Destan Volume 16 English Subtitles
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The Ottomans Part-2
Shaped by others, the Ottomans in their turn affected the evolution and
formation of many central, east, and west European states and the shaping of their popular imagination. If there is such a thing as the paranoid
style in twentieth-century Soviet Russian politics, we have the Ottomans
to thank, in large measure.
For the Czarist Russian state-based in Moscow,
the presence of a powerful Ottoman state long blocked the way to the Black
Sea and Mediterranean warm water ports.
For centuries, the Ottomans were the single most important foreign enemies of the Russian state; czars
and sultans fought against each other in a seemingly endless series of wars
between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, until both disappeared.
These wars had a powerful impact on the evolution and shaping of the
emerging Russian power: the Muscovite state’s deep fears of powerful enemies on its southern (and western) flanks permanently marked its polity with a need to seek safety in expansion and domination.
The Habsburg state on the Danube, for its part, came into existence amid profound regional confusion to check further Ottoman expansion northwards. The Vienna-based state became a center of resistance and, over time, acquired the role and identity as the first line of defense for central Europe because the various kingdoms further south in the Balkan peninsula all had failed to check the Ottomans. Without question, the Ottomans played a decisive role in the formation and subsequent evolution of the Habsburg state, defining its very nature.
Its geopolitical position, at the crossroads of the Asian, European, and
African continents, thus gave the Ottoman state an important role to
play in world history. This importance did not vanish after the military
catastrophe of 1683 and the failing ability of the Ottomans to defend
their territorial integrity.
Indeed, Ottoman weakness prompted international instability among expanding neighbors jealous to lop off Ottoman lands or, at the least, prevent them from falling into the hands of rivals.
This “Eastern Question” – who would inherit which territories once the
Ottoman state vanished – provoked strife among the Great Powers of the
age and became a leading issue of international diplomacy in the nineteenth century. In 1914, the failure to resolve the Eastern Question helped bring on the first great catastrophe of the contemporary age, World War I.
A far more positive reason to study the Ottoman empire and assign
it an important place in world history concerns the tolerant model of
an administration that is offered during most of its existence.
For a contemporary world in which transportation and communication technologies
and the migrations of peoples have brought about an unparalleled
confrontation with a difference, the Ottoman case warrants careful study.
For centuries the Ottoman hand rested lightly on its subject populations.
The Ottoman political system required its administrators and military
6 The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922
officers to protect subjects in the exercise of their religion, whether
Islam, Judaism, or Christianity in whatever variation – e.g.
Sunni, Shia, Greek or Armenian or Syriac Orthodox or Catholic. This requirement
was based on the Islamic principle of toleration of the “People of the
Book,” meaning Jews and Christians. These “people” had received God’s
revelation, even if incompletely and imperfectly; therefore, the Ottoman
Islamic State had the responsibility to protect them in the exercise of their
religions. Without question, these legal protections did fail.
Christian and Jewish subjects sometimes were persecuted or killed because they
did not share the Islamic faith of the state apparatus. But such actions
were violations of the bedrock principle of toleration – a high standard
to which the state expected and required adherence. Such principles of
toleration governed inter-communal relations in the Ottoman empire for
centuries. But, in the final years, there was mounting disharmony and
inter-communal strife (see chapter 9).
For most of its history, however, the Ottoman Empire offered an effective model of a multi-religious
political system to the rest of the world. The Ottoman Empire in European culture
Let us begin with a word of caution about the significance of the following pages, that outline the place of the Ottoman Empire in the history, imagination, and culture of western Europe. This discussion is not intended to imply that the Ottomans are important only to the extent they
contributed to west European development.
Instead, the discussion has this focus because the intended primary audience is those from the west
European cultural tradition. The goal is to demonstrate to those readers
how the Ottoman Empire affected the course of their
history and culture.
Because the Ottomans, by chance, were physically the most proximate to the west European states that came to dominate the globe in the
modern era, they long bore the brunt of Europe’s military, political, and
ideological expansion.
This proximity had a profound impact on the formation of identity, both of the Ottomans and the Europeans. On each side proximity structured a complex identity formation process of repulsion and attraction. After all, people come to perceive themselves as distinct and separate, with particular and unique characteristics, often through
using the “other” as a means of defining what it is and, equally, what it is not.
Confronting the Byzantine, Balkan, east, and west European states,
the Ottomans sometimes emphasized (perhaps like the Moghuls facing
a Hindu enemy in the Indian subcontinent) their identity as Muslim
warriors for the faith. This did not prevent the Ottoman rulers from
