The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

Studies in the History of Turkey, thirteenth–fifteenth Centuries

Paul Wittek, Colin Heywood, Colin Heywood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136513183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Paul Wittek's The Rise of the Ottoman Empire was first published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1938 and has been out of print for more than a quarter of a century. The present reissue of the text also brings together translations of some of his other studies on Ottoman history; eight closely interconnected writings on the period from the founding of the state to the Fall of Constantinople and the reign of Mehmed II. Most of these pieces reproduces the texts of lectures or conference papers delivered by Wittek between 1936 and 1938 when he was teaching at Université Libré in Brussels, Belgium. The books or journals in which they were originally published are for the most part inaccessible except in specialist libraries, in a period when Wittek's activities as an Ottoman historian, in particular his formulations regarding the origins and subsequent history of the Ottoman state (the "Ghazi thesis"), are coming under increasing study within the Anglo-Saxon world of scholarship.

An introduction by Colin Heywood sets Wittek's work in its historical and historiographical context for the benefit of those students who were not privileged to experience it firsthand. This reissue and recontextualizing of Wittek's pioneering work on early Ottoman history makes a valuable contribution to the field and to the historiography of Asian and Middle Eastern history generally.

Part I
The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

I The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

Introduction

Wittek delivered his three London lectures on The Rise of the Ottoman Empire in May 1937. A short book with the same title was published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1938. This makes it, together with ‘De la défaite’, the last of what turned out to be Wittek’s pre-war publications from his years in Brussels. The genesis of the lectures that became a book can be located some three years earlier, in the autumn of 1935. On 25 October in that year the Board of Studies in Oriental Languages and Literatures of the University of London had the duty of recommending to the University the names of two European scholars for selection as Special University Lecturers for 1936–1937. One was the celebrated Spanish Arabist Miguel Asín y Palacios; the other was Dr Paul Witteck [sic] of the Université Libre, Brussels.^a Little happened thereafter until late 1936, but by February 1937, when a public announcement was made by the University, the proposed single lecture on ‘The Rise of the Ottoman Empire’ had been expanded into three, the titles of which reflecting Wittek’s intention to provide for a London audience no doubt but little acquainted with his work what he described as ‘an outline of the subject’.^b At the beginning of May 1937 Wittek duly travelled from Brussels to London, and delivered the lectures on three successive days, 4, 5 and 6 May 1937. Wittek must have worked on the text during the following year (the Preface is dated ‘Brussels, June, 1938’).

I have observed elsewhere that ‘the significance of Wittek’s London lectures as a condensation, final summation and first exposition in English of his “ghâzî-theory” explanation of the foundation and expansion of the Ottoman state . . . can hardly be over-estimated’.^c The immediate impact of the work appears to have been slight – it appears not to have been reviewed in any major British academic journal, not even that of the Royal Asiatic Society, who had published it – but in the post-war years, and among British and American students of Ottoman history, most of whom were to begin their careers either as Wittek’s students or as students of his students, Wittek’s view of Ottoman history came to command a general acceptance that was not seriously challenged or made the subject of scholarly debate until the decade following his death.^d

In actual fact, there was little that was new in Wittek’s London lectures, which were in large part an epitome of his own earlier and contemporary work. As he himself pointed out, the material in them was drawn mainly from his monograph of 1934, Das Fürstentum Mentesche,^e and from three articles, of which two, a valuable longish article in German on medieval Ankara,^f and an even longer one, also in German, on the toponymy of Anatolia in the era of the Turkish conquest, which has subsequently attracted some criticism,^g were not selected for republication here. The third, ‘Deux chapitres de l’histoire des Turcs de Roum’ (1936) appears here in translation (Chapter III). Nonetheless, rarely can a book of such small compass – fifty-four pages in all – have had such an impact on a field. Crucially, it was within these pages that Wittek gave a final condensation and distillation to the thesis – the so-called ‘ghâzî thesis’ – that he had first formulated as early as 1925 in a note appended to an article by Theodor Menzel on the earliest Turkish mystics. There, Wittek observed that, in the context of Menzel’s vivid depiction of the rise of a religiously based heroic society among the Turkish masses of Anatolia, Osman – the eponymous founder of the Ottoman state – ‘appears in the first place as a ghâzî, [which] presents his foundation of the [Ottoman] state in an entirely new light’.^h I have observed elsewhere that the significance of this last sentence cannot be overestimated, since here, in short compass, is the nodal point within early twentieth-century Ottoman historical studies for all of Wittek’s later formulations concerning the origins and fundamental character of the Ottoman state.ⁱ Wittek’s insight into Menzel’s article in the context of Ottoman history was thus transformed in little more than a decade from an observation in an obscure Note appended to a learned article, to do service as the foundation-stone of a ‘general thesis’ which bids fair to rank with that of Wittek’s Brussels colleague Henri Pirenne in its significance for later scholarship. Either in acceptance or in rejection, it has set the tone for scholarly debate on the origins and nature of the early Ottoman state ever since.

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{v}

Preface

I had the honour of delivering the lectures here published at the University of London on May 4th, 5th and 6th, 1937. Naturally, these lectures can only present an outline of the subject. The notes added here are limited to what is strictly necessary, and refer in general only to my preceding publications,¹ where fuller information and references are to be found; sources and authorities are quoted only in the passages containing details with which I have not dealt up to the present.

I desire to thank Sir Denison Ross for his encouragement and the interest that he has shown in my work, and the Royal Asiatic Society for accepting it for publication. I also acknowledge the great assistance Miss Elizabeth Kara-Mikhailova, Miss Joan Hussey and Mr. Peter Charanis gave me in translating these lectures into English. Last, but not least, I am greatly indebted to Professor H. A. R. Gibb, who carefully read and revised my manuscript.

Paul Wittek
Brussels, June, 1938

{1}

I Criticism of the Tradition and Exposition of the Problem

AMONG the great universal monarchies known in world history the Ottoman Empire holds a special place on account of the vast extent of its realm and the long duration of its existence. Arising about 1300 from very modest beginnings, only a century later it was clearly inspired by the idea of universal domination, which it was afterwards to realize by occupying vast territories in the three continents of the ancient world, Europe, Asia and Africa. In this enormous area the Ottoman Empire was for centuries the unrivalled power that determined all political events, and at the same time represented for these countries a cultural epoch, the traces of which still remain visible long after the empire itself has disappeared.

In world history this empire of the Ottomans represents, above all, the dominant Muslim power of modern times, from the beginning of the modern period up to very recent years. Indeed, it united under its rule the largest and most essential part of the Muslim world. Syria, Palestine, Irak and Egypt, the most important stretches of the Arabian peninsula, all these were ‘under the shadow’ of the Ottoman Sultan. This immense realm was further increased by the addition of vassal states such as Tunis and Algiers in the western Mediter ranean and the Khanate of {the Crimea in} southern Russia. No other Muslim prince occupied in modern times a position that could possibly be compared to that of the Ottoman Sultan, who ruled over the two holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, and also over the old residences of the Caliphs, Damascus, Bagdad and Cairo. What were Morocco and {2} Persia, the princes of Turk estan, and even the Great Moguls of India, in comparison with the vast power of the Ottomans, whose armies appeared at one time beneath the walls of Vienna, then on the Caspian Sea, and invaded Poland and Abyssinia; whose fleets cruised in the Indian Ocean and in the Atlantic, controlling the Straits of Gibraltar? And in Constantinople, their capital, the spiritual life of Islam found once more a centre in which were assembled the treasures from the libraries of ancient Bagdad and Cairo, and where Muslim intellectual activity was greatly encouraged by rich academic foundations. This centre evolved a magnificent though somewhat arid architecture, which moulded and determined the features of all the other cities of the empire and spread even as far as India.

But a closer view of Ottoman history shows us that this hegemony in the Muslim world was for the empire itself only of secondary importance. All the Old Muslim countries that we have enumerated as dominions of the empire represent only an outer zone added on to an older nucleus. Though of much smaller extent than the Muslim world-empire, into which it later developed, this older nucleus was in itself already an empire, likewise dominated by the idea of a universal realm. Having grown up in the provinces formerly governed by Byzantium, in Asia Minor and in the Balkans, it finally took possession of Constantinople, the natural centre of this area, and thus obtained a capital that for more than a thousand years past had been the seat of imperial traditions.

This older Ottoman Empire, which we might call the ‘Sultanate of Rûm’, a name applied to it by the Ottomans themselves on account of the ‘Rhomæan’ – i.e. Byzantine – area that it embraced, was never completely absorbed in the later and larger Muslim one; it distinctly retained its position as the vital nucleus of the whole and imposed upon the latter the continuation of its peculiar political tradition. From the first appearance of the Ottomans, the principal factor in this political tradition was the struggle against their Christian neighbours, and this struggle never ceased to be of vital importance to the Ottoman Empire. Even while {3} engaged in their major conquests in the Muslim world, the Ottomans never lessened their efforts to push forward simultaneously the frontier line in Europe. Up to the seventeenth century the Ottomans were still on the offensive on this front; in 1669 they seized Crete from the Venetians, in 1672 Podolia from the Poles, in 1683 they besieged Vienna. It was not until the peace of Carlowitz in 1699 that the slow, gradual process of decomposition began, called ‘the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire’, although it really concerned only its European possessions. But it has been quite rightly remarked that the losses endured in Europe, small as they might seem on the map compared to the circumference of the total, yet left the deepest impression on the whole, and the wounds that the empire received in Europe were closely followed by its decline and ruin. This decline was nevertheless not a rapid one. It was not until the nineteenth century that it became accelerated, and it came to an end at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is very characteristic that the accomplishment of the final breakdown was closely preceded by the loss of nearly all the European possessions consequent on the defeat in the Balkan War. This defeat obliged the Ottomans to resign definitely and for ever any ambition of ruling over Christian countries, and this meant not less than the renunciation of their dominant idea, of the raison d’être of their state. Thus the defeat in the Balkan War was a blow to the heart of the Ottoman Empire, and the dissolution brought about a few years later by the Great War was only a necessary consequence. This renunciation could not have expressed itself more clearly than by the alliance that united the Ottomans during the Great War with their sworn enemy, the Habsburg monarchy. By this alliance both the empires of Austria and Turkey broke with their most essential traditions and thus showed that they had outlived themselves. It is not surprising that both empires failed the test of the Great War and disappeared for ever.

In these introductory remarks I have already tried to lay stress on the point of view that we shall take in the following {4} attempt to describe the rise of the Ottoman Empire. It will not deal with the great Muslim empire that issued from the conquests of Selim and Sulayman in the sixteenth century, but will be devoted to the older one, to the Sultanate of Rûm, the fundamental tradition of which – emphasizing not so much the establishment of a hegemony in the Muslim world as the struggle against its Christian neighbours – remained also the pulse of the greater Muslim empire up to the end. We shall therefore mainly treat such questions as these: how the political tradition, the motive force of the Ottoman state was formed, and in what manner this state, founded on such ideals, developed into an empire whose extension over the greater part of the remaining Muslim world was then only a necessary consequence and a question of time.

I shall begin by saying at once that I place the decisive turning-point in the evolution towards an empire in the time of Sultan Mehmed II, who in 1453 conquered Constantinople, and that we shall therefore take our survey much further than the books that have recently discussed this problem. The oldest of these books, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, by Herbert Adam Gibbons, published in 1916 at Oxford, has the great merit that it pointed out the numerous problems posed by early Ottoman history in their connection. But it ends its narrative with the year 1403, when there could as yet be no question of realization of an empire; on the contrary, we shall see that in this year the Ottomans were, after the disastrous defeat inflicted on them by Tîmûr at Ankara, thrown into a most critical situation, which menaced even their political existence and stopped the development of their state for nearly half a century. Moreover, this book, written by a non-Orientalist, neglects most of the detailed investigations and results due to the studies of Orientalists.

More recently all the detailed results of research on this subject were presented in two clear surveys, one by the Swiss Rudolf Tschudi, and the other by the Americans William L. Langer and Robert P. Blake.² Of still greater interest naturally is such an attempt when undertaken by the eminent {5} Turkish scholar Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, who himself has done a considerable amount of research on this subject. His interesting and important book Les Origines de l’Empire ottoman originated from lectures that he gave in 1935 before the Cercle d’Études Turques at the Sorbonne.³ Unfortunately in this book the investigations are limited to the earliest epoch and do not go beyond the beginning of the fourteenth century. All the questions that are especially important for explaining the {Ottomans’} development towards an empire are therefore completely missing in this work. One year after Köprülü’s lectures I gave an exposition before the same Parisian Cercle d’Études of my own opinion on this subject.⁴ These few references should be sufficient to show that the interest of a large number of scholars of different countries is being concentrated on this subject. I shall, as already mentioned, direct my attention to the question concerning the rise of the empire as such, this point of view having been – in spite of the titles of most papers – neglected up till now. They all content themselves with treating of the origin of the Ottomans and the first beginnings of their political existence, without showing how far those beginnings are yet distant from the later universal monarchy of a Mehmed II, and without dealing with the important development that the Ottomans had still to accomplish before their state evolved into an empire. But we too shall have to turn our attention towards the origins. It is not naive curiosity that has directed research to the study of these first beginnings, but rather the conviction that the history of the Ottoman state, with all its peculiarities, becomes comprehensible only after one has accounted for its origin. The well-known sentence, that every state owes its existence to the same causes that created it, holds good to the full extent for the Ottoman state, and I can say that today, by having gained a clearer comprehension of its origins, we are able to under -stand better the later and even the most recent periods of Ottoman history.

Until quite recently one was content to repeat what the official Turkish historiography said of the origin of the {6} Ottomans. In Europe, where since early times an immense literature has been devoted to t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Paul Wittek: A Man in Dark Times
• Acknowledgements
• Permissions
• A Preliminary Note on the Text of The Rise of the Ottoman Empire
• Journal Titles and Other Abbreviations Employed in Footnotes
• Part I The Rise of the Ottoman Empire
• Part II Precursors of The Rise
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index