, but this caused discontent among both Muslims and Christians, especially since the government did not dare to abandon religious principles when producing officers (1847); this measure was soon cancelled. The massacres of Maronites in Syria (1845 and others) confirmed that religious tolerance was still alien to the Ottoman Empire.

During the reign of Abdul-Mejid, roads were improved, many bridges were built, several telegraph lines were installed, and postal services were organized along European lines.

The events of 1848 did not resonate at all in the Ottoman Empire; only Hungarian revolution prompted the Ottoman government to make an attempt to restore its dominance on the Danube, but the defeat of the Hungarians dispelled its hopes. When Kossuth and his comrades escaped on Turkish territory, Austria and Russia turned to Sultan Abdulmecid demanding their extradition. The Sultan replied that religion forbade him to violate the duty of hospitality.

Crimean War

1853 -1856 were the time of a new Eastern War, which ended in 1856 with the Peace of Paris. On Paris Congress a representative of the Ottoman Empire was admitted on the basis of equality, and thereby the empire was recognized as a member of the European concern. However, this recognition was more formal than actual. First of all, the Ottoman Empire, whose participation in the war was very large and which proved an increase in its combat capability compared with the first quarter of the 19th or the end of the 18th century, actually received very little from the war; the destruction of Russian fortresses on the northern coast of the Black Sea was of negligible significance for her, and Russia’s loss of the right to maintain a navy on the Black Sea could not last long and was canceled already in 1871. Further, consular jurisdiction was preserved and proved that Europe was still watching on the Ottoman Empire as a barbaric state. After the war, European powers began to establish their own postal institutions on the territory of the empire, independent of the Ottoman ones.

The war not only did not increase the power of the Ottoman Empire over the vassal states, but weakened it; the Danube principalities united in 1861 into one state, Romania, and in Serbia, the Turkish-friendly Obrenovichi were overthrown and replaced by those friendly to Russia Karageorgievici; Somewhat later, Europe forced the empire to remove its garrisons from Serbia (1867). During the Eastern Campaign, the Ottoman Empire made a loan in England of 7 million pounds; in 1858,1860 and 1861 I had to make new loans. At the same time, the government issued a significant amount of paper money, the value of which quickly fell sharply. In connection with other events, this caused the trade crisis of 1861, which had a severe impact on the population.

Abdul Aziz (1861–76) and Murad V (1876)

Abdul Aziz was a hypocritical, voluptuous and bloodthirsty tyrant, more reminiscent of the sultans of the 17th and 18th centuries than of his brother; but he understood the impossibility under these conditions of stopping on the path of reform. In the Gatti Sherif published by him upon his accession to the throne, he solemnly promised to continue the policies of his predecessors. Indeed, he released from prison political criminals, concluded in the previous reign, and retained his brother’s ministers. Moreover, he stated that he was abandoning the harem and would be content with one wife. The promises were not fulfilled: a few days later, as a result of palace intrigue, the Grand Vizier Mehmed Kibrısli Pasha was overthrown and replaced by Aali Pasha, who in turn was overthrown a few months later and then again took the same post in 1867.

In general, grand viziers and other officials were replaced with extreme speed due to the intrigues of the harem, which was very soon re-established. Some measures in the spirit of Tanzimat were nevertheless taken. The most important of them is the publication (which, however, does not exactly correspond to reality) of the Ottoman state budget (1864). During the ministry of Aali Pasha (1867-1871), one of the most intelligent and dexterous Ottoman diplomats of the 19th century, partial secularization of waqfs was carried out, and Europeans were granted the right to own real estate within the Ottoman Empire (1867), reorganized state council(1868), a new law on public education was issued, formally introduced metric system of weights and measures, which, however, did not take root in life (1869). The same ministry organized censorship (1867), the creation of which was caused by the quantitative growth of periodical and non-periodical press in Constantinople and other cities, in Ottoman and foreign languages.

Censorship under Aali Pasha was characterized by extreme pettiness and severity; she not only forbade writing about what seemed inconvenient to the Ottoman government, but directly ordered the printing of praises of the wisdom of the Sultan and the government; in general, she made the entire press more or less official. Its general character remained the same after Aali Pasha, and only under Midhad Pasha in 1876-1877 was it somewhat softer.

War in Montenegro

In 1862, Montenegro, seeking complete independence from the Ottoman Empire, supporting the rebels of Herzegovina and counting on Russian support, began a war with the empire. Russia did not support it, and since a significant preponderance of forces was on the side of the Ottomans, the latter fairly quickly won a decisive victory: Omer Pasha’s troops penetrated all the way to the capital, but did not take it, since the Montenegrins began to ask for peace, to which the Ottoman Empire agreed .

Revolt in Crete

In 1866, the Greek uprising began in Crete. This uprising aroused warm sympathy in Greece, which began hastily preparing for war. European powers came to the aid of the Ottoman Empire and resolutely forbade Greece to intercede on behalf of the Cretans. An army of forty thousand was sent to Crete. Despite the extraordinary courage of the Cretans, who waged a guerrilla war in the mountains of their island, they could not hold out for long, and after three years of struggle the uprising was pacified; the rebels were punished by executions and confiscation of property.

After the death of Aali Pasha, the great viziers began to change again with extreme speed. In addition to the harem intrigues, there was another reason for this: two parties fought at the Sultan’s court - English and Russian, acting on the instructions of the ambassadors of England and Russia. The Russian ambassador to Constantinople in 1864-1877 was Count Nikolay Ignatiev, who had undoubted relations with the dissatisfied in the empire, promising them Russian intercession. At the same time, he had great influence on the Sultan, convincing him of Russia’s friendship and promising him assistance in the change of order planned by the Sultan succession to the throne not to the eldest in the clan, as was the case before, but from father to son, since the Sultan really wanted to transfer the throne to his son Yusuf Izedin.

Coup d'etat

In 1875, an uprising broke out in Herzegovina, Bosnia and Bulgaria, dealing a decisive blow to Ottoman finances. It was announced that from now on the Ottoman Empire would pay only one half of interest in money for its foreign debts, and the other half in coupons payable no earlier than in 5 years. The need for more serious reforms was recognized by many senior officials of the empire, led by Midhad Pasha; however, under the capricious and despotic Abdul-Aziz, their implementation was completely impossible. In view of this, the Grand Vizier Mehmed Rushdi Pasha conspired with the ministers Midhad Pasha, Hussein Avni Pasha and others and Sheikh-ul-Islam to overthrow the Sultan. Sheikh-ul-Islam gave the following fatwa: “If the Commander of the Faithful proves his madness, if he does not have the political knowledge necessary to govern the state, if he makes personal expenses that the state cannot bear, if his stay on the throne threatens with disastrous consequences, then should he be deposed or not? The law says yes."

On the night of May 30, 1876, Hussein Avni Pasha, putting a revolver to the chest of Murad, the heir to the throne (son of Abdulmecid), forced him to accept the crown. At the same time, a detachment of infantry entered the palace of Abdul-Aziz, and it was announced to him that he had ceased to reign. Murad V ascended the throne. A few days later it was announced that Abdul-Aziz had cut his veins with scissors and died. Murad V, who was not quite normal before, under the influence of the murder of his uncle, the subsequent murder of several ministers in the house of Midhad Pasha by the Circassian Hassan Bey, who was avenging the Sultan, and other events, finally went crazy and became just as inconvenient for his progressive ministers. In August 1876, he was also deposed with the help of a fatwa from the mufti and his brother Abdul-Hamid was elevated to the throne.

Abdul Hamid II

Already at the end of the reign of Abdul Aziz, uprising in Herzegovina and Bosnia, caused by the extremely difficult situation of the population of these regions, partly obliged to serve corvee in the fields of large Muslim landowners, partly personally free, but completely powerless, oppressed by exorbitant taxes and at the same time constantly fueled in their hatred of the Turks by the close proximity of free Montenegrins.

In the spring of 1875, some communities turned to the Sultan with a request to reduce the tax on sheep and the tax paid by Christians in return for military service, and to organize a police force from Christians. They didn't even get an answer. Then their residents took up arms. The movement quickly spread throughout Herzegovina and spread to Bosnia; Niksic was besieged by rebels. Detachments of volunteers moved from Montenegro and Serbia to help the rebels. The movement aroused great interest abroad, especially in Russia and Austria; the latter turned to the Porte demanding religious equality, lower taxes, revision of real estate laws, etc. The Sultan immediately promised to fulfill all this (February 1876), but the rebels did not agree to lay down their weapons until the Ottoman troops were withdrawn from Herzegovina. The ferment spread to Bulgaria, where the Ottomans, in response, carried out a terrible massacre (see Bulgaria), which caused indignation throughout Europe (Gladstone's brochure about atrocities in Bulgaria), entire villages were massacred, including infants. The Bulgarian uprising was drowned in blood, but the Herzegovinian and Bosnian uprising continued in 1876 and finally caused the intervention of Serbia and Montenegro (1876-1877; see. Serbo-Montenegrin-Turkish War).

On May 6, 1876, in Thessaloniki, the French and German consuls were killed by a fanatical crowd, which included some officials. Of the participants or accomplices of the crime, Selim Bey, the chief of police in Thessaloniki, was sentenced to 15 years in the fortress, one colonel to 3 years; but these punishments, carried out far from in full, did not satisfy anyone, and public opinion Europe was greatly agitated against a country where such crimes could be committed.

In December 1876, at the initiative of England, a conference of the great powers was convened in Constantinople to resolve the difficulties caused by the uprising, but it did not achieve its goal. The Grand Vizier at this time (from December 13, 1876) was Midhad Pasha, a liberal and Anglophile, the head of the Young Turk party. Considering it necessary to make the Ottoman Empire a European country and wanting to present it as such to the authorized representatives of the European powers, he drafted a constitution in a few days and forced Sultan Abdul Hamid to sign and publish it (December 23, 1876).

Ottoman Parliament, 1877

The constitution was drawn up on the model of European ones, especially the Belgian one. It guaranteed individual rights and established a parliamentary regime; Parliament was to consist of two chambers, from which the Chamber of Deputies was elected by a universal closed vote of all Ottoman subjects, without distinction of religion or nationality. The first elections were held during the administration of Midhad; its candidates were almost universally chosen. The opening of the first parliamentary session took place only on March 7, 1877, and even earlier, on March 5, Midhad was overthrown and arrested as a result of palace intrigues. Parliament was opened with a speech from the throne, but was dissolved a few days later. New elections were held, the new session turned out to be just as short, and then, without the formal repeal of the constitution, even without the formal dissolution of the parliament, it no longer met.

Main article: Russian-Turkish War 1877-1878

In April 1877, the war with Russia began, in February 1878 it ended Peace of San Stefano, then (June 13 - July 13, 1878) by the amended Berlin Treaty. The Ottoman Empire lost all rights to Serbia and Romania; Bosnia and Herzegovina was given to Austria to restore order in it (de facto - for complete possession); Bulgaria formed a special vassal principality, Eastern Rumelia - an autonomous province, which soon (1885) united with Bulgaria. Serbia, Montenegro and Greece received territorial increments. In Asia, Russia received Kars, Ardagan, Batum. The Ottoman Empire had to pay Russia an indemnity of 800 million francs.

Riots in Crete and in areas inhabited by Armenians

Nevertheless, the internal conditions of life remained approximately the same, and this was reflected in the riots that constantly arose in one place or another in the Ottoman Empire. In 1889, an uprising began in Crete. The rebels demanded a reorganization of the police so that it would consist of more than just Muslims and would protect more than just Muslims, a new organization of courts, etc. The Sultan rejected these demands and decided to act with weapons. The uprising was suppressed.

In 1887 in Geneva, in 1890 in Tiflis, the political parties Hunchak and Dashnaktsutyun were organized by Armenians. In August 1894, unrest began in Sasun by the Dashnak organization and under the leadership of Ambartsum Boyadzhiyan, a member of this party. These events are explained by the powerless position of the Armenians, especially by the robberies of the Kurds, who made up part of the troops in Asia Minor. The Turks and Kurds responded with a terrible massacre, reminiscent of the Bulgarian horrors, where rivers flowed with blood for months; entire villages were slaughtered [source not specified 1127 days] ; many Armenians were taken prisoner. All these facts were confirmed by European (mainly English) newspaper correspondence, which very often spoke from positions of Christian solidarity and caused an explosion of indignation in England. On the presentation made on this occasion British Ambassador, The Porte responded with a categorical denial of the validity of the “facts” and a statement that it was a matter of the usual pacification of a riot. However, the ambassadors of England, France and Russia in May 1895 presented the Sultan with demands for reforms in areas inhabited by Armenians, based on the resolutions Berlin Treaty; they demanded that the officials administering these lands be at least half Christian and that their appointment depend on a special commission in which Christians would also be represented; [ style!] The Porte replied that it saw no need for reforms for individual territories, but that it had in mind general reforms for the entire state.

On August 14, 1896, members of the Dashnaktsutyun party in Istanbul itself attacked the Ottoman Bank, killed the guards and entered into a shootout with the arriving army units. On the same day, as a result of negotiations between the Russian ambassador Maksimov and the Sultan, the Dashnaks left the city and headed to Marseille, on the yacht of the general director of the Ottoman Bank, Edgard Vincent. The European ambassadors made a presentation to the Sultan on this matter. This time the Sultan considered it necessary to respond with a promise of reform, which was not fulfilled; Only new administration of vilayets, sanjaks and nakhiyas was introduced (see. Government of the Ottoman Empire), which changed the essence of the matter very little.

In 1896, new unrest began in Crete and immediately took on a more dangerous character. The session of the National Assembly opened, but it did not enjoy the slightest authority among the population. Nobody counted on European help. The uprising flared up; Rebel detachments in Crete harassed the Turkish troops, repeatedly causing them heavy losses. The movement found a lively echo in Greece, from which in February 1897 a military detachment under the command of Colonel Vassos set off for the island of Crete. Then the European squadron, consisting of German, Italian, Russian and English warships, under the command of the Italian admiral Canevaro, assumed a threatening position. On February 21, 1897, she began to bombard the rebel military camp near the city of Kanei and forced them to disperse. A few days later, however, the rebels and the Greeks managed to take the city of Kadano and capture 3,000 Turks.

At the beginning of March, there was a riot in Crete by Turkish gendarmes, dissatisfied with not receiving their salaries for many months. This revolt could have been very useful for the rebels, but the European landing disarmed them. On March 25, the rebels attacked Canea, but came under fire from European ships and had to retreat with heavy losses. In early April 1897, Greece moved its troops into Ottoman territory, hoping to penetrate as far as Macedonia, where minor riots were occurring at the same time. Within one month, the Greeks were completely defeated and Ottoman troops occupied all of Thessaly. The Greeks were forced to ask for peace, which was concluded in September 1897 under pressure from the powers. There were no territorial changes, other than a small strategic adjustment of the border between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in favor of the latter; but Greece had to pay a war indemnity of 4 million Turkish pounds.

In the fall of 1897, the uprising on the island of Crete also ceased, after the Sultan once again promised self-government to the island of Crete. Indeed, at the insistence of the powers, Prince George of Greece was appointed governor-general of the island, the island received self-government and retained only vassal relations with the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century. in Crete, a noticeable desire was revealed for the complete separation of the island from the empire and for annexation to Greece. At the same time (1901) fermentation continued in Macedonia. In the fall of 1901, Macedonian revolutionaries captured an American woman and demanded a ransom for her; this causes great inconvenience to the Ottoman government, which is powerless to protect the safety of foreigners on its territory. In the same year, the movement of the Young Turk party, headed by Midhad Pasha, appeared with comparatively greater force; she began intensively publishing brochures and leaflets in the Ottoman language in Geneva and Paris for distribution in the Ottoman Empire; in Istanbul itself, many people belonging to the bureaucratic and officer class were arrested and sentenced to various punishments on charges of participating in Young Turk agitation. Even the Sultan's son-in-law, married to his daughter, went abroad with his two sons, openly joined the Young Turk party and did not want to return to his homeland, despite the Sultan's persistent invitation. In 1901, the Porte attempted to destroy European postal institutions, but this attempt was unsuccessful. In 1901, France demanded that the Ottoman Empire satisfy the claims of some of its capitalists and creditors; the latter refused, then the French fleet occupied Mytilene and the Ottomans hastened to satisfy all demands.

Departure of Mehmed VI, last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 1922

• In the 19th century, separatist sentiments intensified on the outskirts of the empire. The Ottoman Empire began to gradually lose its territories, succumbing to the technological superiority of the West.
• In 1908, the Young Turks overthrew Abdul Hamid II, after which the monarchy in the Ottoman Empire began to be decorative (see article Young Turk Revolution). The triumvirate of Enver, Talaat and Djemal was established (January 1913).
• In 1912, Italy captured Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (now Libya) from the empire.
• IN First Balkan War 1912-1913 the empire loses the vast majority of its European possessions: Albania, Macedonia, northern Greece. During 1913, she managed to recapture a small part of the lands from Bulgaria during Inter-Allied (Second Balkan) War.
• Weak, the Ottoman Empire tried to rely on help from Germany, but this only drew it into First World War which ended in defeat Quadruple Alliance.
• October 30, 1914 - The Ottoman Empire officially announced its entry into the First World War, the day before actually entering it by shelling the Black Sea ports of Russia.
• In 1915, the Genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.
• During 1917-1918, the Allies occupied the Middle Eastern possessions of the Ottoman Empire. After World War I, Syria and Lebanon came under the control of France, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq came under the control of Great Britain; in the west of the Arabian Peninsula with the support of the British ( Lawrence of Arabia) independent states were formed: Hijaz, Najd, Asir and Yemen. Subsequently, Hijaz and Asir became part of Saudi Arabia.
• On October 30, 1918 it was concluded Truce of Mudros followed by Treaty of Sèvres(August 10, 1920), which did not come into force because it was not ratified by all signatories (ratified only by Greece). According to this agreement, the Ottoman Empire was to be dismembered, and one of the largest cities in Asia Minor, Izmir (Smyrna), was promised to Greece. The Greek army took it on May 15, 1919, after which it began war for independence. Turkish military statesmen led by Pasha Mustafa Kemal They refused to recognize the peace treaty and, with the armed forces remaining under their command, expelled the Greeks from the country. By September 18, 1922, Türkiye was liberated, which was recorded in Treaty of Lausanne 1923, which recognized the new borders of Turkey.
• On October 29, 1923, the Turkish Republic was proclaimed, and Mustafa Kemal, who later took the name Ataturk (father of the Turks), became its first president.
• March 3, 1924 - Grand National Assembly of Turkey The Caliphate was abolished.

Turkish conquests of the first half of the 16th century. XVI century was

the time of greatest military-political power of the Ottoman Empire. In the first half of the 16th century. it annexed significant territories in the Middle East and North Africa to its possessions. Having defeated the Persian Shah Ismail in the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and in 1516 in the Aleppo region the troops of the Egyptian Mamluks, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I (1512-1529) included in his state south-eastern Anatolia, Kurdistan, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Northern Mesopotamia to Mosul, Egypt and Hijaz with the holy, Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. Turkish tradition connects the conquest of Egypt with the legend of the transfer of the title of caliph to the Turkish sultan, i.e. deputy, viceroy of the Prophet Muhammad on earth, the spiritual head of all Sunni Muslims. Although the very fact of such a transfer is a later fabrication, the theocratic claims of the Ottoman sultans began to manifest themselves more actively from this time, when the empire subjugated vast territories with a Muslim population. Continuing Selim's eastern policy, Suleiman I Kanuni (the Lawgiver, in European literature it is customary to add the epithet Magnificent to his name) (1520-1566) took possession of Iraq, the western regions of Georgia and Armenia (under a peace treaty with Iran in 1555), Aden (1538 ) and Yemen (1546). In Africa, Algeria (1520), Tripoli (1551), and Tunisia (1574) came under the rule of the Ottoman sultans. An attempt was made to conquer the Lower Volga region, but the Astrakhan campaign of 1569 ended in failure. In Europe, having captured Belgrade in 1521, the Ottoman conquerors undertook throughout 1526-1544. five campaigns against Hungary. As a result, Southern and Central Hungary with the city of Buda was included in the Ottoman Empire. Transylvania was turned into a vassal principality. The Turks also captured the island of Rhodes (1522) and conquered from the Venetians most of the islands of the Aegean Sea and a number of cities in Dalmatia.

As a result of almost continuous aggressive wars, a huge empire was formed, whose possessions were located in three 534

Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII centuries.

parts of the world - Europe, Asia and Africa. The main enemy of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, Iran, was significantly weakened. A constant object of Iranian-Turkish rivalry was control over the traditional trade routes connecting Europe with Asia, along which caravan trade in silk and spices took place. Wars with Iran continued for about a century. They had a religious connotation, since the dominant religion in Iran was Shiite Islam, while the Ottoman sultans professed Sunnism. Throughout the 16th century, Shiism posed a significant internal danger to the Ottoman authorities, since in Anatolia, especially in the East, it was very widespread and became the slogan of the fight against Ottoman rule. Wars with Iran under these conditions required great effort from the Ottoman authorities.

The second rival of the Ottoman Empire in control of trade routes, Egypt ceased to exist as an independent state, its territory was included in the empire. The southern direction of trade through Egypt, Hijaz, Yemen and further to India was completely in the hands of the Ottomans.

Control of overland trade routes with India, which had largely passed to the Ottoman Empire, pitted it against the Portuguese, who had established themselves in a number of points on the western coast of India and were trying to monopolize the spice trade. In 1538, a Turkish naval expedition was undertaken from Suez to India to combat the dominance of the Portuguese, but it was not successful.

The establishment of Ottoman rule over many countries and regions, differing in the level of socio-economic and political development, culture, language and religion, had a significant impact on the historical destinies of the conquered peoples.

The devastating consequences of the Ottoman conquest were great, especially in the Balkans. Ottoman rule slowed down the pace of economic and cultural development in this region. At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that the conquered peoples had an influence on the economy and culture of the conquerors and made a certain contribution to the development of Ottoman society.

Military-administrative structure of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire was "the only truly military power of the Middle Ages." The military nature of the empire affected on its political system and administrative structure, which received legislative formalization in a code of laws adopted during the reign of Suleiman I the Legislator (Kanuni).

The entire territory of the empire was divided into provinces (eya-lets). During the reign of Suleiman, 21 eyalets were created, by the middle of the 17th century. their number increased to 26. Eyalets were divided into sanjaks (districts). Beylerbey, ruler of Eyalet, andsanjakbey, the head of the sanjak, exercised civil administration of their provinces and districts and at the same time were commanders of the feudal militia and local Janissary garrisons. Warriors of the mounted feudal militia (sipahi) received land grants - timars and zeamets. They were obliged, by order of the Sultan, to personally participate in military campaigns and, depending on the income from the land grant they received, to field a certain number of equipped horsemen. In peacetime, sipahis were obliged to live in the sanjak, where their land was located. They were entrusted with certain functions of supervision over the state of the land fund, the regular receipt of taxes from each peasant household, the sale and inheritance of land by peasants, their mandatory cultivation of the land, etc. Carrying out these economic, organizational and police duties and collecting prescribed taxes, sipahis, in fact, were not only warriors, but also performed the functions of the lowest level of the administrative apparatus of the empire. The sipahis received material support from a share of the state tax from the population living in their timars or zeamets. This share was clearly defined by the state. Military commanders and administrative chiefs, beylerbeys and sanjakbeys, along with income from the land holdings granted to them, had the right to receive a certain type of taxes from peasants living in the possessions of ordinary sipahi. As a result of these complex tax combinations, ordinary sipahis were subordinated to large feudal lords who stood at the highest military-administrative level. This created a unique system of feudal hierarchy in the Ottoman Empire.

Even large feudal lords in the Ottoman Empire did not have judicial immunity. Judicial functions were isolated and performed by qadis (Muslim judges), who were subordinate not to the local administration, but only to the qadiaskers in the eyalts and the head of the Muslim community in the empire - Sheikh-ul-Islam. Legal proceedings were centralized, and the Sultan could (through the qadis) directly exercise his supervision on the ground. The Sultan was an unlimited ruler and exercised administrative power through the Grand Vizier, who was in charge of military, administrative and fiscal management, and the Sheikh-ul-Islam, who was in charge of religious and judicial affairs. This duality of governance contributed to the centralization of the state.

However, not all eyalets of the empire had the same status. Almost all Arab regions (except for some Asian regions bordering Anatolia) retained traditional pre-Ottoman agrarian relations and administrative structure. Janissary garrisons were only stationed there. DutyThese eyalets in relation to the central government consisted of supplying the capital with an annual tribute - salyan - and providing certain contingents of troops at the request of the Sultan. Even more independent were the hükümets (possessions) of a number of Kurdish and some Arab tribes, which enjoyed administrative autonomy and only in wartime placed detachments of their troops at the disposal of the Sultan. The empire also included Christian principalities that paid annual tribute, a kind of buffer border territories, in the internal affairs of which the Sublime Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire) did not interfere. Moldova, Wallachia, Transylvania, as well as Dubrovnik and some areas of Georgia and the North Caucasus had this status. The Crimean Khanate, the sherifat of Mecca, Tripoli, Tunisia, and Algeria were in a special position, also retaining special privileges of the border provinces.

New phenomena in agrarian relations of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th-17th centuries. The crisis of the military system. The legislative acts of Suleiman I recorded new phenomena in the agrarian relations of the Ottoman Empire. First of all, this is the legal registration of the attachment of peasants to the land. Back at the end of the 15th century. in some areas of the country there was a practice of returning runaway peasants. According to the Suleiman Code, feudal lords throughout the country received this right. A 15-year period for searching peasants in rural areas and 20 years in cities was established. This provision did not affect only the capital - Istanbul, where fugitives were not wanted.

The balance of power within the ruling class has also changed. Strict government regulation of sipahi income hampered the growth of their economic power. The struggle for land between various layers of the feudal class intensified. Sources indicate that some large feudal lords concentrated 20-30, or even 40-50 zea-mets and timars in their hands. In this regard, the palace aristocracy and bureaucrats were especially active.

Officials of the central apparatus of the Ottoman administration received special land holdings - khasses - for their service. These possessions were extremely large in size; for example, the beylerbey of Anatolia received an annual income from his hass of 1,600,000 akche, the Janissary agha - 500,000 akche (while an ordinary timariot received 3 thousand, or even less). But unlike the sipahi possessions, the khasses were purely service grants and were not inherited. They were associated with a specific position.

A characteristic feature of the Ottoman social structure was that the official aristocracy could penetrate among the military captives, but there was no way back. The Ottoman bureaucracy was replenished either by heredity or bythe so-called kapikulu - “slaves of the Sultan’s court.” The latter came either from former prisoners of war who were captured at an early age, or were taken as maidens. Dev-shirme - blood tax, forced recruitment of boys, carried out in a number of Christian regions of the empire. Christian boys aged 7-12 were torn away from their native environment, converted to Islam and sent to be raised in Muslim families. Then they were trained in a special school at the Sultan's court and formed from them into detachments of troops who received salaries from the Sultans. The greatest fame and glory in the Ottoman Empire was gained by the foot army of this category - the Janissaries. The Ottoman officials of various ranks, right up to the Grand Vizier, were also formed from this environment. As a rule, these persons were promoted to higher positions by famous feudal families, sometimes by the sultans themselves or their relatives, and were obedient agents of their will.

Representatives of the bureaucratic category of the ruling class, in addition to the official hassses assigned to them, received from the Sultan land holdings on the basis of absolute ownership - mulk. The award to mulk dignitaries was especially widespread in the second half of the 16th century.

Frequent changes of senior officials, executions and confiscation of property, practiced by the Sultan's authority, forced the feudal lords to find means to preserve their property. It was practiced to donate land to the waqf, i.e. in favor of Muslim religious institutions. The founders of waqfs and their heirs were guaranteed certain deductions from the donated property. Transfer to the waqf meant the removal of land property from the jurisdiction of the Sultan and guaranteed the former owners the preservation of solid income. Waqf land ownership reached 1/3 of all lands of the empire.

The reduction in the land fund available to the state also entailed a reduction in tax revenues to the treasury. Moreover, by the end of the 16th century. In the Ottoman Empire, the consequences of the “price revolution” that swept through Europe due to the influx of American silver began to be felt. The exchange rate of the empire's main currency, the akche, was falling. A financial crisis was brewing in the country. The peasants - the sipahis - were going bankrupt. And since the sipahis were not only cavalry warriors, but also the lowest level of the administrative apparatus, their ruin disrupted the functioning of the entire state system.

With the ruin of the Sipahi stratum of the feudal class and the reduction in the number of Sipahi cavalry, the role of the paid army, in particular the Janissary corps, increased. The Sultan's authorities, experiencing an acute need for money, increasingly confiscated timars and zeamets from the sipahi andresorted to increasing taxation, introducing various emergency taxes and fees, as well as farming out tax collection. Through the tax farming system, trading and usurious elements began to join in the exploitation of the peasantry.

At the end of the 16th century. The country was experiencing a crisis of the military system. There was disorganization of all links of the Ottoman state system, and the arbitrariness of the ruling class intensified. This caused powerful protests by the masses.

Popular movements in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th - early 17th centuries. Major uprisings in the Ottoman Empire took place already at the beginning of the 16th century. They reached a particular scale in eastern Anatolia and took place mostly under Shiite slogans. However, the religious shell could not obscure the social essence of these uprisings. The largest uprisings were led by Shah-Kulu in 1511-1512, Nur-Ali in 1518, and Jelal in 1519. All subsequent popular movements in Anatolia in the 16th - early 17th centuries were named after the leader of the last uprising. began to be called “jelyali”. Both the Turkish peasantry and nomadic herders and non-Turkish tribes and peoples took part in these movements. Along with anti-feudal demands in the movement of the early 16th century. There were demands reflecting dissatisfaction with the establishment of Ottoman rule in this region, rivalry with the Ottomans of other Turkish tribes and dynasties, and the desire for independence of various Turkic and non-Turkic peoples. The Persian Shah and his agents, who were active in eastern Anatolia, played a major role in inciting the uprisings. The Ottoman sultans managed to deal with this movement through brutal repressive measures.

At the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century. a new stage of movement begins. During this period, religious Shiite slogans are almost no longer found. Social motives, caused by the crisis of the military-feudal system, increased tax oppression and the financial difficulties of the empire, come to the fore. In the uprisings, the main driving force of which was the peasantry, the ruined Timariots took an active part, hoping to achieve the restoration of their former rights to the land on the crest of the popular movement. The largest movements of this period were the uprisings of Kara Yazici and Delhi Hasan (1599-1601) and Kalander-oglu (1592-1608).

The peoples of the Balkan countries also continued their struggle against Ottoman rule. In the 16th century The most common form of resistance here was the Haiduk movement. In the 90s XVI century Uprisings broke out in various areas of the Balkan Peninsula. This is the uprising of the Serbs in Banat, the Wallachian uprising of 1594 led by the ruler Michael the Brave, uprisings in Tarnovo and a number of other cities.

The fight against the anti-feudal and people's liberation movementmarriage required significant effort from the Ottoman authorities. In addition, at this time there were separatist rebellions of large feudal lords. The Janissary corps, which twice, in 1622 and 1623, participated in the overthrow of the sultans, became an unreliable support of power. In the middle of the 17th century. The Ottoman government managed to stop the beginning of the collapse of the empire. However, the crisis of the military-feudal system continued.

The international position of the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 16th - first half of the 17th century. The Ottoman Empire was still a strong power with an active foreign policy. The Turkish government widely used not only military, but also diplomatic methods to combat its opponents, the main of which in Europe was the Habsburg Empire. In this struggle, a military anti-Habsburg alliance of the Ottoman Empire with France was formed, formalized by a special treaty, which in literature was called “surrender” (chapters, articles). Negotiations with France on the conclusion of capitulation had been going on since 1535. Capitulation relations were formalized in 1569. Their fundamental significance was that the Sultan’s government created preferential conditions for French merchants for trade in the Ottoman Empire, granted them the right of extraterritoriality, and established low customs duties. These concessions were unilateral. They were considered by the Ottoman authorities as not as important in comparison with the establishment of military cooperation with France in the anti-Habsburg war. However, later capitulations played a negative role in the fate of the Ottoman Empire, creating favorable conditions for establishing the economic dependence of the empire on Western European countries. So far, in this treaty and in the similar treaties that followed it with England and Holland there were still no elements of inequality. They were given as a favor of the Sultan and were valid only during his reign. From each subsequent sultan, European ambassadors had to again seek consent to confirm the capitulations.

The first diplomatic contacts with Russia were established by the Ottoman Empire (at the initiative of the Turks) at the end of the 15th century. In 1569, after the annexation of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates to Russia, the first military conflict between Russia and the Turks occurred, who wanted to prevent the annexation of Astrakhan to Russia. In the subsequent period of more than 70 years, there were no major military clashes between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

The wars with Iran went on with varying degrees of success. In 1639, borders were established that did not change significantly for a long time. Baghdad, Western Georgia, Western Armenia and part of Kurdistan remained within the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire waged long and stubborn wars with Venice. As a result, the islands of Cyprus (1573) and Crete (1669) were annexed to the Ottoman possessions. It was in the war with Venice and the Habsburgs in 1571 that the Turks suffered their first serious defeat at the naval battle of Lepanto. Although this defeat did not have serious consequences for the empire, it was the first external manifestation of the beginning of the decline of its military power.

War with Austria (1593-1606), Austro-Turkish treaties of 1615 and 1616. and the War with Poland (1620-1621) led to some territorial concessions by the Ottoman Empire to Austria and Poland.

The continuation of endless wars with neighbors worsened the already difficult internal situation of the country. In the second half of the 17th century. The foreign policy positions of the Ottoman Empire weakened significantly.