Living in the Ottoman Realm

Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries

Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Kent F. Schull

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780253019486
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Living in the Ottoman Realm brings the Ottoman Empire to life in all of its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geographic diversity. The contributors explore the development and transformation of identity over the long span of the empire's existence. They offer engaging accounts of individuals, groups, and communities by drawing on a rich array of primary sources, some available in English translation for the first time. These materials are examined with new methodological approaches to gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be Ottoman. Designed for use as a course text, each chapter includes study questions and suggestions for further reading.

PART I

13TH THROUGH 15TH CENTURIES

Emergence and Expansion: From Frontier
Beylik to Cosmopolitan Empire

THE OTTOMAN polity emerged in medieval Anatolia at the end of the thirteenth century. During the previous century, Anatolia and the Balkans had undergone enormous transformations as a result of the emigration of Turkish tribes from Central Asia at the end of the eleventh century and the establishment of Turkish dynasties as rulers in Anatolia. Among the most prominent dynasties were the Seljuks of Rum who ruled from Nicea (Iznik) and then Konya. This dynasty, however, disappeared by the late thirteenth century partly because of the expansion of the Mongols into Anatolia. Earlier, as a result of Turkish migration into Anatolia, the Byzantines had requested military aid from the pope to combat the Turkish forces, and crusaders from Western Europe had added to the mix of peoples in Anatolia and the Balkans after 1096, especially after the Fourth Crusade, when crusaders sacked Constantinople and then created a Latin Empire from 1204 to 1261.

Out of this chaos, many Turkish principalities, known as beyliks, emerged. Ultimately, the Ottomans proved to be the most successful of the rulers of these beyliks. Osman (r. 1299–1326) was the founder of a dynasty that bears his name. He was followed by his son, Orhan (r. 1326–1362), and together in later Ottoman historiography they were depicted as the leaders of gazis, raiders who were also believed to be fighting in the name of Islam. They expanded from a tiny state in Bithynia, conquered the major Byzantine city of Bursa, and then began to expand into the Balkans. Under Orhan, Ottoman forces conquered Gallipoli and Adrianople (today’s Edirne). The Ottoman capital shifted from Bursa to Edirne as this city became a staging ground for continuous raids into the Balkans. Murad I (r. 1362–1389) and his son Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) created an empire composed of states united under their rule as vassals. By Bayezid’s reign the Ottomans had begun a levy of boys from Christian peasants of the Balkans, a practice known as the devşirme. These boys became a source of manpower for the Janissary army and also for the administration. Bayezid I threatened Constantinople at the end of the fourteenth century, but Ottoman expansion was temporarily halted by the powerful conqueror Timur, also known as Tamerlane, in 1402 when he defeated Bayezid’s army at the Battle of Ankara.

After an interregnum during which Ottoman princes fought against one another in an effort to reunite the empire under one member of the dynasty, Mehmed I (r. 1413–1421) eventually emerged as the victor and began to reestablish central control of former Ottoman territories. The Ottomans began to expand once again under Murad II (r. 1421–1444, 1446–1451). Fighting off crusaders and defeating various challengers in the Balkans and Anatolia, the Ottomans were poised to once again attempt to conquer Constantinople. They captured the city in 1453 under a young and ambitious sultan, Mehmed II (r. 1451–1481), known as the Conqueror. At this point the Ottoman polity truly could be considered an empire with a fitting imperial capital at Istanbul. The second half of the fifteenth century witnessed ongoing expansion in the Balkans and in Anatolia and the elimination of remaining rivals in Anatolia.

The Ottomans continued to experience conflicts among the sons of sultans for succeeding to the Ottoman throne. Unlike other Turkish dynasties, the Ottomans did not divide their lands upon succession and whoever defeated his brothers inherited the entire empire. Succession disputes were often bitter and sometimes unpredictable. At Mehmed II’s death, his two remaining sons, Cem and Bayezid II, waged a civil war to determine who would succeed to the throne. Bayezid II with the support of the Janissaries defeated Cem, who fled to the Knights of Rhodes. Later the Knights sent Cem to France, and he eventually was imprisoned in Rome. Because of the threat that Cem might return at the head of a crusading army to attack Bayezid, the sultan pursued a cautious foreign policy until Cem died in 1495. Then he declared war on Venice and strengthened the Ottoman fleet, which now successfully challenged the Venetian fleet. Ottoman forces captured Modon and Coron in Greece. The Ottomans became increasingly involved with diplomacy in Italy and Western Europe during the reign of Bayezid II, partly as a result of Cem’s captivity in France and Rome.

However, a new threat to Ottoman power appeared in eastern Anatolia with the rise of the militant, extremist Shiʿi dynasty of the Safavids of Iran. Turcoman nomadic populations favored the Safavids against the centralizing Ottomans. Safavid propaganda raised revolts in Anatolia, and Bayezid appeared too weak to counter the threat. His son Selim I (r. 1512–1520) seized power and deposed Bayezid, who died soon thereafter. Selim then eliminated his brothers and ruthlessly suppressed Safavid supporters. Selim was now poised to expand to the south and the east, fundamentally changing the composition of the Ottoman Empire.

The chapters in part I address identity during this period when the Ottomans transformed their state from a tiny beylik to a great empire. This complicated history includes many diverse peoples who inhabited Anatolia and the Balkans. The diversity of ethnicity and religion of these peoples contributes to the challenges of understanding identity in the region during this time. Chapter 1 explores how Sufis provided some stability in the chaotic world of medieval Anatolia. Chapter 2 traces depictions of the frontier between Christians and Muslims in epic literature. Chapter 3 explores the fortunes of the Genoese of Galata, who after the conquest of Constantinople became Ottoman subjects. Chapter 4 follows the career of Mahmud Pasha, one of the most powerful administrators during the reign of Mehmed II, who became grand vizier although he was born a Christian. Chapter 5 explores Ottoman historiography to highlight the emergence of a Turkish identity among the Ottoman elite. Chapter 6 analyzes the emergence of new Sufi orders and their involvement in the politics of succession struggles between the sons of Mehmed II. All the chapters in part I creatively use contemporary sources to explore groups’ and individuals’ views of their relationship to the expanding state that became the Ottoman Empire after eliminating regional rivals.

1The Giving Divide

Food Gifts and Social Identity
in Late Medieval Anatolia

Nicolas Trépanier

PEOPLE WHO LIVED in late medieval Anatolia did not write much about identity in the abstract sense; in fact, Muslim sources from that period do not use any word that could be translated as “identity” in its modern meaning. Yet it is clear that they identified some people as part of the same group because they shared an identity. This is most obvious in the ethnic labels that are the focus of most other contributions to this volume. In this chapter, I approach the question in a way that is less uniquely Ottoman, concentrating on the social hierarchy during the period when the Ottomans came to power, fourteenth-century Anatolia.

The challenge here is to pry out answers to questions that the sources themselves never ask and explore a realm of consideration that they never explicitly evoke. This requires an angle, a handle, which in this case will be food gifts. As a voluntary form of social interaction loaded with meaning, the act of giving food betrays quite a lot about the social identity of both the giver and the recipient. The historian who identifies the givers and recipients of food and observes the context and modalities of these food transfers can therefore offer insight into a layer of identity that was at once deeply internalized and largely removed from any reference to the state, ethnicity, or religion. Extrapolating from scenes that depict food gifts, in short, allows us to shed light on a period on which relatively little social and cultural history has been written.

Sources and Methodology

The observations presented in this chapter are derived from a broader research project in which I reconstructed the daily life of late medieval Anatolians. The sources I used include the bulk of existing original texts composed in or describing Anatolia from the late thirteenth to the early fifteenth centuries. Among those, the texts that yielded the richest material are hagiographical collections of anecdotes that depict the miracles and wisdom of Muslim saints. Other types of sources include vakfiyes, which are foundation contracts for pious endowments constituted according to Islamic law (vakıfs), whose format is standard enough to consider them the closest that fourteenth-century Anatolia has to offer to archival documents. In addition, I used a variety of other sources that include chronicles as well as the travelogue of Ibn Battutah, who left a rich but strongly opinionated description of the regions he visited in the fourteenth century, from Morocco and Anatolia to China and from Mali to the Swahili Coast to Indonesia.

To reconstruct the experience or texture of daily life in late medieval Anatolia, I scanned these sources for passages that depict the ways in which people interact with food, covering everything from the work of peasants in fields of barley to the fasting regimen of dervishes, to the symbolic association between rice and luxury.¹ In this chapter, I concentrate on the scenes that depict food giving because they offer insight into how late medieval Anatolians defined both their own social identity and the social identity of other people.

For other, better-studied time periods, an extensive scholarship exists on the social meaning and function of gifts, which is largely the work of anthropologists and the historians who have borrowed from their approach.² The core concern of this scholarship is reciprocation, or what the giving party expects back from the receiving party. The literature shows that, especially in premodern states, the most common expectation is for other gifts of the same nature. In other words, a gift is followed by a second round of gift giving in which the giver becomes the recipient, then a third in which the roles are inversed again, then a fourth, and so on. This ultimately creates “giving circles,” whose direct effect is to strengthen social relations.

An expectation of reciprocity is indeed apparent in most of the gift-giving scenes I survey here, but only a small proportion of these follow a one-to-one pattern of equals exchanging gifts back and forth. Most of the time, rather, the giver and the recipient carry very different social identities. Although the gifts I discuss here do have the effect of strengthening the social order, they do so by incarnating and reinforcing specific relations of social inequality. Rather than the act of giving itself, it is those relations of social inequality that constitute my central concern, because they allow us to circumscribe the identity of various groups in society. In exploring the subject, this chapter will concentrate first on the giving activities of rulers and urban folk and then turn its attention to the various identities that derived from religious professions.

Food Gifts among Rulers and City Dwellers

Some scenes of food giving will come as no surprise to those familiar with late medieval and early modern Middle Eastern history, as they present a handful of rulers and grandees who distribute meals in person. Witness, for example, the deeds of Ottoman sultan Murad II (r. 1421–1444, 1446–1451) after the construction of a bridge that revitalized a region in Thrace:

For the visitors coming and going, they made feasts, they cooked foods, and at the time when they established a soup kitchen, Sultan Murad himself brought religious scholars and fuqarâʾ³ from Edirne and came to this soup kitchen and for a few days made feasts and distributed [coins]. On the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation
• Introduction: Dealing with Identity in the Ottoman Empire
• Part I. 13th through 15th Centuries | Emergence and Expansion: From Frontier Beylik to Cosmopolitan Empire
• Part II. 15th through 17th Centuries | Expansion and Cultural Splendor: The Creation of a Sunni Islamic Empire
• Part III. 17th through 18th Centuries | Upheaval and Transformation: From Conquest to Administrative State
• Part IV. 19th through 20th Centuries | Modernity, Mass Politics, and Nationalism: From Empire to Nation-State
• Connections and Questions to Consider
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index