Ottoman (Ottoman) Empire. The concubine that changed the history of the Ottoman Empire

The description of the order in the Ottoman Empire was given by Prince Zbarazhsky, the ambassador of the Commonwealth in Turkey.

The text is not very, very bad, facts are given, analysis, forecasts which were confirmed in the future. The decline in the morals of the Empire is also not badly described.

What was the position of the Ottoman monarchy in ancient times, what is it now? Where does this disorder come from and is healing possible? What powers does she have at sea and on land? What can be expected from this world, and what are the arguments for and against it?

The order and splendor of the Ottoman monarchy once struck. Comparing those times with the present, which seems to be a shadow of the past, it is difficult, in my opinion, to even come close to understanding its structure (as can be known and seen in other states). After all, they (Turks. - Per.) nothing is written down, everything is based on the observance of traditions and rules. In the very mixture of peoples and tribes, different parts world, different languages ​​and religions, such a a chaotic mixture that is not found in any country in the world. [In a state] where no one can gain fame, where they do not know their ancestors, they do not travel abroad, where there is no spiritual life, no striving for glory that induces people to all sorts of exploits (for few of them remember their ancestors), there miraculous transformations take place: from a gardener, a trapper - immediately into kings, monarchs, and now again it becomes nothing, like characters in some kind of comedy. What is rejected in other countries [here] is preserved. All this is beyond comprehension. With all the surrounding monarchies, tyrannies, [the Ottoman Empire] has only some similarities, but there are many differences. An amazing manifestation of divine providence is manifested in the fact that, having created this monarchy, different from all others, opposite to them in form, [God] multiplied it, preserved and preserves. Christians, who naturally should have been hostile to the faith of the Turks, as their tyrants and invaders, forgetting God and their faith, living there and constantly seeing the temples of their faith, forgetting their origin, torment and torment their own fathers and relatives when they fall into captivity . They do not remember about their homeland and freedom, in which they were born, soul and body grow together with their laws and orders. And not the Turks, but the Christians and their descendants are the basis and support of the empire and its masters. All nations have always had and still have words on their lips about how sweet [memories] of the father's house are. Images of native places, native penates elevate the soul. Faith, once realized, is seldom forgotten. All this has no weight there. Heirs of honest families, having fallen into captivity or own will having found themselves there, they never return to good thoughts, although they remember their origin, they are the worst and furious [servants of the Sultan]. As does everyone else, and I note this with amazement. What could I learn and understand about the order in this empire and the changes that have taken place?

In Turkey there were and exist only two estates, although they also have different categories, but they all have one sovereign, [before him all] the rest are slaves. The power of this sovereign is absolute, from him, as from an earthly God, good and evil come, the condemnation of which in human souls is dishonor and sin. This monarch is the basis and support of everything. Everything is his will. Without it, slaves have no family, no honor, no hereditary heritage. Therefore, no parties, no unions are formed, because tomorrow not a son, but a sultan will inherit your property. Such is the fate of all. Elevation is determined not by birth, not by merit. The son of a slave is better [live than the legitimate heir], therefore, they do not interfere with any love relationships, do not enter into marriages.

Whom the sovereign raises, he flourishes for some time, as soon as he lowers, he immediately fades. Therefore, between them (subjects. - Per.) there is no lasting friendship, constant envy and rivalry. One pushes the other to take his place; reveal all secrets to the sovereign. Whoever is in a public position, he orders and he is held in high esteem. The overthrown loses everything, no one honors him.

No less important than good deeds and punishments at the will of [the sovereign], were training and exercises in the palace to maintain order in the state. All officials passed through this, as through a school, and were a model for the whole earth. Christian sons were selected according to their energy and abilities and used in various activities. Especially diligently dealt with those who were to rise to the service of the monarch. When teaching writing, the greatest attention was paid to the education of modesty, abstinence and observation. They did not neglect various military exercises. The first step was service under the Sultan: it was necessary to carry his bow, arrows, saber, buzdygan, take care of his food and drinks, toilet, storage of clothes, etc. Having shown himself well in this field (servants - Per.), moved to lower positions [at the court]: falconer, kennel, huntsman. Then they became lieutenants (ketkhuda. - Per.), reached the position of Agha Janissaries. From here, the path led to the positions of Asian and European pashas (beylerbeevs. - Per.), and then, if they managed well, to the vizier ranks, so that they could take a closer look at management. So, gradually, they reached the highest post, from where they were rarely dismissed, except perhaps for some great abuse. [Thanks to] the long reign of [viziers] the power of the state grew. And they themselves, multiplying glory, did magnificent deeds, erected buildings that brought glory and benefit to the state. The people who were under their command, when a vacancy appeared, could adequately take these places. They, in turn, taught and educated their close associates. Thus, the knowledge of each class multiplied, the desire to develop virtues grew. Under former sovereigns, people rarely came to high positions in any other way.

The highest award was considered when the chosen one was honored with honorary clothes sent from the palace. This gave him mental strength for diligent service in the palace, for the desire to skillfully wield weapons. All this led to the fact that the greatness and power of the sovereign increased, and human souls rose above the insignificance of their origin.

The army had an unbreakable order for many years. First of all, everyone had his own clothes, depending on the position and type of service, no one interfered in other people's affairs. No one, under pain of execution, aspired to expensive outfits, the luxury and effeminacy that are destroying them now were condemned and eradicated. Salaries and other rewards were small. Timars, which are land holdings, were so divided that no one exhibited more than two sabers (two warriors. - Per.) from the land from which he served, but since the expenses were small, everyone was satisfied with a moderate income [from the timar]. Since obedience and abstinence were revered above all else, whenever they fought, it was not a burden to them. This cord [of power], so beautifully woven, was in the hands of one owner, that is, the monarch himself. As long as this order was observed, the foundations [of the state] were not undermined. Under such rule, this state grew and expanded for almost a thousand years, that is, more than all other monarchies in the world. None of them retained their perfection and power for so long, especially without any reforms. But even the Roman state did not escape this misfortune, which underwent significant changes in the 4th century. Then many states were included in the prosperous Eastern [Roman] Empire, in total it included 23 provinces, [each] the size of a kingdom, without the number of cities and fortresses. It included the father of luxury - New Rome (Constantinople. - Per.). The nurse of higher wisdom - Greece - is bogged down in these networks. There the top of the whole world is Egypt. There is golden Arabia. There - wonderful Cairo and Memphis connected by a single path. Above all, there, in the handful of this stepmother (Eastern Empire), is earth, honey and mammals, given as the highest reward for the virtues of Abraham, given to him by God and for the greater desire of his children, punished by a long, almost eight hundred years of famine. Grains from this handful are already gradually falling out, but you will hear how this happens.

Changes in the Empire

Since the integrity of this state and autocracy depended on respect for customs, observance of the old ways and their preservation, the only guardian of which was the Sultan, the change of the sovereign, the guardian [of customs], should have led to their change, and then affect the integrity of the state. After Suleiman, lazy and pampered sovereigns, namely Mehmed and Ahmed, who admired their greatness, but were not interested in how they achieved this greatness, almost until the present time ruled. First of all, they spoiled the estate of officials, who began to receive benefits not for merit, but for money. And all because of the Sultan's wives, who through their husbands contributed to the promotion [of officials in the service], taking money for this and getting rich. Those who bought positions in order to enrich themselves and recoup the costs, beneficiaries (timars. - Per.), those who fell into their hands were sold for money, and those who were more worthy of merit and courage [than themselves] were completely exterminated. Then it came to ordinary soldiers, who began to pay off their duties and became, as they call, Oturaks. So trade [in posts] first of all infected the army. Also, Christians, from whose children the Janissaries are recruited, preferred to ransom their sons, seeing that everything had turned into an object of trade. The recruitment of troops was carried out carelessly, it was only important to ensure its numbers. Misdemeanors and atrocities that were previously punishable by death were now forgiven for bribes to senior bosses. Many bad examples have led to the growth of various vices. This poison, penetrating into the environment of warriors, although experienced, but arrogant and arrogant, in conditions of impunity and self-will, quickly grew.

More worthy and experienced warriors see that self-will is not followed by punishment, but for good service - a reward, that more than military prowess, any service in the palace is valued, when each soldier of the border garrison tries to achieve exaltation as soon as possible with the help of some a woman [from the seraglio] or a eunuch than merit in the eyes of a military leader. Gradually, weapons became disgusting to them, and bows became pleasant. Those who resorted to these methods began to live in luxury. Drunkenness, which used to be punished as homicide, began to take root. Following such examples, many preferred to pay off military service, which could be easily achieved. The fact is that the viziers, going to war, collected more money than people. The bad consequences of this disease quickly manifested themselves.

First of all, near Eger, before the eyes of the sovereign, a lack of courage [of soldiers] was revealed. Returning home, they revolted against the favorites of the Sultan, the brother of the current Khalil Pasha and the treasurer. The Sultan was forced to execute them and put their heads on public display. Then the uprising of the common people began in Asia, later - [the performance] of the most prominent pashas, ​​who were joined by those who were dissatisfied [with the government] and those who believed that their merits were not appreciated. Significant devastation occurred in those countries, because from their arable land and their houses, everyone who could, rushed into the ranks of lawless gangs.

And since they could not destroy them, the authorities turned to other methods of appeasement: distributions, salary increases, changing the order of providing equipment, forgiveness of various misconduct 10 . From here, the power of the Sultan's decrees and the veneration of officials began to weaken.

Since, due to generous distributions and devastation, the revenues of the treasury decreased and a significant part of them went to palace expenses and luxury, the salary went infrequently to them (warriors. - Per.) act. Khalil Pasha himself, who fought in Persia, told me that when it came to military action, [the soldiers] demanded a salary, defiantly arguing with the commanders until the battle began.

As a result of all this, due to a lack of money, they began to extort them from rich people under various pretexts. From this arose the suspicion of sovereigns, who dishonored noble and worthy people for the slightest reason. So many subjects died, destroyed almost all worthy people.

After those [sultans], the impetuous and angry rather than reasonable sovereign Osman ascended the throne, believing that he would achieve everything, like the first sultans, with one severity, which neither his father nor grandfather had. Not listening to anyone, only flatterers, he began to insult the elders 11 , drown others for misconduct and severely punish for already widespread crimes, introducing the old discipline in everything, especially in the army. After the war, he wanted to change the whole army 12 . His severity led him to premature death, and those [warriors] to despair, because they saw that they were losing both their daily bread and life itself. Since this entire monarchy has so far rested on a weak foundation - only on the head [of the Sultan] and his entourage, then, having crumbled after the fall of the foundation, everything returned to its full circle. [Everything began to be ruled] by common people who do not know customs, without honor and nobility, dressed in satin, without noble [ancestors], without relatives, without respect and reverence for anyone. So eight months after the first [in the Ottoman Empire] assassination of the monarch, hardly a shadow remained of the former [order], not a single estate was preserved in its nobility, did not save its qualities unsullied. Instead of virtues, all vices prevailed, terrible drunkenness, open depravity, luxury, incredible covetousness, hypocrisy, open betrayal. 13 .

All this is incurable even in the house of sovereigns themselves. The current monarch (Mustafa. - Per.) - simply a madman, who understands nothing and is incapable of anything, so because of him his mother also despairs, in whose hands all control is. But since she acts secretly, supposedly on behalf of the Sultan, among such corrupt people, she does it under great fear, and not with the help of [state] wisdom or according to established rules, but only with the help of money; meanwhile, the Sultan's madness manifests itself more and more openly. His closest heirs are four. One of them, Murad, is 12 years old, the other is 8 or 9, the rest are even younger. Murad has a number of defects (which I know from the chief court physician - an Arab), namely, he has some kind of convulsions, similar to insanity, although there are light intervals. In addition, he has one hand dry. His mother [Kösem-sultan], a woman still young and luxurious, is very wasteful. Of course, her reign will be the same or worse. The second one seems to be better than this one, but he has a bubble between his shoulder blades that has grown monstrously. Plus, he's not the right age. Among the present chief dignitaries, who could properly provide guardianship or advice in Constantinople, there is none, with the exception of two. One is the current vizier, the other is Khalil Pasha, a sea captain (kapudan pasha. - Per.). The current vizier (Mere Hussein Pasha. - Per.), of course, a more suitable person, but with him [the Turks] will not last long, because they are afraid of him and his reign. Fear seized them all, but they will not overthrow him, but, probably, they will kill him. Khalil Pasha is a less prominent and less influential person. His character is softer, he avoids danger, does not want this (to become a sadrazam. - Per.), even wants to become a dervish. Of the other [viziers], no one else has either a statesman's mind or authority, they call each other cattle. In Asia, a certain Nafis Pasha 14 has some influence, but as if he is a very old and sick person. There is also a Budinsky [pasha], but this one will not come, as they themselves say, because he has sufficiently strengthened his dominance there. When he was transferred to the service under the Sultan, the soldiers did not want to let him go and the one who came [in his place] was almost killed. None of the others have been heard of.

In the city [among the warriors] strife. First of all, among the Janissaries and Sipahs, over whom the Janissaries take over in the capital, because there are more of them, and it’s easier for the foot soldiers [in the city]. And where there are more sipahis, they threaten the Janissaries. Noble and honest people, men of the council, take the side of the Sipahis. Insolent upstarts [to the Janissaries] join, although there is no less hatred between them. The fact is that the newcomers would like to get rid of the old warriors, of which 15 thousand are over the norm, and those, in turn, from these new Janissaries. There is a palace party, to which belong the ichoglans, bostanjs, that is, gardeners, and many palace artisans, with whom the hajis, students of religious schools, are associated, of which there are many. They all [hold] the same line. There are also reasons for quarrels among the Sipahis. They own unequal timars, the poorer ones would like to divide the possessions of the rich.

Further: they would like to divide the property of the clergy and the waqf among themselves, and this is a hard bone that cannot be gnawed. Especially in Asia, where if a sipahi meets a janissary, and a sipahi janissary, then one seeks to kill the other, each blaming the enemy for killing Osman. Against Constantinople [soldiers] universal hatred. Although they are separated by the sea and long distances, [the Asiatic sipahis] say: let these Constantinopolitans with their sultan remain, but we do not want to know him. From Egypt, Cairo, tribute has not been received and will not come; black (Berber. - Per.) Arabs consider it a great insult to themselves that after Osman they were deprived of almost all their posts, that they are despised. Some Safoglu and Manoglu, the leaders [of the rebels], threaten war 15 . Babylon, the capital of his eastern possessions (sultan. - Per.), busy with some Bekir Pasha, a traitor 16 . In Erzerum, having killed the Janissaries, Abaza Pasha fortified 17 . Raids, robbery do not stop. This was also expected in the European possessions, because [fermentation] was already beginning there. If [Porta] wants to stop the unrest by force of arms, a civil war will certainly begin.

The power of the Ottoman monarchy at the present time

[Janissaries.] Power is more in words than in deeds. The best proof of this was [the reign of] Osman, during which the sovereign was portrayed as having sufficient numbers of troops. It is absolutely indisputable that they (Turks. - Per.) make it their goal to have 30,000 Janissaries in all provinces, including recruits and gunners. I believe that this [figure] can serve as a basis for [calculating] salaries and embezzlement from the treasury, but not the number of soldiers themselves. In fact, Osman, who would gladly take all the inhabitants into the army, had [in the Khotyn campaign] no more than 10 thousand [janissaries]. In Asia, where there is no recruitment of troops, there are fewer of them than in Europe. There are especially many of them in the Hungarian border castles - to threaten the emperor's neighbor. From there, they, of course, will not be sent on any campaign, and they themselves, adhering to custom, will not go, just as they did not go with Osman. Right there, near Constantinople, you can rarely see them, because there are no fortresses. In Constantinople itself, they say, 20 thousand. I just can’t accept it, because with everyone I mentioned earlier, it turns out no more than 10 thousand.

Berber Janissaries, called Jezair 18 , there are 12 thousand. But they are with them (Turkish Janissaries. - Per.) they never went to war and now they didn’t accept the order of the Sultan: with me [it became known] that they didn’t go.

What are these Janissary warriors? I'll start with weapons. They have janissaries, which give a very strong return, you can’t shoot close to your face, you have to take it off your shoulder. Gunpowder is very poor, aimed shooting is very difficult. A single shot will not kill, although a volley will cause great damage. Young warriors have little practice in shooting. This is a real rabble - they have grown long beards and treat them like something sacred. The boys are young and spoiled. They are run by people with no experience. There are also a few old Janissaries, among them quite decrepit ones come across. Of the new [chiefs], not a single one can withstand [several] weeks, let alone months, in the post of agha Janissaries, they never knew what war was before. The current aga Janissary was Osman's barber, he is already being deposed; in his place again there will be some gardener or palace creature.

Sipahis are the second military class. They are believed to be numerous, but, as I definitely found out, under the late Sultan Osman there were no more than 120 - 130 thousand, even including not only the sipahis, but also others who were their subordinates. 19 . Sipahian detachments, called Buluks, are divided into European and Asian, led by seven chiefs. Their main banner is red, it is held to the right of the Sultan. There, in the most honorable place, are the best warriors. This banner has warriors, each with a flag on a spear - a sign of nobility and honesty. Another banner, yellow, is to the left of the Sultan. It is in second place in terms of importance. Other banners are less revered. Outwardly, however, [very impressive when] warriors under these seven banners ride wonderful, well-fed horses, in beautiful turbans and very expensive trousers, with feathers and wings, which adorn not only warriors, but also horses. They form the retinue of the sovereign, make up the color of the cavalry.

Types of weapons - almost all [those that] were used under Osman: jida - a kind of spear with an Indian reed shaft, they are also made of naturally light wood, very flexible, easy to fly. To strengthen them, the iron tip is hardened. There are very few copies, and they are used very ineptly, they are used only by Albanians and other inhabitants of the outskirts of the state. I can definitely say that there were no more than 5 thousand spearmen with Osman. Onions are also rarely used and poorly wielded. Barely one in a thousand has guns, usually our renegades. Spears are not suitable for attack, except for fights before a fight, when you have to fight in all directions and on light (without armor) horses. [Heavy] weapons and shells are not used.

Warriors from Europe are better than Asians, more hardy than they are. Among Asiatics, effeminacy and laziness were great even under the Romans. Sitting on camels and elephants, they fight most often in short silk shirts, with light weapons. When, one October, a cold rain with wind fell near Khotyn, all these poor fellows huddled in the cold. Apparently, the Ottoman tyrant was proud of the number of soldiers rather than true strength, in whose registers the number of people and horses was unusually large. The Asiatics used to have more horses and camels, but now they have diminished. The war with us is so disgusting to everyone that the European [sipahis] dissuade [from participating in it] with poverty, which is true, the Asian ones - with an unfavorable time of the year, shout loudly that they don’t want to go to war in Europe, they don’t want to be frozen : apparently, well, those in shirts are frozen.

Without Asiatic animals it is impossible to wage a serious war in Europe. Those carts with which they burden themselves, carrying all the comforts and riches, require a large number of camels and mules, and they are already there (in Asia. - Per.) not enough, because many [cattle] were lost during the Khotyn war.

There is no more accurate criterion for the number of troops and well-being than the settlement of the territory of the state, which is in desolation. In Asia there were no less than 1,900,000 tribute-paying families, now it is believed that there are a little more than 70,000 of them. Europe (European possessions of the empire. - Per.) all wasted. Those who travel as far as Buda tell how often they have to stop in the field, because there is no village for many miles. The same [on the way] from Constantinople to the Danube, where the troops of the Sultan passed: Dobruja is all empty, ruined; on the road to Ruschuk there are no more than 70 cities, towns, villages, large and small, counting not only those where they passed, but also those that were visible to travelers. There is a saying that where the horse of the Turkish Sultan steps, grass does not grow there. Now, because of anarchy, everything has come to extreme ruin. 20 .

Sipahis and Janissaries stagger from village to village, as if this is their main occupation (this was especially evident in Poland), they eat, drink, extort taxes from arable land, demand to be allowed to stay. The last money is taken from the women and [often] they are killed, so that the whole Ottoman land can be called a robber's den.

To this was added an epidemic, which, by the special grace of God, harmed the Turks more than the Christians, and almost devastated the Turkish villages. On the Black Sea coast, all this manifested itself to such an extent that Cossack raids were not needed either: those who survived fled in fear [of the pestilence]. Here is the exact, unmistakable news: up to 300 thousand people came with Osman, and how many he [of them] killed! And then [the deserters] fled so that the Kapudan Pasha himself, standing at the crossing, said that the executioners did not have enough hands to hang the fugitives.

If with such a sovereign, young and energetic, they did not go [on a campaign] either of their own free will or under duress, then even less can be expected at the present time. They don't have horses in all their land, especially in Europe. Most of all, thanks to our “good” orders, Greeks, Armenians and Moldavians deliver horses from Poland.

Ottoman naval forces. For several years now, more than 56 galleys have not been equipped on the White Sea. This year there will be even fewer, they hope to equip a little more than 40. I will not be mistaken if I say that on the Black Sea - with the greatest exaggeration - there will be no more than 20 of them. [Turkish] galleys are bad, very badly equipped. On none of them, except for the galley of Kapudan Pasha, there are even 100 soldiers, mostly 70 - 60, and even those were either forcibly recruited, or they are serving their duties 21 . In service [galleys] no more than 50 - 60 guns. Such is [the situation] on the White Sea, on the Black Sea it is even worse. Military affairs have not been taught for about 100 years. On the coast, the warriors are so “courageous” that they almost die [of fear] when they have to go against the Cossacks, who are full on the Black Sea 22 . Those on the White Sea showed such "bravery" that their 50 galleys did not dare to fight the Florentine ones and barely escaped from them by flight.

All this happens because the fleet is full of all sorts of scum. Departing from old customs, they allowed [the rulers] to accept among the soldiers of the Gypsies, Greeks and others who serve for money and good deeds. They also fail to recruit workers. The fact is that the Greeks and other peoples living on the coast, whose obligations are to supply [rowers], are trying to pay off, and their number has decreased from the epidemic. Everything was kept and is kept on the Polish slaves, of which many died last year, because our people cannot endure [hard labor]. It is impossible to get money for such burdensome expenses [as the construction of galleys], because of the general ruin. What is the state of affairs, it is easy to see from the fact that now they were barely able to equip one galley 23 .

All coastal fortresses are poorly fortified. Either old warriors or cowards, whose heart is too fearful for battle in the field, but it remains so in the fortress, seek to get a job in them. Because of the devastation, which I have already spoken about, the land is hardly cultivated, little is sown in the vicinity of Constantinople. All food for him is delivered along the Black Sea and very little (only rice and vegetables from Egypt) - along the White, but this is not enough for everyone.

This manifested itself under Osman, when the Black Sea and the Danube were closed [for trade] because of the war. Florentine and Spanish galleys ruled the [Mediterranean] sea. Bread was so expensive that people died of starvation, there was no supply of food by sea.

Present Peace 1623

The treaty now concluded has all the data to be valid for a long time, since there is no doubt that [the Ottomans] did not know a more difficult war than with Poland. Food there (near Khotyn. - Per.) had to be delivered on horseback, because due to the desolation [of the region], it was difficult to get it [on the spot]. It was necessary to feed not only people, but also horses, since the Turkish horse cannot stand without grain.

In their land (in the Balkan provinces. - Per.) there is no way to make transportation, except along the Danube. Moving away from it, it is difficult to ensure the delivery [of food] over long distances. What can be taken from this land if it is devastated?! Beyond the Danube (in the Ottoman provinces. - Per.) no private land holdings. The land of the state, the Sultan's, [is rented out] in large plots for big money.

Our air itself and the difficulties to which they were not accustomed were good science to them. Now we will be bypassed. The incalculable costs of this so distant [war], when there were no conveniences, especially when the treasury is exhausted, will lead to the fact that the rulers of those lands (Ottoman Empire. - Per.) do not want [war]. Among the pashas there are no valiant people who want to fight. They now prefer to secure the favor of the palace for greater prosperity and security. The warriors themselves (sipahis. - Per.) they were extremely impoverished because of the Khotyn war, because countless horses and camels fell there. They got money to indulge in idleness, luxury and immeasurable drunkenness. Those in Constantinople are allowed to act outrageously, not to fight. The same warriors who are stationed on the outskirts of the state will not want to die on the border because of these revelers. Therefore, it has already become so that the Turks [living] on the border, with great courtesy, receive the ambassadors of the Commonwealth and strive for peace.

Circumstances impeding the preservation of this peace treaty. The first is the Cossacks. Only the Lord God can keep them without an army and with such a small salary, but prudent people [do not undertake this]. If they (Cossacks. - Per.) will go to the sea, make such attacks, then this will force the Turks to prefer death in open battle to an obscure death with their families. They (Turks. - Per.) show great patience towards us in order to avoid the need to start war against us again.

Surely, however, there will be something that was already being prepared with me (during the embassy of 1622 - 1623 - Per.): the Tatars, who have already (there are witnesses) offered their services to them, will be set against us. (The Turks] did not advise them, thereby giving reason to hope that they would allow [to raid]. And those (Tatars. - Per.), seeing our disturbances, they hope to quickly fulfill their desires.

The second obstacle [to the establishment of a lasting peace] is that among the highest [Ottoman] dignitaries there are no such reasonable people who would be able to take the positions of viziers, and even more so [those who] would become friends of the Commonwealth. The current sovereign is so imprudent that he can be called simply a madman. With such conductors [ public policy] it is easy to harm us if our [defense] is unprepared.

The third obstacle, which cannot be removed by any arguments, is the most serious - the Tatars. They are divided into two [hordes]. One is the Belgorod [Tatars], they are within easy reach of the Commonwealth. The other - under the rule of the Khan of Perekop - the Crimean Tatars. Belgorod is commanded by Kantemir, whom the Turks certainly will not want to remove, since he supports them well against the Cossacks in the current peaceful conditions. In an atmosphere of such unrest [in the capital], even if they wanted to remove him for state reasons, they could not, as long as he is strong. This Kantemir settled many empty lands with the Nogai Tatars, to which he himself belongs, has greatly strengthened and continues to strengthen. If at first there were 5-6 thousand of them, now there will be up to 20 [thousand]. He began to penetrate into Moldavia, and if the Cossack raids continue, he will probably be allowed to resettle them as far as the Dniester. This Kantemir has already united with the [Crimean] Khan, they have the same camps, the same plans, together they will repay us for the Cossack raids. But, assuming that the Cossacks will not give a reason, they will not allow such a gift as our lands (the possibility of robbery. - Per.), slipped out of their hands. Maybe Kantemir, Khan and Kalga will not go by themselves, but leaders under other names will invade at the head of large detachments.

The effect of the decrees of the current Turkish Sultan is negligible. In Constantinople itself, it was impossible to prevent tobacco smoking in the streets. and did not drink, the decrees turned into a laughingstock. In the future, they will be even more neglected. And people living far away [from the capital] not only do not adhere to them, but have generally forgotten. Necessity itself, even if there were strict prohibitions, forces the Tatars to this (to raids. - Per.). They [give] food, clothes, otherwise they would die. The very accessibility of these places (the possessions of the Commonwealth. - Per.), our lack of caution, the ease of selling [plundered] goods to the Turks, would spoil even the best people, not only greedy robbers. Not very much because of this, the Turks will worry and restore justice, moreover, they will be happy. Hardly without it (without raids. - Per.) will be able to live and hold on, although they promise. Almost all work on land and at sea, the entire economy rests on the subjects of the Commonwealth. Even the wives and beautiful servants come from there. If the Tatars do not [come] all the new slaves (whose number is decreasing for various reasons), where will the wealth come from? It is provided by the hands of captives (they have no peasants), their empty lands are filled with herds from Poland. They are already talking publicly about what is difficult for them without this (without raids. - Per.) hold out.

To remind of justice only in words and rather to beg for it, like beggarly alms, is increasingly becoming common for the [politics] of the Commonwealth. If I, being the great ambassador of my sovereign, could not achieve it, then how can translators and messengers, who will be less reckoned with there, be able to get it? After all, it is worthless to them (to the Turks. - Per.) to punish and harm [people] of their own blood and those from whom they receive riches and all kinds of pleasures. And the fact that the Tatars [in the Polish lands], as in their own possessions, repair abominations, even without taking out their scabbards, inspires the Turks (which is why Osman decided to go to war), so that they will insult us and will not give satisfaction [to our claims ], just getting off with words, they will not do anything, because [this state of affairs] is beneficial for them.

Everyone should know that the Turks, although they swear by the name of God, the creator of life, to whom everyone praises, they have two more gods that are most revered - violence and money. In other words, they do not keep this word, they must be forced to do this or [fidelity to the word] is bought.

I conclude by saying that if a Turkish war falls on any Christian country, it is not the main Turkish army that should be feared, but the Tatars. This is exactly what I predict. On the other hand, if it comes to the point that it has already been decided that Cantemir with 30 thousand Moldavians and Wallachians, 2 thousand people from Buda and Kanizha under the leadership of Ibrahim Pasha, 6 thousand soldiers of Pasha Pech and Herzegovina would go to the aid of the army against the emperor, then one should especially fear that the Tatars would not plan to move through Polish territory. Even if they go the other way, they will certainly want to wage war in Silesia.

Whoever calls for help from such a powerful enemy cannot command or direct him at will. Poland is somehow open to him (Kantemira. - Per.). You should firmly stand your ground (in relation to the Tatars. - Per.): now all doubts have been eliminated that they keep their word only as long as they are afraid of the troops of the Commonwealth, acting in this way out of fear, and not as honest neighbors.

So, the Commonwealth needs a [regular] army, and not a militia, which cannot even be called an army. With God's help, it would rebuff the Budzhak people, who had become insolent from impunity. Then, in case of success, if the Lord God provides for him, and also because of fear - now they neglect all caution - they would stop. And for other [Tatars], who do not put us in anything, do not take into account the authority of the Commonwealth, this would cause fear; [the cessation of the Tatar raids] could give [us] the opportunity to keep the Cossacks in subjection, which would strengthen our authority in the eyes of the Turks. They would certainly seek justice (compensation. - Per.) the Turks were not afraid of neighborly intrigues. [The Turks], seeing their weakness and turmoil, would know that the Commonwealth, having changed its character, is ready to crush their power. Otherwise, I say and bring [to the attention] of both my sovereign and the Commonwealth, misfortunes and defeats will come.

I would also like the Cossacks to be stopped, but not driven [from the Dnieper], so as not to irritate the Turkish Sultan, because there is no benefit from this, but only this established peace - desired by all - is violated. However, let [the Cossacks] prepare [and wait] for the decision of the Commonwealth, when to strike them with all their mighty strength. [And it should have been done] when the time of new troubles among the Turks comes and when the rooted self-will prevails among them, because of which they will surely go against other peoples. [The Cossacks should] act not as usual (they only excite the Turks against us), but, taking the help of the Lord God, destroy that weak armada on the Black Sea (which is a possible thing, as I showed above), and then take Constantinople - the nest of Turkish power. From afar [Istanbul] seems mighty, up close but he is weak and would easily hit them (Cossacks. - Per.) hands, and if the Lord God had given, and would have passed to us 24 .

This is not the time and it is not in my competence to talk about it. I will only say: I clearly understand and see that I have not given to any people; The Lord God has great opportunities for mastering the vital forces of this state, except for (the peoples] of the Commonwealth. And there is hope for their final (Turks. - Per.) death, if we ask the Most High God and if we do not ascend with pride, not with arrogance, but humbly, but with a courageous heart, we want to use suitable opportunities. The Lord God promised those lands to the Commonwealth, and I would justify this in more detail, but now I will end with this wish.

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OTTOMAN (OTTOMAN) EMPIRE. This empire was created by the Turkic tribes in Anatolia and existed since the decline of the Byzantine Empire in the 14th century. until the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1922. Its name comes from the name of Sultan Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty. The influence of the Ottoman Empire in the region began to gradually disappear from the 17th century, it finally collapsed after the defeat in the First World War.

Rise of the Ottomans.

The modern Republic of Turkey traces its origins to one of the Ghazi beyliks. The creator of the future mighty state, Osman (1259–1324/1326), inherited from his father Ertogrul a small border inheritance (uj) of the Seljuk state on the southeastern border of Byzantium, not far from Eskisehir. Osman became the founder of a new dynasty, and the state received his name and went down in history as Ottoman Empire.

In the last years of Ottoman power, a legend appeared that Ertogrul and his tribe arrived from Central Asia just in time to save the Seljuks in their battle with the Mongols, and their western lands were rewarded. However, modern research does not confirm this legend. Ertogrul was given his inheritance by the Seljuks, to whom he swore allegiance and paid tribute, as well as Mongolian khans. This continued under Osman and his son until 1335. It is likely that neither Osman nor his father were ghazis until Osman fell under the influence of one of the dervish orders. In the 1280s, Osman managed to capture Bilecik, İnönü and Eskisehir.

At the very beginning of the 14th century. Osman, together with his ghazis, annexed to his inheritance the lands that stretched up to the coasts of the Black and Marmara Seas, as well as most of the territory west of the Sakarya River, up to Kutahya in the south. After the death of Osman, his son Orkhan occupied the fortified Byzantine city of Brusa. Bursa, as the Ottomans called it, became the capital of the Ottoman state and remained so for more than 100 years until it was taken by them. In almost one decade, Byzantium lost almost all of Asia Minor, and such historical cities as Nicaea and Nicomedia were named Iznik and Izmit. The Ottomans subjugated the beylik of Karesi in Bergama (former Pergamum), and Gazi Orhan became the ruler of the entire northwestern part of Anatolia: from the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles to the Black Sea and the Bosphorus.

conquests in Europe.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire.

In the period between the capture of Bursa and the victory in Kosovo, the organizational structures and management of the Ottoman Empire were quite effective, and already at that time many features of the future huge state were looming. Orhan and Murad were not interested in whether the new arrivals were Muslims, Christians or Jews, whether they were listed as Arabs, Greeks, Serbs, Albanians, Italians, Iranians or Tatars. The state system of government was built on a combination of Arab, Seljuk and Byzantine customs and traditions. In the occupied lands, the Ottomans tried to preserve, as far as possible, local customs, so as not to destroy the established social relations.

In all newly annexed areas, military leaders immediately allocated income from land allotments as a reward to valiant and worthy soldiers. The owners of these kind of fiefs, called timars, were obliged to manage their lands and from time to time participate in campaigns and raids on remote territories. From the feudal lords, called sipahs, who had timars, cavalry was formed. Like the ghazis, the sipahis acted as Ottoman pioneers in the newly conquered territories. Murad I distributed in Europe many such destinies to Turkic clans from Anatolia, who did not have property, resettling them in the Balkans and turning them into a feudal military aristocracy.

Another notable event of that time was the creation of a corps of Janissaries in the army, soldiers who were included in the military units close to the Sultan. These soldiers (Turkish yeniceri, lit. new army), called Janissaries by foreigners, later began to be recruited among captured boys from Christian families, in particular in the Balkans. This practice, known as the devshirme system, may have been introduced under Murad I, but did not fully take shape until the 15th century. under Murad II; it continued uninterrupted until the 16th century, with interruptions until the 17th century. Being slaves of the sultans in status, the Janissaries were a disciplined regular army, consisting of well-trained and armed foot soldiers, superior in combat capability to all similar troops in Europe until the advent of the French army of Louis XIV.

The conquests and fall of Bayezid I.

Mehmed II and the capture of Constantinople.

The young sultan received an excellent education at the palace school and as governor of Manisa under his father. He was undoubtedly more educated than all the other monarchs of the then Europe. After the murder of his minor brother, Mehmed II reorganized his court in preparation for the capture of Constantinople. Huge bronze cannons were cast and troops were gathered to storm the city. In 1452, the Ottomans built a huge fort with three majestic fortress castles in the narrow part of the Bosphorus about 10 km north of the Golden Horn harbor of Constantinople. Thus, the Sultan was able to control shipping from the Black Sea and cut off Constantinople from supplies from the Italian trading posts located to the north. This fort, called Rumeli Hisary, together with another Anadolu Hisary fortress built by the great-grandfather of Mehmed II, guaranteed reliable communication between Asia and Europe. The most spectacular move of the Sultan was the ingenious crossing of part of his fleet from the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn through the hills, bypassing the chain stretched at the entrance to the bay. Thus, the cannons from the ships of the Sultan could bombard the city from the inner harbor. On May 29, 1453, a breach was made in the wall, and the Ottoman soldiers broke into Constantinople. On the third day, Mehmed II was already praying in Ayasofya and decided to make Istanbul (as the Ottomans called Constantinople) the capital of the empire.

Owning such a well-located city, Mehmed II controlled the position in the empire. In 1456, his attempt to take Belgrade ended unsuccessfully. Nevertheless, Serbia and Bosnia soon became provinces of the empire, and before his death, the Sultan managed to annex Herzegovina and Albania to his state. Mehmed II captured all of Greece, including the Peloponnese, with the exception of a few Venetian ports, and the largest islands in the Aegean. In Asia Minor, he finally managed to overcome the resistance of the rulers of Karaman, seize Cilicia, annex Trebizond (Trabzon) on the Black Sea coast to the empire and establish suzerainty over the Crimea. The Sultan recognized the authority of the Greek Orthodox Church and worked closely with the newly elected Patriarch. Previously, for two centuries, the population of Constantinople was constantly declining; Mehmed II moved many people from various parts of the country to the new capital and restored traditionally strong crafts and trade in it.

The heyday of the empire under Suleiman I.

The power of the Ottoman Empire reached its peak in the middle of the 16th century. The reign of Suleiman I the Magnificent (1520-1566) is considered the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman I (previous Suleiman, son of Bayezid I, never ruled all of its territory) surrounded himself with many capable dignitaries. Most of them were recruited according to the devshirme system or captured during army campaigns and pirate raids, and by 1566, when Suleiman I died, these "new Turks", or "new Ottomans", already firmly held power over the entire empire in their hands. They formed the backbone of the administrative authorities, while the highest Muslim institutions were headed by the indigenous Turks. Theologians and jurists were recruited from among them, whose duties included interpreting laws and performing judicial functions.

Suleiman I, being the only son of a monarch, never faced any claims to the throne. He was an educated man who loved music, poetry, nature, and also philosophical discussions. And yet the military forced him to adhere to a militant policy. In 1521 the Ottoman army crossed the Danube and captured Belgrade. This victory, which Mehmed II could not achieve at one time, opened the way for the Ottomans to the plains of Hungary and to the basin of the upper Danube. In 1526 Suleiman took Budapest and occupied all of Hungary. In 1529, the sultan began the siege of Vienna, but was unable to capture the city before the onset of winter. Nevertheless, a vast territory from Istanbul to Vienna and from the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea formed the European part of the Ottoman Empire, and Suleiman during his reign carried out seven military campaigns on the western borders of the state.

Suleiman led fighting and in the east. The borders of his empire with Persia were not defined, and the vassal rulers in the border regions changed their masters, depending on which side the power was on and with whom it was more profitable to conclude an alliance. In 1534, Suleiman took Tabriz, and then Baghdad, including Iraq in the Ottoman Empire; in 1548 he regained Tabriz. The Sultan spent the entire 1549 in pursuit of the Persian Shah Tahmasp I, trying to fight him. While Suleiman was in Europe in 1553, Persian troops invaded Asia Minor and captured Erzurum. Having expelled the Persians and devoted most of 1554 to the conquest of the lands east of the Euphrates, Suleiman, according to the official peace treaty concluded with the shah, received a port in the Persian Gulf at his disposal. The squadrons of the naval forces of the Ottoman Empire operated in the waters of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez.

From the very beginning of his reign, Suleiman paid great attention to strengthening the maritime power of the state in order to maintain the superiority of the Ottomans in the Mediterranean. In 1522 his second campaign was directed against Fr. Rhodes, lying 19 km from the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. After the capture of the island and the eviction of the Joannites who owned it to Malta, the Aegean Sea and the entire coast of Asia Minor became Ottoman possessions. Soon, the French king Francis I turned to the Sultan for military assistance in the Mediterranean and with a request to oppose Hungary in order to stop the advance of the troops of Emperor Charles V, advancing on Francis in Italy. The most famous of the naval commanders of Suleiman Khairaddin Barbarossa, the supreme ruler of Algeria and North Africa, devastated the coasts of Spain and Italy. Nevertheless, Suleiman's admirals failed to capture Malta in 1565.

Suleiman died in 1566 in Szigetvar during a campaign in Hungary. The body of the last of the great Ottoman sultans was transferred to Istanbul and buried in a mausoleum in the courtyard of the mosque.

Suleiman had several sons, but his beloved son died at the age of 21, two others were executed on charges of conspiracy, and the only remaining son, Selim II, turned out to be a drunkard. The conspiracy that destroyed Suleiman's family can be partly attributed to the jealousy of his wife, Roxelana, a former slave girl of either Russian or Polish origin. Another mistake of Suleiman was the elevation in 1523 of his beloved slave Ibrahim, who was appointed chief minister (grand vizier), although there were many other competent courtiers among the applicants. And although Ibrahim was a capable minister, his appointment violated the long-established system of palace relations and aroused the envy of other dignitaries.

Mid 16th century was the heyday of literature and architecture. More than a dozen mosques were erected in Istanbul under the guidance and designs of the architect Sinan, the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, dedicated to Selim II, became a masterpiece.

Under the new Sultan Selim II, the Ottomans began to lose their positions at sea. In 1571, the united Christian fleet met the Turkish in the battle of Lepanto and defeated it. During the winter of 1571-1572, the shipyards in Gelibolu and Istanbul worked tirelessly, and by the spring of 1572, thanks to the construction of new warships, the European naval victory was nullified. In 1573, the Venetians were defeated, and the island of Cyprus was annexed to the empire. Despite this, the defeat at Lepanto was an omen of the coming decline of Ottoman power in the Mediterranean.

Decline of the empire.

After Selim II, most of the Ottoman sultans were weak rulers. Murad III, Selim's son, reigned from 1574 to 1595. His tenure was accompanied by turmoil caused by palace slaves led by Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokolki and two harem factions: one led by the Sultan's mother Nur Banu, a Jewish convert to Islam, and the other by a beloved Safi's wife. The latter was the daughter of the Venetian governor of Corfu, who was captured by pirates and presented to Suleiman, who immediately gave her to his grandson Murad. However, the empire still had enough strength to move east to the Caspian Sea, as well as to maintain its position in the Caucasus and Europe.

After the death of Murad III, 20 of his sons remained. Of these, Mehmed III ascended the throne, strangling 19 of his brothers. His son Ahmed I, who succeeded him in 1603, tried to reform the system of government and get rid of corruption. He departed from the cruel tradition and did not kill his brother Mustafa. And although this, of course, was a manifestation of humanism, but since that time all the brothers of the sultans and their closest relatives from the Ottoman dynasty began to be imprisoned in a special part of the palace, where they spent their lives until the death of the ruling monarch. Then the eldest of them was proclaimed his successor. Thus, after Ahmed I, few of those who reigned in the 17th-18th centuries. Sultans had sufficient intellectual development or political experience to manage such a vast empire. As a result, the unity of the state and the central government itself began to weaken rapidly.

Mustafa I, brother of Ahmed I, was mentally ill and ruled for only one year. Osman II, the son of Ahmed I, was proclaimed the new sultan in 1618. Being an enlightened monarch, Osman II tried to transform state structures, but was killed by his opponents in 1622. For some time, the throne again went to Mustafa I, but already in 1623 Osman's brother Murad ascended the throne IV, who ruled the country until 1640. His reign was dynamic and reminiscent of the reign of Selim I. Having reached the age of majority in 1623, Murad spent the next eight years in relentless attempts to restore and reform the Ottoman Empire. In an effort to improve state structures, he executed 10,000 officials. Murad personally led his armies during the eastern campaigns, banned the consumption of coffee, tobacco and alcoholic beverages, but he himself showed a weakness for alcohol, which led the young ruler to death at the age of only 28 years.

Murad's successor, his mentally ill brother Ibrahim, managed to largely destroy the state he inherited before he was deposed in 1648. The conspirators put Ibrahim's six-year-old son Mehmed IV on the throne and actually led the country until 1656, when the Sultan's mother achieved the appointment of Grand Vizier with unlimited powers talented Mehmed Köprülü. He held this position until 1661, when his son Fazıl Ahmed Koprulu became vizier.

The Ottoman Empire nevertheless managed to overcome the period of chaos, extortion and crisis of state power. Europe was divided by the Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War, while Poland and Russia were in trouble. This made it possible for both Köprül, after the purge of the administration, during which 30,000 officials were executed, to capture the island of Crete in 1669, and in 1676 Podolia and other regions of Ukraine. After the death of Ahmed Koprulu, his place was taken by a mediocre and corrupt palace favorite. In 1683, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna, but were defeated by the Poles and their allies, led by Jan Sobieski.

Leaving the Balkans.

The defeat at Vienna was the beginning of the retreat of the Turks in the Balkans. First, Budapest fell, and after the loss of Mohacs, all of Hungary fell under the rule of Vienna. In 1688 the Ottomans had to leave Belgrade, in 1689 Vidin in Bulgaria and Nish in Serbia. Thereafter Suleiman II (r. 1687–1691) appointed Mustafa Köprülü, Ahmed's brother, as grand vizier. The Ottomans managed to retake Nis and Belgrade, but they were utterly defeated by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1697 near Senta, in the far north of Serbia.

Mustafa II (r. 1695–1703) attempted to recapture lost ground by appointing Hussein Köprülä as grand vizier. In 1699, the Karlovitsky Peace Treaty was signed, according to which the Peloponnese and Dalmatia peninsulas retreated to Venice, Austria received Hungary and Transylvania, Poland - Podolia, and Russia retained Azov. The Treaty of Karlovtsy was the first in a series of concessions that the Ottomans were forced to make as they left Europe.

During the 18th century The Ottoman Empire lost most of its power in the Mediterranean. In the 17th century The main opponents of the Ottoman Empire were Austria and Venice, and in the 18th century. – Austria and Russia.

In 1718, Austria, according to the Pozharevatsky (Passarovitsky) treaty, received a number of territories. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire, despite the defeats in the wars that it waged in the 1730s, according to the treaty signed in 1739 in Belgrade, regained this city, mainly due to the weakness of the Habsburgs and the intrigues of French diplomats.

Surrenders.

As a result of behind-the-scenes maneuvers of French diplomacy in Belgrade, in 1740 an agreement was concluded between France and the Ottoman Empire. Called "Surrenders", this document was for a long time the basis for the special privileges received by all states in the territory of the empire. The formal beginning of the agreements was laid as early as 1251, when the Mamluk sultans in Cairo recognized Saint Louis IX, King of France. Mehmed II, Bayezid II and Selim I confirmed this agreement and used it as a model in relations with Venice and other Italian city-states, Hungary, Austria and most other European countries. One of the most important was the agreement of 1536 between Suleiman I and the French king Francis I. In accordance with the agreement of 1740, the French received the right to move freely and trade on the territory of the Ottoman Empire under the full protection of the Sultan, their goods were not taxed, with the exception of import and export duties, French envoys and consuls acquired judicial power over compatriots who could not be arrested in the absence of a representative of the consulate. The French were given the right to erect and freely use their churches; the same privileges were reserved within the Ottoman Empire and for other Catholics. In addition, the French could take under their protection the Portuguese, Sicilians and citizens of other states who did not have ambassadors at the Sultan's court.

Further decline and attempts at reform.

The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 marked the beginning of new attacks against the Ottoman Empire. Despite the fact that the French king Louis XV sent Baron de Totta to Istanbul to modernize the Sultan's army, the Ottomans were defeated by Russia in the Danube provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia and were forced to sign the Kyuchuk-Kaynarji peace treaty in 1774. Crimea gained independence, and Azov went to Russia, which recognized the border with the Ottoman Empire along the Bug River. The Sultan promised to provide protection for the Christians living in his empire, and allowed the presence in the capital of the Russian ambassador, who received the right to represent the interests of his Christian subjects. Starting from 1774 and up to the First World War, the Russian tsars referred to the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi agreement, justifying their role in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. In 1779, Russia received rights to the Crimea, and in 1792 the Russian border was moved to the Dniester in accordance with the Iasi peace treaty.

Time dictated change. Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) brought in architects who built him palaces and mosques in the style of Versailles and opened a printing press in Istanbul. The closest relatives of the Sultan were no longer kept in strict imprisonment, some of them began to study the scientific and political heritage of Western Europe. However, Ahmed III was killed by the conservatives, and Mahmud I took his place, during which the Caucasus was lost, passed to Persia, and the retreat in the Balkans continued. One of the prominent sultans was Abdul-Hamid I. During his reign (1774-1789), reforms were made, French teachers and technical specialists were invited to Istanbul. France hoped to save the Ottoman Empire and keep Russia out of the Black Sea straits and the Mediterranean.

Selim III

(reigned 1789–1807). Selim III, who became sultan in 1789, formed a 12-member cabinet of ministers in the style of European governments, replenished the treasury and created a new military corps. They created new educational establishments, designed to educate civil servants in the spirit of the ideas of the Enlightenment. Printed publications were again allowed, and the works of Western authors began to be translated into Turkish.

In the early years of the French Revolution, the Ottoman Empire was left alone with its problems by the European powers. Napoleon considered Selim as an ally, believing that after the defeat of the Mamluks, the sultan would be able to strengthen his power in Egypt. Nevertheless, Selim III declared war on France and sent his fleet and army to defend the province. Saved the Turks from defeat only the British fleet, located off Alexandria and off the coast of the Levant. This step of the Ottoman Empire involved it in the military and diplomatic affairs of Europe.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, after the departure of the French, Muhammad Ali, a native of the Macedonian city of Kavala, who served in the Turkish army, came to power. In 1805 he became governor of the province, which opened a new chapter in the history of Egypt.

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, relations with France were restored, and Selim III managed to maintain peace until 1806, when Russia invaded its Danubian provinces. England helped her ally Russia by sending her fleet through the Dardanelles, but Selim managed to speed up the restoration of defensive structures, and the British were forced to sail into the Aegean Sea. The French victories in Central Europe strengthened the position of the Ottoman Empire, but a rebellion began in the capital against Selim III. In 1807, during the absence of Bayraktar, the commander-in-chief of the imperial army, the sultan was deposed, and his cousin Mustafa IV took the throne. After the return of Bayraktar in 1808, Mustafa IV was executed, but before that, the rebels strangled Selim III, who was imprisoned. Mahmud II remained the only male representative of the ruling dynasty.

Mahmoud II

(reigned 1808–1839). Under him, in 1809, the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain concluded the famous Dardanelles Peace, which opened the Turkish market for British goods on the condition that Great Britain recognized the closed status of the Black Sea straits for military ships in peacetime for the Turks. Earlier, the Ottoman Empire agreed to join the continental blockade created by Napoleon, so the agreement was perceived as a violation of previous obligations. Russia began hostilities on the Danube and captured a number of cities in Bulgaria and Wallachia. Under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812, significant territories were ceded to Russia, and she refused to support the rebels in Serbia. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Ottoman Empire was recognized as a European power.

National Revolutions in the Ottoman Empire.

During the French Revolution, the country faced two new problems. One of them has been ripening for a long time: as the center weakened, the separated provinces eluded the power of the sultans. In Epirus, Ali Pasha Yaninsky, who ruled the province as sovereign and maintained diplomatic relations with Napoleon and other European monarchs, revolted. Similar performances also took place in Vidin, Sidon (modern Saida, Lebanon), Baghdad and other provinces, which undermined the power of the Sultan and reduced tax revenues to the imperial treasury. The strongest of the local rulers (pashas) eventually became Muhammad Ali in Egypt.

Another intractable problem for the country was the growth of the national liberation movement, especially among the Christian population of the Balkans. At the height of the French Revolution, Selim III in 1804 faced an uprising raised by the Serbs, led by Karageorgiy (George Petrovich). The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) recognized Serbia as a semi-autonomous province within the Ottoman Empire, led by Miloš Obrenović, a rival of Karađorđe.

Almost immediately after the defeat of the French Revolution and the fall of Napoleon, Mahmud II faced the Greek national liberation revolution. Mahmud II had a chance to win, especially after he managed to convince the nominal vassal in Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to send his army and navy to support Istanbul. However, the Pasha's armed forces were defeated after the intervention of Great Britain, France and Russia. As a result of the breakthrough of Russian troops in the Caucasus and their offensive against Istanbul, Mahmud II had to sign the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, which recognized the independence of the Kingdom of Greece. A few years later, the army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha, captured Syria and found itself dangerously close to the Bosphorus in Asia Minor. Mahmud II was rescued only by the Russian amphibious assault, which landed on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus as a warning to Muhammad Ali. After that, Mahmud never managed to get rid of Russian influence until he signed the humiliating Unkiyar-Iskelesi Treaty in 1833, which gave the Russian Tsar the right to “protect” the Sultan, as well as to close and open the Black Sea straits at his discretion for the passage of foreign military courts.

Ottoman Empire after the Congress of Vienna.

The period after the Congress of Vienna was probably the most destructive for the Ottoman Empire. Greece seceded; Egypt under Muhammad Ali, which, moreover, by capturing Syria and South Arabia, became virtually independent; Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia became semi-autonomous territories. During the Napoleonic Wars, Europe significantly strengthened its military and industrial power. The weakening of the Ottoman state is attributed to a certain extent to the massacre of the Janissaries organized by Mahmud II in 1826.

By signing the Treaty of Unkiyar-Isklelesiy, Mahmud II hoped to buy time to transform the empire. His reforms were so tangible that travelers visiting Turkey in the late 1830s noted that more changes had taken place in the country in the last 20 years than in the previous two centuries. Instead of the Janissaries, Mahmud created a new army, trained and equipped according to the European model. Prussian officers were hired to train officers in the new military art. Formal wear civil officials were fez and frock coats. Mahmoud tried to introduce into all areas of management the latest methods developed in young European states Oh. It was possible to reorganize the financial system, streamline the activities of the judiciary, and improve the road network. Additional educational institutions were created, in particular, military and medical colleges. Newspapers began to be published in Istanbul and Izmir.

In the last year of his life, Mahmud again entered the war with his Egyptian vassal. Mahmud's army was defeated in northern Syria, and his fleet in Alexandria went over to the side of Muhammad Ali.

Abdul Mejid

(reigned 1839–1861). The eldest son and successor of Mahmud II, Abdul-Majid, was only 16 years old. Without an army and navy, he was helpless in the face of the superior forces of Muhammad Ali. He was saved by the diplomatic and military assistance of Russia, Great Britain, Austria and Prussia. France initially supported Egypt, but the concerted action of the European powers made it possible to find a way out of the deadlock: the pasha received the hereditary right to rule Egypt under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman sultans. This provision was legalized by the London Treaty of 1840 and confirmed by Abdul-Mejid in 1841. In the same year, the London Convention of the European Powers was concluded, according to which military ships were not to pass through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus in peacetime for the Ottoman Empire, and the powers that signed it took on the obligation to assist the Sultan in maintaining sovereignty over the Black Sea straits.

Tanzimat.

During the struggle with his powerful vassal, Abdulmejid in 1839 promulgated the khatt-i sherif (“sacred decree”), announcing the beginning of reforms in the empire, with which the chief minister Reshid Pasha spoke to the highest state dignitaries and invited ambassadors. The document abolished the death penalty without trial, guaranteed justice for all citizens regardless of their racial or religious affiliation, established a judicial council to adopt a new penal code, abolished the farming system, changed the methods of recruiting the army and limited the length of military service.

It became obvious that the empire was no longer able to defend itself in the event of a military attack from any of the great European powers. Reshid Pasha, who previously served as ambassador to Paris and London, understood that certain steps must be taken to show the European states that the Ottoman Empire was capable of self-reformation and manageable, i.e. deserves to be preserved as an independent state. Hatt-i sheriff seemed to be the answer to the doubts of the Europeans. However, in 1841 Reshid was removed from office. In the next few years, his reforms were suspended, and only after his return to power in 1845 did they begin to be put into practice again with the support of the British ambassador, Stratford Canning. This period in the history of the Ottoman Empire, known as the tanzimat ("ordering"), included the reorganization of the system of government and the transformation of society in accordance with the ancient Muslim and Ottoman principles of tolerance. At the same time, education developed, the network of schools expanded, sons from famous families began to study in Europe. Many Ottomans began to lead a Western way of life. The number of published newspapers, books and magazines increased, and the younger generation professed new European ideals.

At the same time, foreign trade grew rapidly, but the influx of European industrial products had a negative impact on the finances and economy of the Ottoman Empire. Imports of British factory-made textiles disrupted artisanal textile production and siphoned gold and silver out of the state. Another blow to the economy was the signing in 1838 of the Balto-Liman Trade Convention, according to which import duties on goods imported into the empire were frozen at the level of 5%. This meant that foreign merchants could operate in the empire on an equal footing with local merchants. As a result most of trade in the country was in the hands of foreigners, who, in accordance with the "Surrenders", were released from control by officials.

Crimean War.

The London Convention of 1841 abolished the special privileges that the Russian Emperor Nicholas I received under the secret annex to the Unkiyar-Iskelesi Treaty of 1833. Referring to the Kyuchuk-Kainarji Treaty of 1774, Nicholas I launched an offensive in the Balkans and demanded a special status and rights for Russian monks in holy places in Jerusalem and Palestine. After the refusal of Sultan Abdulmejid to satisfy these demands, the Crimean War began. Great Britain, France and Sardinia came to the aid of the Ottoman Empire. Istanbul became a forward base for the preparation of hostilities in the Crimea, and the influx of European sailors, army officers and civil officials left an indelible mark on Ottoman society. The Paris Treaty of 1856, which ended this war, declared the Black Sea a neutral zone. The European powers again recognized Turkish sovereignty over the Black Sea straits, and the Ottoman Empire was admitted to the "union of European states". Romania gained independence.

Bankruptcy of the Ottoman Empire.

After the Crimean War, the sultans began to borrow money from Western bankers. Back in 1854, having practically no external debt, the Ottoman government very quickly became bankrupt, and already in 1875 Sultan Abdulaziz owed almost one billion dollars in foreign currency to European bondholders.

In 1875 the Grand Vizier declared that the country was no longer able to pay the interest on its debts. Noisy protests and pressure from the European powers forced the Ottoman authorities to raise taxes in the provinces. Unrest began in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia and Bulgaria. The government sent troops to "appease" the rebels, during which unprecedented cruelty was shown that amazed the Europeans. In response, Russia sent volunteers to help the Balkan Slavs. At this time, a secret revolutionary society of the "New Ottomans" appeared in the country, advocating constitutional reforms in their homeland.

In 1876, Abdul-Aziz, who succeeded his brother Abdul-Mejid in 1861, was deposed for incompetence by Midhat Pasha and Avni Pasha, leaders of the liberal organization of the constitutionalists. On the throne they put Murad V, the eldest son of Abdul-Mejid, who turned out to be mentally ill and was removed in just a few months, and Abdul-Hamid II, another son of Abdul-Mejid, was placed on the throne.

Abdul Hamid II

(reigned 1876–1909). Abdul-Hamid II visited Europe, and many pinned great hopes on him for a liberal constitutional regime. However, at the time of his accession to the throne, Turkish influence in the Balkans was in danger despite the fact that the Ottoman forces managed to defeat the Bosnian and Serbian rebels. This development of events forced Russia to come out with the threat of open intervention, which was sharply opposed by Austria-Hungary and Great Britain. In December 1876, a conference of ambassadors was convened in Istanbul, at which Abdul-Hamid II announced the introduction of the constitution of the Ottoman Empire, which provided for the creation of an elected parliament, a government responsible to it, and other attributes of European constitutional monarchies. However, the brutal suppression of the uprising in Bulgaria nevertheless led in 1877 to a war with Russia. In this regard, Abdul-Hamid II suspended the operation of the Constitution for the period of the war. This situation continued until the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

Meanwhile, at the front, the military situation was developing in favor of Russia, whose troops were already encamped under the walls of Istanbul. Great Britain managed to prevent the capture of the city by sending a fleet to the Sea of ​​Marmara and presenting an ultimatum to St. Petersburg demanding to stop hostilities. Initially, Russia imposed on the sultan the extremely disadvantageous Treaty of San Stefano, according to which most of the European possessions of the Ottoman Empire became part of a new autonomous entity - Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary and Great Britain opposed the terms of the treaty. All this prompted the German Chancellor Bismarck to convene the Berlin Congress in 1878, at which the size of Bulgaria was reduced, but the complete independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania was recognized. Cyprus went to Great Britain, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary. Russia received the fortresses of Ardahan, Kars and Batum (Batumi) in the Caucasus; to regulate navigation on the Danube, a commission was created from representatives of the Danubian states, and the Black Sea and the Black Sea straits again received the status provided for by the Treaty of Paris of 1856. The Sultan promised to equally fairly govern all his subjects, and the European powers considered that the Berlin Congress had solved the difficult Eastern problem forever.

During the 32-year reign of Abdul-Hamid II, the Constitution actually did not come into effect. One of the most important unresolved issues was the bankruptcy of the state. In 1881, under foreign control, the Office of the Ottoman Public Debt was created, which was made responsible for the payments on European bonds. Within a few years, confidence in the financial stability of the Ottoman Empire was restored, which contributed to the participation of foreign capital in the construction of such large projects as the Anatolian Railway, which connected Istanbul with Baghdad.

Young Turk Revolution.

During these years, national uprisings took place in Crete and Macedonia. In Crete, bloody clashes took place in 1896 and 1897, which led to the empire's war with Greece in 1897. After 30 days of fighting, the European powers intervened to save Athens from capture by the Ottoman army. Public opinion in Macedonia leaned towards either independence or union with Bulgaria.

It became obvious that the future of the state was connected with the Young Turks. The ideas of national upsurge were propagated by some journalists, the most talented of whom was Namik Kemal. Abdul-Hamid tried to suppress this movement with arrests, exiles and executions. At the same time, secret Turkish societies flourished in military headquarters around the country and in places as far away as Paris, Geneva, and Cairo. Most effective organization turned out to be the secret committee "Unity and Progress", which was created by the "Young Turks".

In 1908, the troops stationed in Macedonia rebelled and demanded the implementation of the Constitution of 1876. Abdul-Hamid was forced to agree to this, unable to use force. Elections to parliament followed, and the formation of a government of ministers responsible to that legislative body. In April 1909, a counter-revolutionary rebellion broke out in Istanbul, which, however, was quickly suppressed by armed units that arrived in time from Macedonia. Abdul-Hamid was deposed and sent into exile, where he died in 1918. His brother Mehmed V was proclaimed Sultan.

Balkan wars.

The Young Turk government soon faced internal strife and new territorial losses in Europe. In 1908, as a result of the revolution that took place in the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria proclaimed its independence, and Austria-Hungary seized Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Young Turks were powerless to prevent these events, and in 1911 they found themselves embroiled in a conflict with Italy, which had invaded the territory of modern Libya. The war ended in 1912 when the provinces of Tripoli and Cyrenaica became an Italian colony. In early 1912, Crete allied itself with Greece, and later that year, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria launched the First Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire.

Within a few weeks, the Ottomans lost all their possessions in Europe, with the exception of Istanbul, Edirne and Ioannina in Greece and Scutari (modern Shkodra) in Albania. The great European powers, anxiously watching how the balance of power in the Balkans was being destroyed, demanded a cessation of hostilities and a conference. The Young Turks refused to surrender the cities, and in February 1913 the fighting resumed. In a few weeks, the Ottoman Empire completely lost its European possessions, with the exception of the Istanbul zone and the straits. The Young Turks were forced to agree to a truce and formally give up the already lost lands. However, the victors immediately began an internecine war. The Ottomans entered into a clash with Bulgaria in order to return Edirne and the European regions adjacent to Istanbul. The Second Balkan War ended in August 1913 with the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, but a year later the First World War broke out.

World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Developments after 1908 weakened the government of the Young Turks and isolated it in politically. It tried to correct this situation by offering alliances to the stronger European powers. On August 2, 1914, shortly after the start of the war in Europe, the Ottoman Empire entered into a secret alliance with Germany. On the Turkish side, the pro-German Enver Pasha, a leading member of the Young Turk triumvirate and Minister of War, participated in the negotiations. A few days later, two German cruisers "Goeben" and "Breslau" took refuge in the straits. The Ottoman Empire acquired these warships, sailed them into the Black Sea in October and fired at Russian ports, thus declaring war on the Entente.

In the winter of 1914–1915, the Ottoman army suffered huge losses when Russian troops entered Armenia. Fearing that local residents would come out on their side there, the government authorized the massacre of the Armenian population in eastern Anatolia, which many researchers later called the Armenian genocide. Thousands of Armenians were deported to Syria. In 1916, the Ottoman rule in Arabia came to an end: the uprising was raised by the sheriff of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali, supported by the Entente. As a result of these events, the Ottoman government finally collapsed, although Turkish troops, with German support, achieved a number of important victories: in 1915 they managed to repel the Entente attack on the Dardanelles, and in 1916 they captured the British corps in Iraq and stopped the advance of the Russians in the east. During the war, the Capitulation regime was canceled and customs tariffs were raised to protect domestic trade. The Turks took over the business of the evicted national minorities, which helped create the nucleus of a new Turkish commercial and industrial class. In 1918, when the Germans were withdrawn to defend the Hindenburg Line, the Ottoman Empire began to suffer defeat. On October 30, 1918, Turkish and British representatives concluded a truce, according to which the Entente received the right to "occupy any strategic points" of the empire and control the Black Sea straits.

The collapse of the empire.

The fate of most of the provinces of the Ottoman state was determined in the secret treaties of the Entente during the war. The Sultanate agreed to the separation of regions with a predominantly non-Turkish population. Istanbul was occupied by forces that had their own areas of responsibility. Russia was promised the Black Sea straits, including Istanbul, but the October Revolution led to the annulment of these agreements. In 1918, Mehmed V died, and his brother Mehmed VI took the throne, who, although he retained the government in Istanbul, actually became dependent on the Allied occupying forces. Problems were growing in the interior of the country, far from the places of deployment of the Entente troops and government institutions subordinate to the Sultan. Detachments of the Ottoman army, wandering around the vast outskirts of the empire, refused to lay down their arms. British, French and Italian military contingents occupied various parts of Turkey. With the support of the Entente fleet in May 1919, Greek armed formations landed in Izmir and began to advance deep into Asia Minor in order to protect the Greeks in Western Anatolia. Finally, in August 1920, the Treaty of Sevres was signed. Not a single area of ​​the Ottoman Empire remained free from foreign supervision. An international commission was created to control the Black Sea Straits and Istanbul. After riots broke out in early 1920 as a result of the growth of national sentiment, British troops entered Istanbul.

Mustafa Kemal and the Lausanne Peace Treaty.

In the spring of 1920, Mustafa Kemal, the most successful Ottoman commander of the war period, convened a Grand National Assembly in Ankara. He arrived from Istanbul in Anatolia on May 19, 1919 (the date on which the Turkish national liberation struggle began), where he united patriotic forces around him, striving to preserve Turkish statehood and the independence of the Turkish nation. From 1920 to 1922 Kemal and his supporters defeated the enemy armies in the east, south and west and made peace with Russia, France and Italy. At the end of August 1922, the Greek army retreated in disorder to Izmir and the coastal regions. Then the detachments of Kemal went to the Black Sea Straits, where the British troops were located. After the British Parliament refused to support the proposal to start hostilities, English prime minister Lloyd George resigned, and the war was averted by the signing of an armistice in the Turkish city of Mudanya. The British government invited the Sultan and Kemal to send their representatives to a peace conference, which opened in Lausanne (Switzerland) on November 21, 1922. However, the Grand National Assembly in Ankara abolished the Sultanate, and Mehmed VI, the last Ottoman monarch, left Istanbul on a British warship on November 17.

On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, which recognized the complete independence of Turkey. The Office of the Ottoman Public Debt and Capitulations were abolished, and foreign control over the country was abolished. At the same time, Turkey agreed to demilitarize the Black Sea straits. The province of Mosul, with its oil fields, went to Iraq. It was planned to carry out an exchange of population with Greece, from which the Greeks living in Istanbul and the West Thracian Turks were excluded. On October 6, 1923, British troops left Istanbul, and on October 29, 1923, Turkey was proclaimed a republic, and Mustafa Kemal was elected its first president.



Turks are a relatively young people. His age is only 600 years old. The first Turks were a bunch of Turkmens, fugitives from Central Asia, who fled from the Mongols to the west. They reached the Konya Sultanate and asked for land for a settlement. They were given a place on the border with the Empire of Nicaea near Bursa. The fugitives began to settle there in the middle of the 13th century.

The main among the fugitive Turkmens was Ertogrul-bey. He called the territory allotted to him the Ottoman beylik. And taking into account the fact that the Konya Sultan lost all power, he became an independent ruler. Ertogrul died in 1281 and power passed to his son Osman I Ghazi. It is he who is considered the founder of the dynasty of the Ottoman sultans and the first ruler of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire existed from 1299 to 1922 and played a significant role in world history.

Ottoman sultan with his warriors

An important factor contributing to the formation of a powerful Turkish state was the fact that the Mongols, having reached Antioch, did not go further, as they considered Byzantium their ally. Therefore, they did not touch the lands on which the Ottoman beylik was located, believing that it would soon become part of the Byzantine Empire.

And Osman Gazi, like the crusaders, declared a holy war, but only for the Muslim faith. He began to invite everyone to take part in it. And seekers of fortune began to flock to Osman from all over the Muslim East. They were ready to fight for the faith of Islam until their swords became dull and until they got enough wealth and wives. And in the east it was considered a very big achievement.

Thus, the Ottoman army began to be replenished with Circassians, Kurds, Arabs, Seljuks, Turkmens. That is, anyone could come, pronounce the formula of Islam and become a Turk. And on the occupied lands, such people began to allocate small plots of land for farming. Such a site was called "timar". He represented a house with a garden.

The owner of the timar became a rider (spagi). It was his duty to appear at the first call to the Sultan in full armor and on his own horse in order to serve in the cavalry. It was noteworthy that spagi did not pay taxes in the form of money, since they paid the tax with their blood.

With such an internal organization, the territory of the Ottoman state began to expand rapidly. In 1324, Osman's son Orhan I captured the city of Bursa and made it his capital. From Bursa to Constantinople, a stone's throw, and the Byzantines lost control over the northern and western regions of Anatolia. And in 1352, the Ottoman Turks crossed the Dardanelles and ended up in Europe. After this, the gradual and steady capture of Thrace began.

In Europe, it was impossible to get by with one cavalry, so there was an urgent need for infantry. And then the Turks created a completely new army, consisting of infantry, which they called Janissaries(yang - new, charik - army: it turns out Janissaries).

The conquerors took by force from the Christian nations boys aged 7 to 14 years old and converted to Islam. These children were well fed, taught the laws of Allah, military affairs and made foot soldiers (Janissaries). These warriors turned out to be the best foot soldiers in all of Europe. Neither the knightly cavalry, nor the Persian Qizilbash could break through the line of the Janissaries.

Janissaries - infantry of the Ottoman army

And the secret of the invincibility of the Turkish infantry was in the spirit of camaraderie. Janissaries from the first days lived together, ate delicious porridge from the same cauldron, and, despite the fact that they belonged to different nations, they were people of the same fate. When they became adults, they got married, started families, but continued to live in the barracks. Only during the holidays they visited their wives and children. That is why they did not know defeat and represented the faithful and reliable force of the Sultan.

However, having reached the Mediterranean Sea, the Ottoman Empire could not confine itself to the Janissaries alone. Since there is water, ships are needed, and a need arose for a navy. The Turks began to recruit pirates, adventurers and vagabonds from all over the Mediterranean for the fleet. Italians, Greeks, Berbers, Danes, Norwegians went to serve them. This public had no faith, no honor, no law, no conscience. Therefore, they willingly converted to the Muslim faith, since they did not have any faith at all, and it did not matter to them who they were, Christians or Muslims.

From this motley crowd, a fleet was formed that looked more like a pirate than a military one. He began to rage in the Mediterranean, so much so that he horrified the Spanish, French and Italian ships. The very same navigation in the Mediterranean began to be considered a dangerous business. Turkish corsair squadrons were based in Tunisia, Algeria and other Muslim lands that had access to the sea.

Ottoman navy

Thus, from completely different peoples and tribes, such a people as the Turks was formed. And the connecting link was Islam and a single military destiny. During successful campaigns, Turkish soldiers captured captives, made them their wives and concubines, and children from women of different nationalities became full-fledged Turks born on the territory of the Ottoman Empire.

A small principality that appeared on the territory of Asia Minor in the middle of the XIII century, very quickly turned into a powerful Mediterranean power, called the Ottoman Empire after the first ruler Osman I Gazi. The Ottoman Turks also called their state the High Port, and they called themselves not Turks, but Muslims. As for the real Turks, they were considered to be the Turkmen population living in the interior regions of Asia Minor. The Ottomans conquered these people in the 15th century after the capture of Constantinople on May 29, 1453.

European states could not resist the Ottoman Turks. Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople and made it his capital - Istanbul. In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire significantly expanded its territories, and with the capture of Egypt, the Turkish fleet began to dominate the Red Sea. By the second half of the 16th century, the population of the state reached 15 million people, and the Turkish Empire itself began to be compared with the Roman Empire.

But by the end of the 17th century, the Ottoman Turks suffered a series of major defeats in Europe.. The Russian Empire played an important role in weakening the Turks. She always beat the warlike descendants of Osman I. She took away the Crimea, the Black Sea coast from them, and all these victories became a harbinger of the decline of the state, which in the 16th century shone in the rays of its power.

But the Ottoman Empire was weakened not only by endless wars, but also by ugly farming. Officials squeezed all the juice out of the peasants, and therefore they ran the economy in a predatory way. This led to the emergence of a large number of waste lands. And this is in the "fertile crescent", which in ancient times fed almost the entire Mediterranean.

Ottoman Empire on the map, XIV-XVII centuries

It all ended in disaster in the 19th century, when the state treasury was empty. The Turks began to borrow loans from the French capitalists. But it soon became clear that they could not pay their debts, since after the victories of Rumyantsev, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Dibich, the Turkish economy was completely undermined. The French then brought a navy into the Aegean and demanded customs in all ports, mining as concessions, and the right to collect taxes until the debt was repaid.

After that, the Ottoman Empire was called the "sick man of Europe." She began to quickly lose the conquered lands and turn into a semi-colony of European powers. The last autocratic sultan of the empire, Abdul-Hamid II, tried to save the situation. However, under him the political crisis worsened even more. In 1908, the Sultan was overthrown and imprisoned by the Young Turks (a political movement of the pro-Western republican persuasion).

On April 27, 1909, the Young Turks enthroned the constitutional monarch Mehmed V, who was the brother of the deposed sultan. After that, the Young Turks joined the First world war on the side of Germany and were defeated, destroyed. There was nothing good in their reign. They promised freedom, but ended up with a terrible massacre of Armenians, saying that they were against the new regime. And they really were against it, since nothing has changed in the country. Everything remained the same as before it was 500 years under the rule of the sultans.

After the defeat in the First World War, the Turkish Empire began to agonize. Anglo-French troops occupied Constantinople, the Greeks captured Smyrna and moved inland. Mehmed V died on July 3, 1918 from a heart attack. And on October 30 of the same year, the Mudros truce, shameful for Turkey, was signed. The Young Turks fled abroad, leaving the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI, in power. He became a puppet in the hands of the Entente.

But then the unexpected happened. In 1919, a national liberation movement was born in the distant mountainous provinces. It was headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He led the common people. He very quickly expelled the Anglo-French and Greek invaders from his lands and restored Turkey within the borders that exist today. On November 1, 1922, the Sultanate was abolished. Thus, the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist. On November 17, the last Turkish sultan, Mehmed VI, left the country and went to Malta. He died in 1926 in Italy.

And in the country on October 29, 1923, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey announced the creation of the Republic of Turkey. It exists to this day, and its capital is the city of Ankara. As for the Turks themselves, they have been living quite happily for the last decades. In the morning they sing, in the evening they dance, and in between they pray. May Allah protect them!

1. The decline of the Turkish military-feudal state

By the middle of the XVII century. the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which began already in the previous century, was clearly indicated. Turkey still owned vast territories in Asia, Europe and Africa, had important trade routes and strategic positions, had many peoples and tribes in its subordination. The Turkish sultan - the Great Senior, or the Great Turk, as he was called in European documents - was still considered one of the most powerful sovereigns. The military power of the Turks also seemed formidable. But in reality, the roots of the former power of the Sultan's empire were already undermined.

The Ottoman Empire did not have internal unity. Its individual parts differed sharply from each other in ethnic composition, language and religion of the population, in terms of social, economic and cultural development, according to the degree of dependence on the central government. The Turks themselves were a minority in the empire. Only in Asia Minor and in the part of Rumelia (European Turkey) adjacent to Istanbul did they live in large compact masses. In the rest of the provinces, they were scattered among the indigenous population, which they never managed to assimilate.

Turkish domination over the oppressed peoples of the empire was thus based almost exclusively on military violence alone. Domination of this kind could last for a more or less long period only if there were sufficient funds to carry out this violence. Meanwhile, the military power of the Ottoman Empire was steadily declining. The military system of land ownership, inherited by the Ottomans from the Seljuks and at one time one of the most important reasons for the success of Turkish weapons, has lost its former significance. Formally, legally, it continued to exist. But its actual content has changed so much that from a factor in the strengthening and enrichment of the Turkish feudal lords of the class, it has become a source of its ever-increasing weakness.

Decomposition of the military fief system of land tenure

The military-feudal nature of the Ottoman Empire determined its entire domestic and foreign policy. Prominent Turkish politician and writer of the 17th century. Kochibey Gemyurdzhinsky noted in his "risal" (tract) that the Ottoman state "was obtained with a saber and can only be supported with a saber." For several centuries, the receipt of military booty, slaves and tribute from the conquered lands was the main means of enriching the Turkish feudal lords, and direct military violence against the conquered peoples and the Turkish working masses - main function state power. Therefore, since the emergence of the Ottoman state, Turkish ruling class he directed all his energy and attention to the creation and maintenance of a combat-ready army. The decisive role in this regard was played by the military-feudal system of land tenure, which provided for the formation and supply of the feudal army by the military fiefs themselves - sipahs, who for this received large and small estates (zeamets and timars) from the state land fund on conditional ownership rights with the right to collect a certain part rent-tax in their favor. Although this system did not extend to all the territories captured by the Turks, its significance was decisive for the Turkish military-feudal state as a whole.

At first, the military system acted clearly. It directly followed from the interest of the Turkish feudal lords in an active policy of conquest and, in turn, stimulated this interest. Numerous military captives - loans (owners of zeamets) and timariots (owners of timars) - were not only military, but also the main political force of the Ottoman Empire, they constituted, in the words of a Turkish source, "a real army for faith and the state." The military system freed the state budget from the main part of the cost of maintaining the army and ensured the rapid mobilization of the feudal army. The Turkish infantry - Janissaries, as well as some other corps of government troops were on a monetary salary, but the military land tenure system indirectly influenced them, opening up a tempting prospect for commanders and even ordinary soldiers to receive military fiefs and thereby become sipahs.

At first, the military system did not have a detrimental effect on the peasant economy. Of course, peasant raya ( Raya (raaya, reaya) - the common name of the taxable population in the Ottoman Empire, "subjects"; later (not before) late XVI II century) only non-Muslims were called raya.), deprived of any political rights, was in feudal dependence on the sipah and was subjected to feudal exploitation. But this exploitation at first had a predominantly fiscal and more or less patriarchal character. As long as the sipahi was enriched mainly by war booty, he considered land ownership not as the main, but as an auxiliary source of income. He was usually limited to the collection of rent-tax and the role of political overlord and did not interfere in the economic activities of the peasants, who used their land plots on the basis of hereditary holdings. With natural forms of economy, such a system provided the peasants with the opportunity for a tolerable existence.

However, in its original form, the military system did not operate in Turkey for long. The internal contradictions inherent in it began to appear soon after the first great Turkish conquests. Born in war and for war, this system required the continuous or almost continuous waging of aggressive wars, which served as the main source of enrichment. ruling class. But this source was not inexhaustible. The Turkish conquests were accompanied by enormous destruction, and the material values ​​extracted from the conquered countries were quickly and unproductively squandered. On the other hand, the conquests, by expanding feudal landownership and creating for the feudal lords a certain guarantee of the unimpeded exploitation of the received estates, raised in their eyes the importance land ownership, increased its attractive power.

The greed of the feudal lords for money increased with the development of commodity-money relations in the country and especially external trade relations, which made it possible to satisfy the growing demand of the Turkish nobility for luxury goods.

All this caused the Turkish feudal lords to desire to increase the size of the estates and the income received from them. At the end of the XVI century. the ban on the concentration of several fiefs in one hand, established by previous laws, ceased to be observed. In the 17th century, especially from its second half, the process of concentration of landed property intensified. Vast estates began to be created, the owners of which sharply increased feudal duties, introduced arbitrary requisitions, and in some cases, although still rare at that time, created a master's plow in their own estates, the so-called chiftliks ( Chiftlik (from the Turkish "chift" - a pair, means a pair of oxen, with the help of which a land plot is cultivated) in the period under review - a private feudal estate formed on state land. The Chiftlik system became most widespread later, at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, when the landowners - chiftlikchi began to seize peasant lands en masse; in Serbia, where this process took place in especially violent forms, it received the Slavicized name of reverence.).

The very mode of production did not change because of this, but the attitude of the feudal lord to the peasants, to land ownership, and to his duties to the state did change. The old exploiter - the sipahis, who had war in the foreground and who was most interested in military booty, was replaced by a new, much more money-hungry feudal landowner, whose main goal was to maximize income from the exploitation of peasant labor. New landowners, unlike the old ones, were actually, and sometimes formally, exempted from military obligations to the state. Thus, at the expense of the state-feudal land fund, large-scale private-feudal property grew. The sultans also contributed to this, distributing vast estates to dignitaries, pashas of the provinces, court favorites in unconditional possession. The former war captives sometimes also managed to turn into landlords of a new type, but most often the timariots and loans went bankrupt, and their lands passed to new feudal owners. Directly or indirectly attached to landed property and usurious capital. But, while contributing to the disintegration of the military system, he did not create a new, more progressive mode of production. As K. Marx noted, “with Asian forms, usury can exist for a very long time, without causing anything other than economic decline and political corruption”; "... it is conservative and only brings the existing mode of production to a more miserable state" ( K. Marx, Capital, vol. III, pp. 611, 623.).

The disintegration and then the crisis of the military-feudal system of land tenure led to the crisis of the Turkish military-feudal state as a whole. It was not a crisis of the mode of production. Turkish feudalism was then still far from the stage at which the capitalist structure arises, entering into a struggle with the old forms of production and the old political superstructure. The elements of capitalist relations that were observed in the period under review in the economy of cities, especially in Istanbul and in general in the European provinces of the empire - the emergence of certain manufactories, the partial use of hired labor in state enterprises, etc. - were very weak and fragile. IN agriculture there were not even faint sprouts of new forms of production. The disintegration of the Turkish military-feudal system resulted not so much from changes in the mode of production, but from those contradictions that were rooted in it and developed without going beyond the framework of feudal relations. But thanks to this process, there were significant changes in the agrarian system of Turkey and shifts within the class of feudal lords. Ultimately, it was the disintegration of the military-fief system that caused the decline of Turkish military power, which, due to the specifically military nature of the Ottoman state, was of decisive importance for its entire further development.

Decreased military power of the Turks. The defeat at Vienna and its consequences

By the middle of the XVII century. the crisis of the military fief system of land tenure has gone far. Its consequences were manifested both in the strengthening of feudal oppression (as evidenced by numerous cases of peasant uprisings, as well as the mass exodus of peasants to cities and even outside the empire), and in reducing the size of the Sipahian army (under Suleiman the Magnificent, it numbered 200 thousand people, and to the end of the 17th century - only 20 thousand), and in the decomposition of both this army and the Janissaries, and in the further collapse of the government apparatus, and in the growth of financial difficulties.

Some Turkish statesmen tried to delay this process. The most prominent among them were the great viziers from the Köprülü family, who carried out in the second half of the 17th century. a number of measures aimed at streamlining administration, strengthening discipline in the state apparatus and the army, and regulating the tax system. However, all these measures led to only partial and short-term improvements.

Turkey also weakened relatively - in comparison with its main military opponents, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. In most of these countries, although feudalism still dominated in them, new productive forces gradually grew, and a capitalist system developed. In Turkey, there were no prerequisites for this. Already after the great geographical discoveries, when the process of primitive accumulation took place in the advanced European countries, Turkey found itself aloof from the economic development of Europe. Further, nations and nation-states were formed in Europe, either single-national or multi-national, but in this case also headed by some strong developing nation. Meanwhile, the Turks not only could not rally all the peoples of the Ottoman Empire into a single "Ottoman" nation, but they themselves were increasingly lagging behind in the socio-economic, and therefore, in national development from many peoples subject to them, especially the Balkans.

Unfavorable for Turkey in the middle of the XVII century. the international situation in Europe. The Peace of Westphalia raised the importance of France and reduced her interest in getting help from the Turkish sultan against the Habsburgs. In its anti-Habsburg policy, France began to orient itself more towards Poland, as well as towards the smaller German states. On the other hand, after the Thirty Years' War, which undermined the position of the emperor in Germany, the Habsburgs concentrated all their efforts on the fight against the Turks, trying to take away Eastern Hungary from them. Finally, an important shift in the balance of power in Eastern Europe came as a result of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia. Turkish aggression has now met with much more powerful resistance in the Ukraine. The Polish-Turkish contradictions also deepened.

The military weakening of Turkey and its growing lag behind the European states soon affected the course of hostilities in Europe. In 1664, a large Turkish army suffered a heavy defeat at St. Gotthard (Western Hungary) from the Austrians and Hungarians, who this time were joined by a detachment of the French. True, this defeat has not yet stopped the Turkish aggression. In the early 70s, the troops of the Turkish sultan and his vassal, the Crimean Khan, invaded Poland and Ukraine several times, reaching the Dnieper itself, and in 1683 Turkey, taking advantage of the struggle of part of the Hungarian feudal lords led by Emerik Tekeli against the Habsburgs, undertook a new attempt to defeat Austria. However, it was this attempt that led to the disaster near Vienna.

At first, the campaign developed successfully for the Turks. A huge, more than a hundred thousandth army led by the great vizier Kara Mustafa defeated the Austrians in Hungary, then invaded Austria and on July 14, 1683 approached Vienna. The siege of the Austrian capital lasted two months. The position of the Austrians was very difficult. Emperor Leopold, his court and ministers fled from Vienna. Behind them, the rich and the nobles began to flee, until the Turks closed the siege ring. Remained to defend the capital mainly artisans, students and peasants who came from the suburbs burned by the Turks. The troops of the garrison totaled only 10 thousand people and had an insignificant amount of guns and ammunition. The defenders of the city were weakening every day, and famine soon began. Turkish artillery destroyed a significant part of the fortifications.

The turning point came on the night of September 12, 1683, when the Polish king Jan Sobieski approached Vienna with a small (25 thousand people), but fresh and well-armed army, consisting of Poles and Ukrainian Cossacks. Near Vienna, Saxon detachments also joined Jan Sobieski.

The next morning there was a battle that ended in the complete defeat of the Turks. Turkish troops left on the battlefield 20 thousand dead, all artillery and convoy. The remaining Turkish units retreated to Buda and Pest, losing another 10 thousand people while crossing the Danube. Pursuing the Turks, Jan Sobieski inflicted a new defeat on them, after which Kara Mustafa Pasha fled to Belgrade, where he was killed by order of the Sultan.

The defeat of the Turkish armed forces under the walls of Vienna was the inevitable result of the decline of the Turkish military-feudal state long before that. Regarding this event, K. Marx wrote: “... There is absolutely no reason to believe that the decline of Turkey began from the moment when Sobieski provided assistance to the Austrian capital. Hammer's studies (Austrian historian of Turkey. - Ed. irrefutably prove that the organization of the Turkish Empire was then in a state of decay, and that already some time before that the era of Ottoman power and greatness was quickly coming to an end "( K. Marx, The reorganization of the British military department. - Austrian requirements. - The economic situation in England. - Saint-Arno, K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch, vol. 10. ed. 2, p. 262.).

The defeat at Vienna put an end to the Turkish advance into Europe. From that time on, the Ottoman Empire began to gradually lose, one after another, the territories it had previously conquered.

In 1684, to fight Turkey, the "Holy League" was formed, consisting of Austria, Poland, Venice, and from 1686, Russia. The military actions of Poland were unsuccessful, but the Austrian troops in 1687-1688. occupied Eastern Hungary, Slavonia, Banat, captured Belgrade and began to move deep into Serbia. The actions of the Serbian volunteer troops that opposed the Turks, as well as the uprising of the Bulgarians that broke out in 1688 in Chiprovtse, created a serious threat to Turkish communications. A number of defeats were inflicted on the Turks by Venice, which captured Morea and Athens.

In the difficult international situation of the 90s of the 17th century, when the Austrian forces were diverted by the war with France (the war of the League of Augsburg), the hostilities of the "Holy League" against the Turks took on a protracted character. Nevertheless, Turkey continued to fail. An important role in the military events of this period was played by the Azov campaigns of Peter I in 1695-1696, which facilitated the task of the Austrian command in the Balkans. In 1697, the Austrians utterly defeated a large Turkish army near the city of Zenta (Senta) on the Tisza and invaded Bosnia.

Great assistance to Turkey was provided by English and Dutch diplomacy, through whose mediation in October 1698 peace negotiations were opened in Karlovitsy (in Srem). The international situation generally favored Turkey: Austria entered into separate negotiations with it in order to secure its interests and evade support for Russian demands regarding Azov and Kerch; Poland and Venice were also ready to come to terms with the Turks at the expense of Russia; the intermediary powers (England and Holland) spoke openly against Russia and generally helped the Turks more than the allies. However, the internal weakening of Turkey went so far that the Sultan was ready to end the war at any cost. Therefore, the results of the Karlowitz Congress turned out to be very unfavorable for Turkey.

In January 1699, treaties were signed between Turkey and each of the allies separately. Austria received Eastern Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia and almost all of Slavonia; only Banat (province of Temeswar) with fortresses returned to the Sultan. The peace treaty with Poland deprived the Sultan of the last remaining part of the Right-Bank Ukraine and Podolia with the Kamenets fortress. Venice, the Turks ceded part of Dalmatia and Morea. Russia, abandoned by its allies, was forced to sign with the Turks in Karlovitsy not a peace treaty, but only a truce for a period of two years, leaving Azov in its hands. Subsequently, in 1700, in the development of the terms of this truce in Istanbul, a Russian-Turkish peace treaty was concluded, which secured Azov with the surrounding lands for Russia and canceled the payment by Russia of the annual "dacha" to the Crimean Khan.

Rebellion of Patron-Khalil

At the beginning of the XVIII century. Turkey had some military successes: the encirclement of the army of Peter I on the Prut in 1711, which resulted in the temporary loss of Azov by Russia; the capture of the Seas and a number of the Aegean islands from the Venetians in the war of 1715-1718. etc. But these successes, explained by market changes in the international situation and the fierce struggle between the European powers (the Northern War, the War of the Spanish Succession), were transient.

War of 1716-1718 with Austria brought Turkey new territorial losses in the Balkans, fixed in the Pozharevatsky (Passarovitsky) treaty. A few years later, under a 1724 treaty with Russia, Turkey was forced to renounce its claims to the Caspian regions of Iran and Transcaucasia. In the late 1920s, a powerful popular movement arose in Iran against the Turkish (and Afghan) conquerors. In 1730, Nadir Khan took away a number of provinces and cities from the Turks. In this regard, the Iranian-Turkish war began, but even before its official announcement, failures in Iran served as an impetus for a major uprising that broke out in the fall of 1730 in Istanbul. The root causes of this uprising were connected not so much with the foreign as with the domestic policy of the Turkish government. Despite the fact that the Janissaries actively participated in the uprising, artisans, small traders, and the urban poor were its main driving force.

Istanbul already then was a huge, multilingual and multi-tribal city. Its population probably exceeded 600 thousand people. In the first third of the XVIII century. it still increased significantly due to the massive influx of peasants. This was partly due to what was then happening in Istanbul, in the Balkan cities, as well as in the main centers of Levantine trade (Thessaloniki, Izmir, Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria) by the well-known growth of handicrafts and the emergence of manufactory production. Turkish sources of this period contain information about the creation of paper, cloth and some other manufactories in Istanbul; attempts were made to build a faience manufactory at the Sultan's palace; old enterprises expanded and new ones appeared to serve the army and navy.

The development of production was one-sided. The domestic market was extremely narrow; production served mainly foreign trade and the needs of the feudal lords, the state and the army. Nevertheless, the small-scale urban industry of Istanbul had an attractive force for the new working population, especially since the capital's artisans enjoyed many privileges and tax benefits. However, the vast majority of the peasants who fled to Istanbul from their villages did not find permanent work here and joined the ranks of day laborers and homeless beggars. The government, taking advantage of the influx of newcomers, began to increase taxes and introduce new duties on handicrafts. Food prices have risen so much that the authorities, fearing unrest, were even forced several times to distribute free bread in mosques. The intensified activity of usurious capital, which more and more subordinated handicraft and small-scale production to its control, resounded heavily on the working masses of the capital.

Early 18th century was marked by widespread European fashion in Turkey, especially in the capital. The Sultan and the nobles competed in inventing amusements, arranging festivities and feasts, building palaces and parks. In the vicinity of Istanbul, on the banks of a small river, known to Europeans as the “Sweet Waters of Europe”, the luxurious Sultan's Saadabad Palace and about 200 kiosks (“kiosks”, small palaces) of the court nobility were built. Turkish nobles were especially sophisticated in breeding tulips, decorating their gardens and parks with them. The passion for tulips manifested itself both in architecture and in painting. A special "style of tulips" arose. This time entered the Turkish history under the name of the “period of tulips” (“lale devri”).

The luxurious life of the feudal nobility contrasted sharply with the growing poverty of the masses, increasing their discontent. The government did not take this into account. Sultan Ahmed III (1703-1730), a selfish and insignificant man, cared only about money and pleasures. The actual ruler of the state was the great vizier Ibrahim Pasha Nevsehirli, who bore the title of damada (sultan's son-in-law). He was a great statesman. Having taken the post of Grand Vizier in 1718, after signing an unfavorable treaty with Austria, he took a number of steps to improve the internal and international position of the empire. However, Damad Ibrahim Pasha replenished the state treasury by cruelly increasing the tax burden. He encouraged the predation and wastefulness of the nobility, and he himself was alien to corruption.

Tensions in the Turkish capital culminated in the summer and autumn of 1730, when the Janissaries were aggravated by the apparent inability of the government to defend the Turkish conquests in Iran. At the beginning of August 1730, the sultan and the grand vizier set out at the head of the army from the capital, allegedly on a campaign against the Iranians, but, having crossed to the Asian coast of the Bosphorus, they did not move further and started secret negotiations with Iranian representatives. Upon learning of this, the Janissaries of the capital called on the population of Istanbul to revolt.

The uprising began on September 28, 1730. Among its leaders were Janissaries, artisans, and representatives of the Muslim clergy. The most prominent role was played by a native of the lower classes, a former small merchant, later a sailor and janissary Patrona-Khalil, an Albanian by origin, who gained great popularity among the masses with his courage and disinterestedness. The events of 1730 were therefore included in the historical literature under the name of "the uprisings of Patron-Khalil."

Already on the first day, the rebels defeated the palaces and keshki of the court nobility and demanded that the Sultan issue them a grand vizier and four more senior dignitaries. Hoping to save his throne and life, Ahmed III ordered to kill Ibrahim Pasha and hand over his corpse. Nevertheless, the next day, Ahmed III, at the request of the rebels, had to abdicate in favor of his nephew Mahmud.

For about two months, power in the capital was actually in the hands of the rebels. Sultan Mahmud I (1730-1754) initially showed full agreement with Patron-Khalil. The Sultan ordered the destruction of the Saadabad Palace, abolished a number of taxes imposed under his predecessor, and, at the direction of Patron-Khalil, made some changes in the government and administration. Patrona-Khalil did not take a government post. He did not take advantage of his position to enrich himself. He even came to Divan meetings in an old shabby dress.

However, neither Patron-Khalil nor his associates had a positive program. Having dealt with the nobles hated by the people, they essentially did not know what to do next. Meanwhile, the Sultan and his entourage drew up a secret plan for the reprisal against the leaders of the uprising. On November 25, 1730, Patrona-Khalil and his closest assistants were invited to the Sultan's palace, allegedly for negotiations, and were treacherously killed.

The Sultan's government returned entirely to the old methods of government. This caused in March 1731 a new uprising. It was less powerful than the previous one, and in it the popular masses played a smaller role. The government suppressed it relatively quickly, but the unrest continued until the end of April. Only after numerous executions, arrests and expulsion from the capital of several thousand Janissaries did the government take control of the situation.

Strengthening the influence of Western powers on Turkey. Rise of the Eastern Question

The Turkish ruling class still saw its salvation in wars. The main military opponents of Turkey at that time were Austria, Venice and Russia. In the 17th and early 18th centuries the most acute were the Austro-Turkish contradictions, later - Russian-Turkish. Russian-Turkish antagonism deepened as Russia advanced to the Black Sea coast, and also as a result of the growth of national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples of the Ottoman Empire, who saw the Russian people as their ally.

The Turkish ruling circles took a particularly hostile position towards Russia, which they considered the main culprit of the unrest of the Balkan Christians and, in general, almost all the difficulties of the Sublime Porte ( Brilliant, or High Port Sultan government.). Therefore, the contradictions between Russia and Turkey in the second half of the XVIII century. increasingly led to armed conflicts. All this was used by France and England, which at that time increased their influence on the Sultan's government. Of all the European powers, they had the most serious trading interests in Turkey, the French owned rich trading posts in the ports of the Levant. On the embankments of Beirut or Izmir, French was more often heard than Turkish. By the end of the XVIII century. France's trade turnover with the Ottoman Empire reached 50-70 million livres per year, which exceeded the turnover of all other European powers combined. The British also had significant economic positions in Turkey, especially on the Turkish coast of the Persian Gulf. The British trading post in Basra, associated with the East India Company, became a monopolist in buying up raw materials.

During this period, France and England, engaged in colonial wars in America and India, did not yet set themselves the immediate task of capturing the territories of the Ottoman Empire. They preferred to temporarily support the weak power of the Turkish sultan, which was most advantageous for them in terms of their commercial expansion. No other power and no other government that would have replaced Turkish domination would have created such wide opportunities for unhindered trade for foreign merchants, would not have placed them in such favorable conditions in comparison with their own subjects. Hence the openly hostile attitude of France and England towards the liberation movements of the oppressed peoples of the Ottoman Empire; this largely explained their opposition to the advance of Russia to the shores of the Black Sea and the Balkans.

France and England alternately, and in other cases jointly, encouraged the Turkish government to act against Russia, although each new Russian-Turkish war invariably brought Turkey new defeats and new territorial losses. The Western powers were far from providing any effective assistance to Turkey. They even capitalized on Turkey's defeats in the wars with Russia by forcing the Turkish government to grant them new trade benefits.

During the Russian-Turkish war of 1735-1739, which arose largely due to the intrigues of French diplomacy, the Turkish army suffered a severe defeat near Stavuchany. Despite this, after the conclusion of a separate peace with Turkey by Austria, Russia, under the Belgrade Peace Treaty of 1739, was forced to be satisfied with the annexation of Zaporozhye and Azov. France, for the diplomatic services rendered to Turkey, received in 1740 a new surrender, which confirmed and expanded the privileges of French subjects in Turkey: low customs duties, exemption from taxes and fees, lack of jurisdiction over the Turkish court, etc. At the same time, unlike previous capitulation letters the capitulation of 1740 was issued by the sultan not only in his own name, but also as an obligation for all his future successors. Thus, capitulation privileges (which soon extended to subjects of other European powers) were fixed for a long time as Turkey's international obligation.

The Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774, which was prompted by the question of replacing the Polish throne, was also largely due to the harassment of French diplomacy. This war, which was marked by the brilliant victories of the Russian troops under the command of P. A. Rumyantsev and A. V. Suvorov and the defeat of the Turkish fleet in the Battle of Chesme, had especially difficult consequences for Turkey.

A striking example of the selfish use of Turkey by the European powers was the policy of Austria at that time. She in every possible way incited the Turks to continue the unsuccessfully proceeding war for them and undertook to provide them with economic and military assistance. For this, when signing an agreement with Austria in 1771, the Turks paid the Austrians 3 million piastres in advance. However, Austria did not fulfill its obligations, evading even the diplomatic support of Turkey. Nevertheless, she not only kept the money received from Turkey, but also took Bukovina from her in 1775 under the guise of a “remainder” of compensation.

The Kyuchuk-Kaynarji peace treaty of 1774, which ended the Russian-Turkish war, marked a new stage in the development of relations between the Ottoman Empire and the European powers.

Crimea was declared independent from Turkey (in 1783 it was annexed to Russia); the Russian border advanced from the Dnieper to the Bug; The Black Sea and the straits were open to Russian merchant shipping; Russia acquired the right to patronize the Moldavian and Wallachian rulers, as well as the Orthodox Church in Turkey; capitulation privileges were extended to Russian subjects in Turkey; Turkey had to pay Russia a large indemnity. But the significance of the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi world was not only that the Turks suffered territorial losses. This was not new for them, and the losses were not so great, since Catherine II, in connection with the partition of Poland, and especially in connection with the Pugachev uprising, was in a hurry to end the Turkish war. Much more important for Turkey was the fact that after the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi peace, the balance of power in the Black Sea basin changed radically: the sharp strengthening of Russia and the equally sharp weakening of the Ottoman Empire put on the order of the day the problem of Russia's access to the Mediterranean Sea and the complete elimination of Turkish domination in Europe . The solution to this problem, since Turkey's foreign policy was increasingly losing its independence, acquired an international character. Russia, in its further advance to the Black Sea, the Balkans, Istanbul and the straits, now faced not so much with Turkey itself, but with the main European powers, who also put forward their claims to the "Ottoman heritage" and openly interfered both in Russian-Turkish relations and in the relationship between the Sultan and his Christian subjects.

Since that time, the so-called Eastern Question has been in existence, although the term itself began to be used somewhat later. The constituent parts of the Eastern Question were, on the one hand, the internal collapse of the Ottoman Empire, associated with the liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples, and on the other hand, the struggle between the great European powers for the division of the territories falling away from Turkey, primarily European.

In 1787 a new Russo-Turkish war began. Russia openly prepared for it, putting forward a plan for the complete expulsion of the Turks from Europe. But the initiative to break this time also belonged to Turkey, which acted under the influence of British diplomacy, which was fussing about creating a Turkish-Swedish-Prussian coalition against Russia.

The alliance with Sweden and Prussia was of little use to the Turks. Russian troops under the command of Suvorov defeated the Turks at Focsani, Rymnik and Izmail. Austria took the side of Russia. Only due to the fact that the attention of Austria, and then Russia, was diverted by events in Europe, in connection with the formation of a counter-revolutionary coalition against France, Turkey was able to end the war with relatively few losses. The Treaty of Sistovo in 1791 with Austria was concluded on the basis of the status quo (the situation that existed before the war), and according to the Treaty of Jassy with Russia in 1792 (according to the old style of 1791), Turkey recognized the new Russian border along the Dniester, with the inclusion of Crimea and Kuban to Russia, renounced claims to Georgia, confirmed the Russian protectorate over Moldavia and Wallachia and other conditions of the Kyuchuk-Kainarji treaty.

The French Revolution, having caused international complications in Europe, created a favorable situation for Turkey, which contributed to the postponement of the elimination of Turkish domination in the Balkans. But the process of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire continued. The Eastern question became even more aggravated due to the growth of the national self-consciousness of the Balkan peoples. The contradictions between the European powers also deepened, putting forward new claims to the “Ottoman inheritance”: some of these powers acted openly, others under the guise of “protecting” the Ottoman Empire from the encroachment of their rivals, but in all cases this policy led to a further weakening of Turkey and the transformation her into a country dependent on the European powers.

Economic and political crisis of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 18th century.

By the end of the XVIII century. The Ottoman Empire entered a period of acute crisis that engulfed all sectors of its economy, the armed forces, and the state apparatus. The peasants languished under the yoke of feudal exploitation. According to rough estimates, in the Ottoman Empire at that time there were about a hundred different taxes, dues and duties. The severity of the tax burden was exacerbated by the taxation system. At government auctions, the highest dignitaries spoke, with whom no one dared to compete. Therefore, they received a ransom for a low fee. Sometimes the ransom was granted for life use. The original farmer usually sold the ransom at a large premium to the usurer, who resold it again until the right to farm out fell into the hands of the direct tax collector, who reimbursed and covered his costs by shamelessly robbing the peasants.

The tithe was taken in kind from all kinds of grains, horticultural crops, from the catch of fish, etc. In fact, it reached a third and even half of the harvest. The best quality products were taken from the peasant, leaving him the worst. The feudal lords, moreover, demanded that the peasants perform various duties: for the construction of roads, the supply of firewood, food, and sometimes corvée work. Complaining was useless, since the wali (governors general) and other high officials were themselves the largest landlords. If complaints sometimes reached the capital and an official was sent from there to investigate, then the pashas and beys got off with a bribe, and the peasants bore additional burdens for feeding and maintaining the auditor.

Christian peasants were subjected to double oppression. The personal tax on non-Muslims - jizya, now also called kharaj, increased dramatically in size and was levied without exception from everyone, even from babies. To this was added religious oppression. Any Janissary could commit violence against a non-Muslim with impunity. Non-Muslims were not allowed to have weapons, wear the same clothes and shoes as Muslims; the Muslim court did not recognize the testimony of "infidels"; even in official documents, contemptuous and abusive nicknames were used in relation to non-Muslims.

Turkish agriculture was destroyed every year. In many areas, entire villages were left without inhabitants. The Sultan's decree in 1781 explicitly recognized that "poor subjects are fleeing, which is one of the reasons for the devastation of my highest empire." The French writer Volney, who made a trip to the Ottoman Empire in 1783-1785, noted in his book that the degradation of agriculture, which had intensified about 40 years earlier, led to the desolation of entire villages. The farmer has no incentive to expand production: "he sows just enough to live on," this author reported.

Peasant unrest arose spontaneously not only in non-Turkish regions, where the anti-feudal movement was combined with the liberation movement, but also in Turkey itself. Crowds of destitute, homeless peasants roamed Anatolia and Rumelia. Sometimes they formed armed detachments and attacked the estates of feudal lords. There were also riots in the cities. In 1767 the Pasha of Kars was killed. Troops were sent from Van to pacify the population. Then there was an uprising in Aydin, where the inhabitants killed the tax farmer. In 1782, the Russian ambassador reported to St. Petersburg that "confusion in various Anatolian regions day by day more and more leads the clergy and the ministry into care and despondency."

Attempts by individual peasants - both non-Muslims and Muslims - to quit farming were suppressed by legislative and administrative measures. A special tax was introduced for the abandonment of agriculture, which increased the attachment of peasants to the land. In addition, the feudal lord and the usurer kept the peasants in debt. The feudal lord had the right to forcibly return the departed peasant and force him to pay taxes for the entire time of absence.

The situation in the cities was still somewhat better than in the countryside. In the interests of their own security, the city authorities, and in the capital the government itself, tried to provide the townspeople with food. They took grain from the peasants at a fixed price, introduced grain monopolies, and forbade the export of grain from the cities.

Turkish handicraft in this period was not yet suppressed by the competition of European industry. Still famous at home and abroad were satin and velvet Beams, Ankara shawls, Izmir long-wool fabrics, Edirne soap and rose oil, Anatolian carpets, and especially the works of Istanbul artisans: dyed and embroidered fabrics, mother-of-pearl inlays, silver and ivory products , carved weapons, etc.

But the Turkish city's economy also showed signs of decline. Unsuccessful wars, the territorial losses of the empire reduced the already limited demand for Turkish handicrafts and manufactories. Medieval workshops (esnafs) hindered the development of commodity production. The corrupting influence of commercial and usurious capital also affected the position of the craft. In the 20s of the XVIII century. the government introduced a system of gediks (patents) for artisans and merchants. Without a gedik, it was impossible to even engage in the profession of a boatman, a peddler, a street singer. By lending money to the artisans to buy gediks, the usurers made the guilds dependent on themselves.

The development of crafts and trade was also hindered by internal customs, the presence of different measures of length and weight in each province, the arbitrariness of the authorities and local feudal lords, robbery on trade routes. The insecurity of property killed artisans and merchants any desire to expand their activities.

The defacement of the coin by the government had catastrophic consequences. The Hungarian baron de Tott, who was in the service of the Turks as a military expert, wrote in his memoirs: “The coin is damaged to such an extent that counterfeiters are now working in Turkey for the benefit of the population: whatever the alloy they use, the coin minted by the Grand Seigneur is still lower in value."

Fires, epidemics of plague and other contagious diseases raged in the cities. Frequent natural disasters like earthquakes and floods completed the ruin of the people. The government restored mosques, palaces, Janissary barracks, but did not provide assistance to the population. Many moved to the position of domestic slaves or joined the ranks of the lumpenproletariat along with the peasants who had fled from the countryside.

Against the gloomy background of the people's ruin and poverty, the squandering of the upper classes stood out even brighter. Enormous sums were spent on the maintenance of the Sultan's court. Titled persons, wives and concubines of the Sultan, servants, pashas, ​​eunuchs, guards, there were a total of more than 12 thousand people. The palace, especially its female half (harem), was the focus of intrigue and secret conspiracies. Court favorites, sultanas, and among them the most influential - the sultana-mother (valid-sultan) received bribes from dignitaries who sought a lucrative position, from provincial pashas who sought to conceal the taxes received, from foreign ambassadors. One of the highest places in the palace hierarchy was occupied by the head of the black eunuchs - kyzlar-agasy (literally - the head of the girls). He had in his charge not only the harem, but also the personal treasury of the Sultan, the waqfs of Mecca and Medina and a number of other sources of income and enjoyed great actual power. Kyzlar-Agasy Beshir for 30 years, until the middle of the 18th century, had a decisive influence on state affairs. In the past, a slave bought in Abyssinia for 30 piastres, he left behind 29 million piastres in money, 160 luxurious armor and 800 watches adorned with precious stones. His successor, also named Beshir, enjoyed the same power, but did not get along with the higher clergy, was removed and then strangled. After that, the chiefs of the black eunuchs became more cautious and tried not to interfere openly in government affairs. Nevertheless, they retained their secret influence.

Corruption in the ruling circles of Turkey was caused, in addition to the deep causes of the social order, also by the obvious degeneration that befell the Osman dynasty. Sultans have long ceased to be commanders. They also had no experience of public administration, since before ascending the throne they lived for many years in strict isolation in the inner chambers of the palace. By the time of accession (which could happen very slowly, since succession to the throne in Turkey did not go in a straight line, but according to seniority in the dynasty), the crown prince was for the most part a morally and physically degenerated person. Such was, for example, Sultan Abdul-Hamid I (1774-1789), who spent 38 years imprisoned in the palace before taking the throne. The great viziers (sadrazams), as a rule, were also insignificant and ignorant people who received appointments through bribery and bribes. In the past, this position was often filled by capable statesmen. Such were, for example, in the XVI century. the famous Mehmed Sokollu, in the 17th century. - the Köprülü family, at the beginning of the 18th century. - Damad Ibrahim Pasha. Even in the middle of the XVIII century. the post of sadrazam was occupied by a prominent statesman Raghib Pasha. But after the death of Ragib Pasha in 1763, the feudal clique no longer allowed any strong and independent personality to power. In rare cases, Grand Viziers remained in office for two or three years; for the most part they were replaced several times a year. Almost always, the resignation was immediately followed by execution. Therefore, the great viziers hurried to use the few days of their lives and their power to plunder as much as possible and just as quickly squander the loot.

Many positions in the empire were officially sold. For the position of ruler of Moldavia or Wallachia, it was necessary to pay 5-6 million piastres, not counting offerings to the Sultan and bribes. The bribe became so firmly established in the habits of the Turkish administration that in the 17th century. the Ministry of Finance even had a special “accounting for bribes”, which had as its function the accounting of bribes received by officials, with the deduction of a certain share to the treasury. The positions of qadis (judges) were also sold. In compensation for the money paid, the qadis enjoyed the right to charge a certain percentage (up to 10%) from the amount of the claim, and this amount was paid not by the loser, but by the winner of the lawsuit, which encouraged the presentation of deliberately unfair claims. In criminal cases, bribery of judges was practiced openly.

The peasantry suffered especially from the judges. Contemporaries noted that "the first concern of the villagers is to hide the fact of the crime from the knowledge of the judges, whose presence is more dangerous than the presence of thieves."

The decomposition of the army, especially the Janissary corps, reached great depths. The Janissaries became the main stronghold of the reaction. They resisted any kind of reform. Janissary revolts became commonplace, and since the Sultan had no other military support besides the Janissaries, he tried his best to appease them. Upon accession to the throne, the sultan paid them the traditional reward - "julus bakhshishi" ("ascension gift"). The amount of remuneration increased in the event of the participation of the Janissaries in the coup, which led to the change of the Sultan. Entertainment and theatrical performances were organized for the Janissaries. The delay in the issuance of salaries to the Janissaries could cost the life of the minister. Once on the day of bayram (Muslim holiday), the master of ceremonies of the court mistakenly allowed the chiefs of artillery and cavalry corps to kiss the sultan's mantle earlier than the Janissary agha; the sultan immediately ordered the execution of the master of ceremonies.

In the provinces, the Janissaries often subjugated the pashas, ​​held all the administration in their hands, arbitrarily levied taxes and various fees from artisans and merchants. The Janissaries themselves were often engaged in trade, taking advantage of the fact that they did not pay any taxes and were subject only to their superiors. The lists of the Janissaries included many people who were not engaged in military affairs. Since the salaries of the Janissaries were issued upon presentation of special tickets (esame), these tickets became the subject of purchase and sale; a large number of them were in the hands of usurers and court favorites.

Discipline has drastically declined in other military units. The number of Sipahian cavalry for 100 years, from the end of the 17th to the end of the 18th century, decreased 10 times: for the war with Russia in 1787, it was possible to assemble 2 thousand horsemen with difficulty. The feudal sipahis were always the first to flee from the battlefield.

Embezzlement reigned among the military command. The money destined for the army or for the fortress garrisons was plundered by half in the capital, and the lion's share of the rest was appropriated by the local commanders.

Military equipment froze in the form in which it existed in the 16th century. Still used, as in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, marble cores. The casting of cannons, the manufacture of guns and swords - all the production of military equipment by the end of the 18th century. lagged behind Europe by at least a century and a half. The soldiers wore heavy and uncomfortable clothes, used weapons of various sizes. The European armies were trained in the art of maneuvering, and the Turkish army was operating on the battlefield in a continuous and disorderly mass. The Turkish fleet, which once dominated the entire Mediterranean basin, lost its former importance after the Chesme defeat in 1770.

The weakening of the central government, the collapse of the government apparatus and the army contributed to the growth of centrifugal tendencies in the Ottoman Empire. The struggle against Turkish domination was incessantly waged in the Balkans, in the Arab countries, in the Caucasus and in other lands of the empire. By the end of the XVIII century. the separatist movements of the Turkish feudal lords themselves also acquired enormous proportions. Sometimes they were well-born feudal lords from ancient families of military feudal lords, sometimes representatives of the new feudal nobility, sometimes just lucky adventurers who managed to gain wealth and recruit their own mercenary army. They came out of submission to the Sultan and actually turned into independent kings. The Sultan's government was powerless to fight them and considered itself satisfied when it sought to receive at least a part of the taxes and maintain the semblance of Sultan's sovereignty.

In Epirus and in southern Albania, Ali Pasha of Tepelena rose to prominence, later gaining great fame under the name of Ali Pasha of Janinsky. On the Danube, in Vidin, the Bosnian feudal lord Omer Pazvand-oglu recruited an entire army and became the de facto owner of the Vidin district. The government succeeded in capturing him and executing him, but soon his son Osman Pazvand-oglu came out even more strongly against the central government. Even in Anatolia, where the feudal lords had not yet openly rebelled against the sultan, real feudal principalities developed: the feudal family of Karaosman-oglu owned lands in the southwest and west, between the Great Menderes and the Sea of ​​Marmara; clan Chapan-oglu - in the center, in the region of Ankara and Yozgad; the clan of Battala Pasha is in the northeast, in the region of Samsun and Trabzon (Trapezunt). These feudal lords had their own troops, distributed land grants, and levied taxes. Sultan's officials did not dare to interfere in their actions.

Separatist tendencies were also shown by pashas appointed by the Sultan himself. The government tried to fight the pashas' separatism by moving them frequently, two or three times a year, from one province to another. But if the order was carried out, then the result was only a sharp increase in extortions from the population, since the pasha sought to reimburse his expenses for the purchase of a position, for bribes and for moving in a shorter period of time. However, over time, this method also ceased to produce results, since the pashas began to start their own mercenary armies.

Decline of culture

Turkish culture, which reached its peak in the XV-XVI centuries, already from the end of the XVI century. gradually declining. The pursuit of poets for excessive sophistication and pretentiousness of form leads to the impoverishment of the content of works. The technique of versification, the play on words, begin to be valued higher than the thought and feeling expressed in the verse. One of the last representatives of the degenerate palace poetry was Ahmed Nedim (1681-1730), a talented and brilliant spokesman for the “epoch of tulips”. Nedim's work was limited to a narrow circle of palace themes - the chanting of the Sultan, court feasts, pleasure walks, "conversations over halva" in the Saadabad Palace and kyoshkas of aristocrats, but his works were distinguished by great expressiveness, immediacy, and comparative simplicity of language. In addition to the sofa (a collection of poems), Nedim left behind a translation into Turkish of the collection “Pages of News” (“Sahaif-ul-Akhbar”), better known as “The History of the Chief Astrologer” (“Munejim-bashi tarihi”).

The didactic literature of Turkey of this period is represented primarily by the work of Yusuf Nabi (d. 1712), the author of the moralistic poem "Khairie", which in some of its parts contained a sharp criticism of modern morals. A prominent place in Turkish literature was also occupied by the symbolic poem of Sheikh Talib (1757-1798) "Beauty and Love" ("Hyusn-yu Ashk").

Turkish historiography continued to develop in the form of court historical chronicles. Naima, Mehmed Reshid, Chelebi-zade Asim, Ahmed Resmi and other court historiographers, following a long tradition, described in an apologetic spirit the life and work of the sultans, military campaigns, etc. Information about foreign countries was contained in reports on Turkish embassies sent for border (sefaret-name). Along with some true observations, they contained a lot of naive and simply invented things.

In 1727, the first printing house in Turkey was opened in Istanbul. Its founder was Ibrahim-aga Muteferrika (1674-1744), a native of a poor Hungarian family, who was captured by the Turks as a boy, then converted to Islam and remained in Turkey. Among the first books printed in the printing house were the Vankuli Arabic-Turkish Dictionary, the historical works of Kyatib Chelebi (Haji Khalife), Omer Effendi. After the death of Ibrahim-aga, the printing house was inactive for almost 40 years. In 1784 she resumed her work, but even then she published a very limited number of books. The printing of the Koran was forbidden. Secular works were also mostly copied by hand.

The development of science, literature and art in Turkey was especially hindered by the dominance of Muslim scholasticism. The higher clergy did not allow secular education. Mullahs and numerous dervish orders entangled the people in a thick web of superstitions and prejudices. Signs of stagnation were found in all areas of Turkish culture. Attempts to revive the old cultural traditions were doomed to failure, the development of new ones coming from the West was reduced to blind borrowing. This was the case, for example, with architecture, which followed the path of imitation of Europe. French decorators introduced a distorted baroque into Istanbul, while Turkish builders mixed all styles and built ugly buildings. Nothing remarkable was created in painting either, where the strict proportions of the geometric ornament were violated, now replaced, under the influence of European fashion, by floral ornament with a predominance of the image of tulips.

But if the culture of the ruling class experienced a period of decline and stagnation, then folk art continued to develop steadily. big love the masses enjoyed folk poets and singers who reflected freedom-loving folk dreams and aspirations, hatred of oppressors in their songs and poems. Folk storytellers (hikyaedzhiler or meddakhi), as well as the folk shadow theater “karagez”, whose performances were sharply topical and covered the events taking place in the country, are gaining wide popularity from the point of view of the common people, according to their understanding and interests.

2. Balkan peoples under Turkish rule

The position of the Balkan peoples in the second half of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire, the decomposition of the military fief system, the weakening of the power of the Sultan's government - all this was heavily reflected in the lives of the South Slavic peoples, Greeks, Albanians, Moldavians and Wallachians who were under Turkish rule. The formation of ciftliks, the desire of the Turkish feudal lords to increase the profitability of their lands worsened the position of the peasantry more and more. The distribution in the mountainous and forest regions of the Balkans to private ownership of lands that previously belonged to the state led to the enslavement of the communal peasantry. The power of the landowners over the peasants expanded, and more severe forms of feudal dependence were established than before. Starting their own economy and not content with in-kind and monetary requisitions, spahii (sipahi) forced the peasants to perform corvée. The transfer of spahiluks (Turkish - sipahilik, possession of sipahi) at the mercy of usurers, who mercilessly robbed the peasants, became widespread. Arbitrariness, bribery and arbitrariness of local authorities, Qadi judges, and tax collectors grew as the central government weakened. The Janissary troops became one of the main sources of revolts and turmoil in the European possessions of Turkey. The robbery by the Turkish army and especially by the Janissaries of the civilian population turned into a system.

IN Danubian Principalities Ah, in the 17th century. the process of consolidation of the boyar farms and the seizure of peasant lands continued, accompanied by an increase in the feudal dependence of the bulk of the peasantry; only a few wealthy peasants had the opportunity to obtain personal freedom for a large ransom.

The growth of hatred for Turkish domination on the part of the Balkan peoples and the desire of the Turkish government to squeeze out more taxes prompted the latter to be carried out in the 17th century. a policy of complete subjugation to the Turkish authorities and feudal lords of a number of mountainous regions and outlying regions of the empire, previously controlled by local Christian authorities. In particular, the rights of rural and urban communities in Greece and Serbia, which enjoyed considerable independence, were steadily curtailed. The pressure of the Turkish authorities on the Montenegrin tribes intensified in order to force them to complete obedience and to regular payment of haracha (kharaj). The Porta sought to turn the Danubian principalities into ordinary pashaliks ruled by Turkish officials. The resistance of the strong Moldavian and Wallachian boyars did not allow this measure to be carried out, however, interference in the internal affairs of Moldavia and Wallachia and the fiscal exploitation of the principalities intensified significantly. Using the constant struggle of boyar groups in the principalities, the Porte appointed its henchmen as Moldavian and Wallachian rulers, removing them every two or three years. At the beginning of the 18th century, fearing the rapprochement of the Danubian principalities with Russia, the Turkish government began to appoint Phanariot Greeks from Istanbul as rulers ( Phanar - a quarter in Istanbul, where the Greek patriarch had his seat; Phanariots - rich and noble Greeks, from whose midst came the highest representatives of the church hierarchy and officials of the Turkish administration; Phanariots were also engaged in large trade and usury transactions.), closely associated with the Turkish feudal class and ruling circles.

The aggravation of contradictions within the empire and the growth of social struggle in it led to the growth of religious antagonism between Muslims and Christians. The manifestations of Muslim religious fanaticism and the discriminatory policy of the Porte in relation to Christian subjects intensified, attempts to forcibly convert Bulgarian villages, entire Montenegrin and Albanian tribes to Islam became more frequent.

The Orthodox clergy of the Serbs, Montenegrins and Bulgarians, who enjoyed great political influence among their peoples, often actively participated in anti-Turkish movements. Therefore, the Porte was extremely distrustful of the South Slavic clergy, sought to belittle its political role, to prevent its ties with Russia and other Christian states. But the Phanariot clergy enjoyed the support of the Turks. Porta condoned the Hellenization of the South Slavic peoples, Moldavians and Vlachs, which the Greek hierarchy and the Phanariots who stood behind it tried to carry out. The Patriarchate of Constantinople appointed only Greeks to the highest church positions, who burned Church Slavonic books, did not allow church services in a language other than Greek, etc. Hellenization was especially active in Bulgaria and the Danubian principalities, but it met with strong resistance from the masses .

Serbia in the 18th century the highest church positions were also seized by the Greeks, which led to the rapid breakdown of the entire church organization, which previously played a large role in maintaining national identity and folk traditions. In 1766, the Patriarchate of Constantinople obtained from the Porte the issuance of firmans (sultan's decrees), which brought the autocephalous Patriarchate of Pec and the Archbishopric of Ohrid under the authority of the Greek Patriarch.

The medieval backwardness of the Ottoman Empire, the economic disunity of the regions, and cruel national and political oppression hampered the economic progress of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula enslaved by Turkey. But, despite the unfavorable conditions, in a number of regions of the European part of Turkey in the XVII-XVIII centuries. significant shifts were observed in the economy. The development of productive forces and commodity-money relations, however, proceeded unevenly: first of all, it was found in some coastal areas, in areas located along the river. big rivers and on international trade routes. So, in the coastal parts of Greece and on the islands, the shipbuilding industry grew. In Bulgaria, textile crafts developed significantly, serving the needs of the Turkish army and the urban population. In the Danubian principalities, enterprises for the processing of agricultural raw materials, textile, paper and glass manufactories, based on serf labor, arose.

A characteristic phenomenon of this period was the growth of new cities in some areas of European Turkey. So, for example, in the foothills of the Balkans, in Bulgaria, in areas remote from Turkish centers, a number of commercial and handicraft Bulgarian settlements arose, serving the local market (Kotel, Sliven, Gabrovo, etc.).

The internal market in the Balkan possessions of Turkey was poorly developed. The economy of areas remote from large urban centers and trade routes was still mostly natural in nature, but the growth of trade gradually destroyed their isolation. Foreign and transit trade, which was in the hands of foreign merchants, has long been of paramount importance in the economy of the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. However, in the XVII century. in connection with the decline of Dubrovnik and Italian cities, local merchants begin to take a stronger position in trade. The Greek commercial and usurious bourgeoisie acquired especially great economic strength in Turkey, subordinating the weaker South Slavic merchant class to its influence.

The development of trade and commercial and usurious capital, despite the general backwardness of social relations among the Balkan peoples, did not yet create the conditions for the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. But the further, the more obvious it became that the economy of the Balkan peoples, who were under the yoke of Turkey, was developing in an independent way; that they, living in the most unfavorable conditions, nevertheless overtake in their social development the nationality that dominates the state. All this made the struggle of the Balkan peoples for their national-political liberation inevitable.

The liberation struggle of the Balkan peoples against the Turkish yoke

During the XVII-XVIII centuries. in various parts On the Balkan Peninsula, uprisings against Turkish domination broke out more than once. These movements were usually local in nature, did not arise simultaneously, and were not sufficiently prepared. They were mercilessly suppressed by Turkish troops. But time passed, failures were forgotten, hopes for liberation revived with renewed vigor, and with them new uprisings arose.

The main driving force in the uprisings was the peasantry. Often, the urban population, the clergy, even the Christian feudal lords who survived in some areas, and in Serbia and Montenegro, the local Christian authorities (knezes, governors and tribal leaders) often took part in them. In the Danubian principalities, the struggle against Turkey was usually led by the boyars, who hoped to free themselves from Turkish dependence with the help of neighboring states.

The liberation movement of the Balkan peoples took on particularly broad dimensions during the war of the Holy League with Turkey. The successes of the Venetian and Austrian troops, joining the anti-Turkish coalition of Russia, with which the Balkan peoples were connected by the unity of religion - all this inspired the enslaved Balkan peoples to fight for their liberation. In the first years of the war, an uprising against the Turks began to be prepared in Wallachia. Gospodar Shcherban Kantakuzino conducted secret negotiations for an alliance with Austria. He even recruited an army hidden in the forests and mountains of Wallachia to move it at the first signal of the Holy League. Cantacuzino intended to unite and lead the uprisings of other peoples of the Balkan Peninsula. But these plans were not destined to come true. The desire of the Habsburgs and the Polish king Jan Sobieski to seize the Danube principalities into their own hands forced the Wallachian ruler to abandon the idea of ​​\u200b\u200buprising.

When in 1688 the Austrian troops approached the Danube, and then took Belgrade and began to move south, in Serbia, Western Bulgaria, Macedonia, a strong anti-Turkish movement began. The local population joined the advancing Austrian troops, volunteer couples (partisan detachments) began to spontaneously form, which successfully conducted independent military operations.

At the end of 1688, an uprising against the Turks arose in the center of ore development in the northwestern part of Bulgaria - the city of Chiprovtse. Its participants were the craft and trade population of the city, as well as residents of the surrounding villages. The leaders of the movement hoped that the Austrians approaching Bulgaria would help them drive out the Turks. But the Austrian army did not arrive in time to help the rebels. Chiprovets were defeated, and the city of Chiprovets was swept off the face of the earth.

The policy of the Habsburgs at that time had as its main goal the possession of lands in the Danube basin, as well as the Adriatic coast. Not having sufficient military forces to carry out such broad plans, the emperor hoped to wage war with Turkey with the forces of local rebels. The Austrian emissaries called on the Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins to revolt, tried to win over the local Christian authorities (knezes and governor), tribal leaders, baked patriarch Arseny Chernoyevich.

The Habsburgs tried to make George Brankovich, a Serbian feudal lord living in Transylvania, an instrument of this policy. Brankovich pretended to be a descendant of the Serbian sovereigns and cherished a plan for the revival of an independent state, including all the South Slavic lands. The project of creating such a state, which is under the Austrian protectorate, Brankovich presented to the emperor. This project did not correspond to the interests of the Habsburgs, and it was not real. Nevertheless, the Austrian court brought Brankovich closer to itself, granting him the title of count as a descendant of the Serbian despots. In 1688 Georgy Brankovich was sent to the Austrian command to prepare the action of the population of Serbia against the Turks. However, Brankovich left the Austrians and tried to independently organize an uprising of the Serbs. Then the Austrians arrested him and kept him in prison until his death.

Hopes for liberation with the help of the Habsburgs ended in severe disappointment for the southern Slavs. After a successful raid into the depths of Serbia and Macedonia, carried out mainly by the forces of the Serbian volunteer army with the assistance of the local population and haiduks, the Austrians at the end of 1689 began to suffer defeat from the Turkish troops. Fleeing from the revenge of the Turks, who destroyed everything in their path, the local population left after the retreating Austrian troops. This "great migration" took on a mass character. From Serbia at that time, mainly from its southern and southwestern regions, about 60-70 thousand people fled to the Austrian possessions. In the following years of the war, Serbian volunteer detachments, under the command of their commander, fought against the Turks as part of the Austrian troops.

During the war of the Venetians against the Turks in the mid-80s and early 90s of the XVII century. a strong anti-Turkish movement arose among the Montenegrin and Albanian tribes. This movement was strongly encouraged by Venice, which concentrated all its military forces in the Sea, and in Dalmatia and Montenegro expected to wage war with the help of the local population. The Pasha of Shkodra Suleiman Bushatly repeatedly undertook punitive expeditions against the Montenegrin tribes. In 1685 and 1692 Turkish troops twice captured the residence of the Montenegrin metropolitans of Cetinje. But the Turks were never able to hold their ground in this small mountainous region, which fought hard for complete independence from the Porte.

The specific conditions in which Montenegro found itself after the Turkish conquest, the dominance of backward social relations and patriarchal remnants in it contributed to the growth of the political influence of local metropolitans, who led the struggle for national-political liberation and the unification of the Montenegrin tribes. Of great importance was the reign of the talented statesman Metropolitan Danila Petrovich Negosh (1697-1735). Danila Petrovich stubbornly fought for the complete liberation of Montenegro from the power of the Port, which did not leave attempts to restore its positions in this strategically important area. In order to undermine the influence of the Turks, he exterminated or expelled from the country all the Montenegrins who converted to Islam (Turchenians). Danila also carried out some reforms that contributed to the centralization of government and the weakening of tribal hostility.

From the end of the 17th century the political and cultural ties of the southern Slavs, Greeks, Moldavians and Vlachs with Russia are expanding and strengthening. The tsarist government sought to expand its political influence among the peoples subject to Turkey, which in the future could become an important factor in deciding the fate of Turkish possessions in Europe. From the end of the 17th century the Balkan peoples began to attract more and more attention of Russian diplomacy. The oppressed peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, for their part, have long seen their common faith in Russia as their patroness and hoped that the victories of the Russian arms would bring them liberation from the Turkish yoke. Russia's entry into the Holy League prompted representatives of the Balkan peoples to establish direct contact with the Russians. In 1688, the Wallachian ruler Shcherban Kantakuzino, the former Patriarch of Constantinople Dionysius and the Serbian patriarch Arseniy Chernoevich sent letters to the Russian tsars Ivan and Peter, in which they described the suffering of the Orthodox peoples in Turkey and asked Russia to send its troops to the Balkans to liberate the Christian peoples. Although the operations of the Russian troops in the war of 1686-1699. developed far from the Balkans, which did not allow the Russians to establish direct contacts with the Balkan peoples, the tsarist government already at that time began to put forward as the reason for the war with Turkey its desire to liberate the Balkan peoples from its yoke and acts in the international arena as a defender of the interests of all Orthodox Christians in general subjects of the Porte. The Russian autocracy adhered to this position during the entire further struggle with Turkey in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Setting as his goal to achieve Russia's access to the Black Sea, Peter I counted on help from the Balkan peoples. In 1709, he entered into a secret alliance with the Wallachian ruler Konstantin Brankovan, who promised, in case of war, to go over to the side of Russia, put up a detachment of 30 thousand people, and also supply Russian troops with food. The Moldavian ruler Dimitri Cantemir also undertook to provide military assistance to Peter and concluded an agreement with him on the transfer of Moldovans to Russian citizenship, subject to the provision of full internal independence to Moldova. In addition, the Austrian Serbs promised their assistance, a large detachment of which was supposed to join the Russian troops. Starting the Prut campaign in 1711, the Russian government issued a charter calling all the peoples enslaved by Turkey to arms. But the failure of the Prut campaign stopped the anti-Turkish movement of the Balkan peoples at the very beginning. Only Montenegrins and Herzego-Vintians, having received a letter from Peter I, began to undertake military sabotage against the Turks. This circumstance was the beginning of the establishment of close ties between Russia and Montenegro. Metropolitan Danila visited Russia in 1715, after which Peter I established periodic cash benefits for Montenegrins.

As a result of a new war between Turkey and Austria in 1716-1718, in which the population of Serbia also fought on the side of the Austrians, Banat, the northern part of Serbia and Lesser Wallachia fell under the rule of the Habsburgs. However, the population of these lands, freed from the power of the Turks, fell into no less heavy dependence on the Austrians. Taxes have been raised. The Austrians forced their new subjects to accept Catholicism or Uniatism, and the Orthodox population suffered severe religious oppression. All this caused great discontent and the flight of many Serbs and Wallachians to Russia or even to Turkish possessions. At the same time, the Austrian occupation of northern Serbia contributed to some development of commodity-money relations in this area, which later led to the formation of a layer of the rural bourgeoisie.

The next war between Turkey and Austria, which the latter waged in alliance with Russia, ended with the loss of Lesser Wallachia and Northern Serbia by the Habsburgs in the Peace of Belgrade in 1739, however, Serbian lands remained in the Austrian monarchy - Banat, Bačka, Baranya, Srem. During this war, an uprising against the Turks broke out again in Southwestern Serbia, which, however, did not take on a wide character and was quickly suppressed. This unsuccessful war halted Austrian expansion in the Balkans and led to a further decline in the political influence of the Habsburgs among the Balkan peoples.

From the middle of the XVIII century. the leading role in the fight against Turkey passes to Russia. In 1768, Catherine II entered the war with Turkey and, following Peter's policy, appealed to the Balkan peoples to rise up against Turkish domination. The successful military actions of Russia stirred up the Balkan peoples. The appearance of the Russian fleet off the coast of Greece caused in 1770 an uprising in Morea and on the islands of the Aegean Sea. At the expense of Greek merchants, a fleet was created, which, under the leadership of Lambros Katzonis, at one time waged a successful war with the Turks at sea.

A Croatian warrior on the Austro-Turkish border ("border"). Drawing of the middle of the XVIII century.

The entry of Russian troops into Moldavia and Wallachia was enthusiastically received by the population. From Bucharest and Iasi, delegations of boyars and clergy went to St. Petersburg, asking to accept the principalities under Russian protection.

The Kyuchuk-Kainarji peace of 1774 was of great importance for the Balkan peoples. A number of articles of this treaty were devoted to the Christian peoples subject to Turkey and gave Russia the right to protect their interests. The return of the Danubian principalities to Turkey was subject to a number of conditions aimed at improving the situation of their population. Objectively, these articles of the treaty made it easier for the Balkan peoples to fight for their liberation. The further policy of Catherine II in the Eastern Question, regardless of the aggressive goals of tsarism, also contributed to the revival of the national liberation movement of the Balkan peoples and the further expansion of their political and cultural ties with Russia.

The beginning of the national revival of the Balkan peoples

Several centuries of Turkish domination did not lead to the denationalization of the Balkan peoples. Southern Slavs, Greeks, Albanians, Moldavians and Vlachs retained their national languages, culture, folk traditions; under the conditions of a foreign yoke, although slowly, but steadily, elements of an economic community developed.

The first signs of the national revival of the Balkan peoples appeared in the 18th century. They were expressed in the cultural and educational movement, in the revival of interest in their historical past, in the intensified desire to raise public education, improve the system of education in schools, and introduce elements of secular education. The cultural and educational movement began first among the Greeks, the most socio-economically developed people, and then among the Serbs and Bulgarians, Moldavians and Vlachs.

The enlightenment movement had its own characteristics for each Balkan people and did not develop simultaneously. But its social base in all cases was the national trade and craft class.

The difficult conditions for the formation of the national bourgeoisie among the Balkan peoples determined the complexity and inconsistency of the content of national movements. In Greece, for example, where commercial and usurious capital was most powerful and closely connected with the entire Turkish regime and with the activities of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the beginning national movement was accompanied by the emergence of great-power ideas, plans for the revival of the great Greek Empire on the ruins of Turkey and the subjugation of the rest of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula to the Greeks. These ideas found practical expression in the Hellenizing efforts of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Phanariots. At the same time, the ideology of the Greek enlighteners, the development of public education and schooling by the Greeks had a positive impact on other Balkan peoples and accelerated the emergence of similar movements among the Serbs and Bulgarians.

At the head of the enlightenment movement of the Greeks in the XVIII century. scientists, writers and teachers Evgennos Voulgaris (died in 1806) and Nikiforos Theotokis (died in 1800), and later an outstanding public figure, scientist and publicist Adamantios Korais (1748-1833) stood. His works, imbued with love of freedom and patriotism, instilled in his compatriots a love for the motherland, freedom, for the Greek language, in which Korais saw the first and most important instrument of national revival.

Among the southern Slavs, the national enlightenment movement first of all began in the Serbian lands subject to the Habsburgs. With the active support of the Serbian trade and craft class, which had become stronger here, in the second quarter of the 18th century. in Banat, Bačka, Baranya, Srem, schooling, Serbian writing, secular literature, and book printing begin to develop.

The development of enlightenment among the Austrian Serbs at that time took place under strong Russian influence. At the request of the Serbian Metropolitan, in 1726, the Russian teacher Maxim Suvorov arrived in Karlovitsy to organize the school business. Emanuil Kozachinsky, a native of Kyiv, headed the “Latin School” founded in Karlovichi in 1733. Many Russians and Ukrainians taught in other Serbian schools. Serbs also received books and textbooks from Russia. The consequence of Russian cultural influence on the Austrian Serbs was the transition from the Serbian Church Slavonic language used earlier in writing to the Russian Church Slavonic language.

The main representative of this trend was the outstanding Serbian writer and historian Jovan Rajic (1726 - 1801). Under strong Russian influence, the activities of another well-known Serbian writer Zakhary Orfelin (1726 - 1785), who wrote the major work "The Life and Glorious Deeds of Emperor Peter the Great", also developed. The cultural and educational movement among the Austrian Serbs received a new impetus in the second half of the 18th century, when the outstanding writer, scientist and philosopher Dosifey Obradovic (1742-1811) began his work. Obradovic was a supporter of enlightened absolutism. His ideology was formed to a certain extent under the influence of the philosophy of the European enlighteners. At the same time, it had a purely national basis. Obradovic's views subsequently received wide recognition among the trade and craft class and the emerging bourgeois intelligentsia, not only among the Serbs, but also among the Bulgarians.

In 1762, the monk Paisiy Hilendarsky (1722-1798) completed Slavonic-Bulgarian History, a journalistic treatise based on historical data, directed primarily against Greek dominance and the impending denationalization of the Bulgarians. Paisius called for the revival of the Bulgarian language and social thought. Bishop Sofroniy (Stoyko Vladislavov) (1739-1814) was a talented follower of the ideas of Paisius of Hilendarsky.

The outstanding Moldavian educator Dimitri Cantemir (1673 - 1723) wrote a satirical novel "Hieroglyphic History", a philosophical and didactic poem "The dispute of the sage with the sky or the litigation of the soul with the body" and a number of historical works. The development of the culture of the Moldavian people was also greatly influenced by the prominent historian and linguist Enakits Vekerescu (c. 1740 - c. 1800).

The national revival of the Balkan peoples took on a wider scope at the beginning of the next century.

3. Arab countries under Turkish rule

The decline of the Ottoman Empire was reflected in the position of the Arab countries that were part of it. During the period under review, the power of the Turkish Sultan in North Africa, including Egypt, was largely nominal. In Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, it was sharply weakened by popular uprisings and rebellions of local feudal lords. In Arabia, a broad religious and political movement arose - Wahhabism, which set as its goal the complete expulsion of the Turks from the Arabian Peninsula.

Egypt

In the XVII-XVIII centuries. some new phenomena are observed in the economic development of Egypt. Peasant farming is increasingly being drawn into market ties. In a number of areas, especially in the Nile Delta, the rent-tax takes the form of money. Foreign travelers of the late 18th century. describe a lively trade in the urban markets of Egypt, where the peasants delivered grain, vegetables, livestock, wool, cheese, butter, homemade yarn and bought fabrics, clothes, utensils, and metal products in return. Trade was also carried out directly in the village markets. Significant development was achieved by trade relations between different regions of the country. According to contemporaries, in the middle of the XVIII century. from the southern regions of Egypt, down the Nile, to Cairo and into the delta region, there were ships with grain, sugar, beans, linen fabrics and linseed oil; in the opposite direction were goods of cloth, soap, rice, iron, copper, lead, salt.

Foreign trade relations have also grown significantly. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. Egypt exported cotton and linen fabrics, leather, sugar, ammonia, as well as rice and wheat to European countries. Lively trade was conducted with neighboring countries - Syria, Arabia, Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), Sudan, Darfur. A significant part of the transit trade with India passed through Egypt. At the end of the XVIII century. in Cairo alone, 5,000 merchants were engaged in foreign trade.

In the XVIII century. in a number of industries, especially in industries working for export, the transition to manufacture began. Manufactories were founded in Cairo, Mahalla Kubra, Rosetta, Kus, Kina and other cities, producing silk, cotton and linen fabrics. Each of these manufactories employed hundreds of wage laborers; on the largest of them - in Mahalla-Kubra, from 800 to 1000 people were constantly employed. Wage labor was used in oil mills, sugar and other factories. Sometimes feudal lords, in company with sugar refiners, founded enterprises on their estates. Often the owners of manufactories, large craft workshops and shops were representatives of the higher clergy, the rulers of vaqfs.

The technique of production was still primitive, but the division of labor within manufactories contributed to an increase in its productivity and a significant increase in output.

By the end of the XVIII century. in Cairo, there were 15 thousand hired workers and 25 thousand artisans. Wage labor began to be used in agriculture: thousands of peasants were hired for field work in neighboring large estates.

However, under the conditions then existing in Egypt, the germs of capitalist relations could not develop significantly. As in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, the property of merchants, owners of manufactories and workshops was not protected from the encroachments of pashas and beys. Excessive taxes, requisitions, indemnities, extortion ruined merchants and artisans. The regime of capitulations ousted local merchants from more profitable branches of trade, ensuring the monopoly of European merchants and their agents. In addition, as a result of the systematic robbery of the peasantry domestic market was extremely unstable and narrow.

Along with the development of trade, the feudal exploitation of the peasantry grew steadily. New ones were constantly added to the old taxes. The multazims (landlords) levied taxes on the fellahs (peasants) to pay tribute to the Porte, taxes on the maintenance of the army, provincial authorities, village administration and religious institutions, fees for their own needs, as well as many other fees, sometimes levied without any reason. List of taxes collected from the peasants of one of the Egyptian villages, published by the French explorer of the XVIII century. Estev, contained over 70 titles. In addition to taxes established by law, all sorts of additional fees based on custom were widely used. “It is enough that the amount is collected 2-3 years in a row,” Estev wrote, “so that it is then demanded on the basis of customary law.”

Feudal oppression increasingly provoked uprisings against Mamluk domination. In the middle of the XVIII century. the Mamluk feudal lords were expelled from Upper Egypt by the Bedouins, whose uprising was suppressed only by 1769. Soon a large uprising of the fellahs broke out in the Tanta district (1778), also suppressed by the Mamluks.

The Mamluks still firmly held power in their hands. Although formally they were vassals of the Porte, the power of the Turkish pashas sent from Istanbul was illusory. In 1769, during the Russian-Turkish war, the Mamluk ruler Ali Bey proclaimed the independence of Egypt. Having received some support from the commander of the Russian fleet in the Aegean Sea, A. Orlov, he initially successfully resisted the Turkish troops, but then the uprising was crushed, and he himself was killed. Nevertheless, the power of the Mamluk feudal lords did not weaken; the place of the deceased Ali Bey was taken by the leaders of another Mamluk group hostile to him. Only at the beginning of the XIX century. Mamluk power was overthrown.

Syria and Lebanon

Sources of the XVII-XVIII centuries. contain scant information about the economic development of Syria and Lebanon. There are no data on internal trade, on manufactories, on the use of hired labor. More or less accurate information is available on growth in the period under review. foreign trade, the emergence of new trade and craft centers, strengthening the specialization of areas. There is also no doubt that in Syria and Lebanon, as in Egypt, the scale of feudal exploitation increased, the struggle within the feudal class intensified, and the liberation struggle of the masses against foreign oppression grew.

In the second half of the 17th and early 18th centuries of great importance was the struggle between the two groups of Arab feudal lords - the Kaisites (or "Reds", as they called themselves) and the Yemenites (or "Whites"). The first of these groups, led by emirs from the Maan clan, opposed Turkish domination and therefore enjoyed the support of the Lebanese peasants; this was her strength. The second group, headed by emirs from the Alam-ad-din clan, served the Turkish authorities and, with their help, fought against their rivals.

After the suppression of the uprising of Fakhr-ad-Din II and his execution (1635), the Port handed over the Sultan's firman to rule Lebanon to the leader of the Yemenites, Emir Alam-ad-Din, but soon the Turkish protege was overthrown by a new popular uprising. The rebels elected the nephew of Fakhr-ad-din II, Emir Mel-hem Maan, as the ruler of Lebanon, and Porta was forced to approve this choice. However, she did not give up trying to remove the Qaysites from power and put her supporters at the head of the Lebanese principality.

In 1660, the troops of Damascus Pasha Ahmed Koprulu (son of the Grand Vizier) invaded Lebanon. According to the Arabic chronicle, the pretext for this military expedition was the fact that the vassals and allies of the Maans - the emirs of Shihaba "incited the Damascus against the pasha." Acting together with the Yemenite militias, Turkish troops occupied and burned a number of mountainous villages in Lebanon, including the capital of the Maans - Dayr al-Qamar and the residences of the Shihabs - Rashaya (Rashaya) and Hasbeya (Hasbaya). The Kaysite emirs were forced to retreat with their squads to the mountains. But popular support eventually ensured their victory over the Turks and Yemenites. In 1667, the Kaisit group returned to power.

In 1671, a new clash between the Kaisites and the troops of the Damascus Pasha led to the occupation and sack of Rashaya by the Turks. But in the end, the victory again remained with the Lebanese. Other attempts by the Turkish authorities to put at the head of Lebanon emirs from the Alam-ad-din clan, undertaken in the last quarter of the 17th century, were also unsuccessful.

In 1710, the Turks, together with the Yemenites, again attacked Lebanon. Having overthrown the Kaysite emir Haidar from the Shihab clan (the emir throne passed to this clan in 1697, after the death of the last emir from the Maan clan), they turned Lebanon into an ordinary Turkish pashalik. However, already in the next 1711, in the battle of Ain Dar, the troops of the Turks and Yemenites were defeated by the Qaysits. Most of the Yemenites, including the entire family of Alam-ad-din emirs, died in this battle. The victory of the Kaysites was so impressive that the Turkish authorities had to abandon the organization of the Lebanese pashalik; for a long time they refrained from interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon.

The victory at Ain Dar was won by the Lebanese peasants, but this did not lead to an improvement in their situation. Emir Haidar limited himself to taking away the destinies (mukataa) from the Yemenite feudal lords and distributing them among his supporters.

From the middle of the XVIII century. The feudal principality of Safad in northern Palestine became the center of the struggle against Turkish rule. Its ruler, the son of one of the Kaysites, Sheikh Dagir, gradually rounding off the possessions received by his father from the Lebanese emir, extended his power to the whole of Northern Palestine and a number of regions of Lebanon. Around 1750, he acquired a small seaside village - Akku. According to the testimony of the Russian officer Pleshcheev, who visited Akka in 1772, by that time it had become a major center of maritime trade and handicraft production. Many merchants and artisans from Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus and other parts of the Ottoman Empire settled in Akka. Although Dagir levied significant taxes on them and applied the system of monopolies and farming, common in the Ottoman Empire, the conditions for the development of trade and crafts were apparently somewhat better here than in other cities: feudal taxes were strictly fixed, and the life and property of the merchant and artisan were protected from arbitrariness. In Akka were the ruins of a fortress built by the crusaders. Dagir restored this fortress, created his own army and navy.

The actual independence and growing wealth of the new Arab principality aroused the discontent and greed of the neighboring Turkish authorities. Since 1765, Dagir had to defend himself against three Turkish pashas - Damascus, Tripoli and Said. At first, the struggle was reduced to episodic clashes, but in 1769, after the start of the Russian-Turkish war, Dagir led an Arab popular uprising against Turkish oppression. He entered into an alliance with the Mamluk ruler of Egypt, Ali Bey. The allies took Damascus, Beirut, Said (Sidon), laid siege to Jaffa. Russia provided significant assistance to the rebellious Arabs. Russian warships cruised along the Lebanese coast, bombarded Beirut during the assault on its fortress by the Arabs, and delivered guns, shells and other weapons to the Arab rebels.

In 1775, a year after the end of the Russian-Turkish war, Dagir was besieged in Akka and soon killed, and his principality fell apart. Akka became the residence of the Turkish pasha Ahmed, nicknamed Jazzar ("The Butcher"). But the struggle of the popular masses of Syria and Lebanon against Turkish oppression continued.

During the last quarter of the XVIII century. Jazzar continuously increased tribute from the Arab regions subject to him. So, the tribute levied from Lebanon increased from 150 thousand piastres in 1776 to 600 thousand piastres in 1790. To pay it, a number of new fees, previously unknown to Lebanon, were introduced - a poll tax, taxes on sericulture, on mills etc. The Turkish authorities again began to openly interfere in the internal affairs of Lebanon, their troops, sent to collect tribute, plundered and burned the villages, exterminated the inhabitants. All this caused continuous uprisings, weakening the power of Turkey over the Arab lands.

Iraq

In terms of economic development, Iraq lagged behind Egypt and Syria. Of the formerly numerous cities in Iraq, only Baghdad and Basra retained to a certain extent the importance of large handicraft centers; woolen fabrics, carpets, leather products were made here. But through the country there was transit trade between Europe and Asia, which brought significant income, and this circumstance, as well as the struggle for the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf located in Iraq, made Iraq the object of a sharp Turkish-Iranian struggle. Transit trade attracted English merchants to the country, who in the 17th century. founded the trading post of the East India Company in Basra, and in the XVIII century. - in Baghdad.

The Turkish conquerors divided Iraq into two pashaliks (eyalets): Mosul and Baghdad. In the Mosul pashalik, populated mainly by Kurds, there was a military system. The Kurds - both nomads and settled farmers - still retained the features of tribal life, the division into ashirets (clans). But their communal lands and most of the livestock have long been the property of the leaders, and the leaders themselves - khans, beks and sheikhs - turned into feudal lords who enslaved their fellow tribesmen.

However, the power of the Porte over the Kurdish feudal lords was very fragile, which was explained by the crisis of the military system that was observed in the XVII-XVIII centuries. throughout the Ottoman Empire. Using the Turkish-Iranian rivalry, the Kurdish feudal lords often shied away from their military duties, and sometimes openly sided with the Iranian Shah against the Turkish Sultan or maneuvered between the Sultan and the Shah in order to achieve greater independence. In turn, the Turkish pashas, ​​seeking to strengthen their power, kindled enmity between the Kurds and their Arab neighbors and Christian minorities and encouraged strife among the Kurdish feudal lords.

In the Baghdad pashalik, inhabited by Arabs, in 1651 a tribal uprising broke out, led by the feudal family of Siyab. It led to the expulsion of the Turks from the district of Basra. Only in 1669, after repeated military expeditions, did the Turks manage to re-install their pasha in Basra. But already in 1690, the Arab tribes settled in the Euphrates valley, united in the Muntafik union, rebelled. The rebels occupied Basra and for a number of years waged a successful war against the Turks.

Appointed at the beginning of the XVIII century. As the ruler of Baghdad, Hasan Pasha fought for 20 years against the Arab agricultural and Bedouin tribes of southern Iraq. He concentrated in his hands power over all of Iraq, including Kurdistan, and secured it to his "dynasty": throughout the 18th century. the country was ruled by pashas from among his descendants or his külemens ( Külemen - a white slave (usually of Caucasian origin), a soldier in a mercenary army made up of slaves, the same as the Mamluk in Egypt.). Hassan Pasha created a government and a court in Baghdad according to the Istanbul model, acquired his own army, formed from Janissaries and Kulemens. He was related to the Arab sheikhs, gave them ranks and gifts, took away lands from some tribes and endowed them with others, kindled enmity and civil strife. But even with these maneuvers, he failed to make his power stable: it was weakened by the almost continuous uprisings of the Arab tribes, especially the muntafiks, who most vigorously defended their freedom.

A new big wave of popular uprisings broke out in southern Iraq at the end of the 18th century. in connection with the intensification of feudal exploitation and a sharp increase in the amount of tribute. The uprisings were crushed by Suleiman Pasha of Baghdad, but they dealt a serious blow to Turkish dominance in Iraq.

Arabia. Rise of Wahhabism

On the Arabian Peninsula, the power of the Turkish conquerors was never strong. In 1633, as a result of popular uprisings, the Turks were forced to leave Yemen, which became an independent feudal state. But they stubbornly held out in the Hijaz: the Turkish sultans attached exceptional importance to their nominal dominance over the holy cities of Islam - Mecca and Medina, which served as the basis for their claims to spiritual power over all "orthodox" Muslims. In addition, during the Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage) season, these cities turned into grandiose fairs, centers of lively trade, which brought significant income to the Sultan's treasury. Therefore, the Porte not only did not impose tribute on the Hijaz, but, on the contrary, obliged the pashas of the neighboring Arab countries - Egypt and Syria - to annually send gifts to Mecca for the local spiritual nobility and give generous subsidies to the leaders of the Hijaz tribes, through whose territory the caravans of pilgrims passed. For the same reason, the real power within the Hijaz was left to the Meccan spiritual feudal lords - sheriffs, who had long enjoyed influence over the townspeople and nomadic tribes. The Turkish pasha of Hijaz was not in fact the ruler of the country, but the representative of the Sultan to the sheriff.

In Eastern Arabia in the 17th century, after the expulsion of the Portuguese from there, an independent state arose in Oman. Arab merchants of Oman possessed a significant fleet and, like European merchants, were engaged in piracy along with trade. At the end of the XVII century. they took the island of Zanzibar and the African coast adjacent to it from the Portuguese, and at the beginning of the 18th century. expelled the Iranians from the Bahrain Islands (later, in 1753, the Iranians regained Bahrain). In 1737, under Nadir Shah, the Iranians tried to seize Oman, but a popular uprising that broke out in 1741 ended in their expulsion. The leader of the uprising, the Muscat merchant Ahmed ibn Said, was proclaimed the hereditary imam of Oman. Its capitals were Rastak - a fortress in the inner mountainous part of the country, and Muscat - a trading center on the sea coast. During this period, Oman pursued an independent policy, successfully resisting the penetration of European merchants - the British and French, who tried in vain to obtain permission to set up their trading posts in Muscat.

The coast of the Persian Gulf to the northwest of Oman was inhabited by independent Arab tribes - Javas, Atban, etc., who were engaged in sea crafts, mainly pearl fishing, as well as trade and piracy. In the XVIII century. Atbans built the fortress of Kuwait, which became a significant shopping mall and the capital of the principality of the same name. In 1783, one of the divisions of this tribe occupied the Bahrain Islands, which after that also became an independent Arab principality. Small principalities were also founded on the Qatar peninsula and at various points on the so-called Pirate Coast (present-day Trucial Oman).

The inner part of the Arabian Peninsula - Nejd - was in the XVII-XVIII centuries. almost completely isolated from the outside world. Even the Arab chronicles of that time, compiled in neighboring countries, remain silent about the events that took place in Nejd and, apparently, remained unknown to their authors. Meanwhile, it was in Nejd that arose in the middle of the 18th century. movement, which subsequently played a major role in the history of the entire Arab East.

The real political goal of this movement was to unite the disparate small feudal principalities and independent tribes of Arabia into single state. Constant strife between tribes over pastures, nomadic raids on the settled population of oases and on merchant caravans, feudal strife was accompanied by the destruction of irrigation facilities, the destruction of gardens and groves, theft of herds, the ruin of peasants, merchants and a significant part of the Bedouins. Only the unification of Arabia could stop these endless wars and ensure the rise of agriculture and trade.

The call for the unity of Arabia was clothed in the form of a religious doctrine, which received the name of Wahhabism after its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. This teaching, preserving the entire dogma of Islam, emphasized the principle of monotheism, severely condemned local and tribal cults of saints, remnants of fetishism, corruption of morals, and demanded the return of Islam to its "original purity." To a large extent, it was directed against the "apostates from Islam" - the Turkish conquerors who captured the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries.

Similar religious teachings arose among Muslims before. In Najd itself, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab had predecessors. However, his activities went far beyond religious preaching. From the middle of the XVIII century. Wahhabism was recognized as the official religion of the principality of Dareya, whose emirs Muhammad ibn Saud (1747-1765) and his son Abd al-Aziz (1765-1803), relying on the union of Wahhabi tribes, demanded from other tribes and principalities of Najd under the threat of a "holy war and the death of accepting the Wahhabi creed and joining the Saudi state.

For 40 years, there were continuous wars in the country. Principalities and tribes, forcibly annexed by the Wahhabis, more than once raised uprisings and renounced the new faith, but these uprisings were severely suppressed.

The struggle for the unification of Arabia stemmed not only from the objective needs of economic development. The accession of new territories increased the income and power of the Saudi dynasty, and military booty enriched the "fighters for a just cause", and the share of the emir accounted for one fifth of it.

By the end of the 80s of the XVIII century. all of Najd was united under the rule of the Wahhabi feudal nobility, headed by the emir Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud. However, government in this state was not centralized. Power over individual tribes remained in the hands of the former feudal leaders, provided that they recognized themselves as vassals of the emir and received Wahhabi preachers.

Subsequently, the Wahhabis went beyond the borders of Inner Arabia to spread their power and faith in other Arab countries. At the very end of the XVIII century. they launched the first raids on the Hijaz and Iraq, which opened the way for the further rise of the Wahhabi state.

Arab culture in the XVII-XVIII centuries.

The Turkish conquest led to the decline of Arab culture, which continued during the 17th-18th centuries. Science during this period developed very poorly. Philosophers, historians, geographers, and jurists mostly expounded and rewrote the works of medieval authors. At the level of the Middle Ages, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics froze. Experimental methods for studying nature were not known. Religious motifs predominated in poetry. Mystical dervish literature was widely distributed.

In Western bourgeois historiography, the decline of Arab culture is usually attributed to the dominance of Islam. In fact, the main reason for the decline was the extremely slow pace of socio-economic development and Turkish oppression. As for Islamic dogma, which undoubtedly played a negative role, the Christian dogmas professed in a number of Arab countries had no less reactionary influence. The religious disunity of the Arabs, divided into a number of religious groups - especially in Syria and Lebanon, led to cultural disunity. Every cultural movement has inevitably taken on a religious imprint. In the 17th century a college for Lebanese Arabs was founded in Rome, but it was entirely in the hands of the Maronite clergy (Maronites are Christian Arabs who recognize the spiritual authority of the pope) and its influence was limited to a narrow circle of the Maronite intelligentsia. The same religious character, limited by the framework of Maronite propaganda, was carried out by the educational activities of the Maronite Bishop Herman Farhat, who founded the Maronite Bishop at the beginning of the 18th century. the library in Aleppo (Haleb); the Maronite school, founded in the 18th century, was distinguished by the same features. at the monastery of Ain Barka (Lebanon), and an Arabic printing house founded at this monastery. Theology was the main subject of study at the school; The printing house printed only religious books.

In the 17th century Patriarch Macarius of Antioch and his son Paul of Aleppo made a trip to Russia and Georgia. The descriptions of this journey, compiled by Paul of Aleppo, can be compared in terms of the brightness of observations and the artistry of style with the best monuments of classical Arabic geographical literature. But these works were known only in a narrow circle of Orthodox Arabs, mainly among the clergy.

At the beginning of the XVIII century. The first printing house was founded in Istanbul. In Arabic, she printed only Muslim religious books - the Koran, hadiths, commentaries, etc. The cultural center of Muslim Arabs was still the al-Azhar Theological University in Cairo.

However, even during this period, historical and geographical works appeared containing original material. In the 17th century the historian al-Makkari created an interesting work on the history of Andalusia; the Damascus judge Ibn Khallikan compiled an extensive collection of biographies; in the 18th century the chronicle of the Shikhabs was written - the most important source on the history of Lebanon during this period. Other chronicles were created on the history of the Arab countries in the 17th-18th centuries, as well as descriptions of travels to Mecca, Istanbul and other places.

The centuries-old art of Arab folk craftsmen continued to manifest itself in remarkable architectural monuments and in handicrafts. This is evidenced by the Azma Palace in Damascus, built in the 18th century, the remarkable architectural ensembles of the Moroccan capital Meknes, erected at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, many monuments in Cairo, Tunisia, Tlemcen, Aleppo and other Arab cultural centers.

The lands of the Ottoman Empire, every inch of which was conquered by the sword, stretched across three continents. The possessions of the Sultan were more extensive than those of the emperors of ancient Rome.

They covered all of southeastern Europe and the coast of North Africa to the borders of Morocco; they came close to the shores of the Caspian, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf; The Black Sea was an internal "Turkish lake". Sitting in Constantinople, the sultan ruled great cities so distant from each other and so dissimilar as Algiers, Cairo, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Athens and Belgrade. More than two dozen modern states fit in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. These endless expanses contained mountains, and deserts, and rivers, and fertile valleys; about 25 million people lived here - a huge figure for those times, almost twice the population of any European state or empire, except France. The Ottoman Empire was Muslim - in the middle of its possessions, in the heart of Arabia, lay the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Turkish sultan, who is also the caliph - the ruler of the faithful, was obliged to keep and protect the shrines of Islam. The Ottoman Turks constituted the dominant group of the Muslim population of the empire; Arabs, Kurds, Crimean Tatars, peoples of the Caucasus, Bosnians and Albanians also lived here. In addition, millions of Christians were subject to the sultan - Greeks, Serbs, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Moldavians and others.

Needless to say, the political ties that united these multilingual peoples, adherents of different religions, were weak and unreliable. The sultan was in Constantinople, and in the localities the power was represented by a motley flock of pashas, ​​princes, governors, beys, khans and emirs, some of whom were only nominally subordinate to the sultan. For example, the Christian princes of the wealthy provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia were appointed by the sultan himself, but in fact they ruled autonomously and all their duties to the central government were limited only to the annual payment of tribute. Every year wagons loaded with tribute in gold and other coins arrived from the north to the High Port in Constantinople. The power of the Crimean Khan over the peninsula was absolute, and only when the Sultan called him to war, he left his capital, Bakhchisarai, and appeared under the banner of his overlord at the head 20 000-30 000 riders. 1,200 miles to the west lay the Berber states of Tripoli, Tunisia, and Algeria. In wartime, they served their Ottoman overlord by directing fast corsair ships - which in normal times profitably traded in piracy, robbing everyone indiscriminately - against the fleets of Venice and Genoa, powerful Christian maritime powers.

In the XVI century, under Sultan Suleiman the Legislator, or, as the Europeans called him, Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), the Ottoman Empire reached its peak. It was the golden age of Constantinople * - huge wealth flowed into the city, majestic mosques were built here, and beautiful country palaces were built along the shores of the Bosphorus and the Sea of ​​​​Marmara.

Suleiman himself patronized literature, arts and sciences; he was fond of music, poetry and philosophy. But above all, he was a warrior. The Ottoman armies moved north along the great military road that led to Belgrade, Buda, and finally to Vienna, and where they passed, among the Balkan mountains and valleys, mosques and minarets grew. The Christian monarchies of the West, outraged by these obvious symbols of Islamic occupation, looked at the Turks as the oppressors of the Greeks and other Christian peoples of the East. However, the Ottoman Empire, more generous in this respect than most European states, was tolerant of the Gentiles. The Sultan officially recognized the Greek Church and confirmed the jurisdiction of its patriarch and archbishops, and Orthodox monasteries kept their property. The Turks preferred to govern through pre-existing local power structures, so that the Christian provinces were allowed, subject to the payment of tribute, to maintain their own system of government and class hierarchy.

It is curious that the Ottoman Turks rendered the "highest honor" to their Christian subjects: officials of the central imperial administration were recruited from their number and special regiments of the Sultan's guard - Janissaries * were formed.

Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were denied access to administrative and military careers. Therefore, a Christian could rise through the ranks only by converting to Islam - as described below.

In the subjugated Balkan provinces, the conversion to Islam opened the road to success for capable Christian youths. They were sent - at first by force - to Muslim schools, where they received a harsh upbringing aimed at eradicating all memory of their mother, father, brothers and sisters, destroying the slightest traces of Christianity in their souls. They were brought up in selfless loyalty to the Koran and the Sultan and joined the ranks of his fearless followers, ready to perform any service. The most gifted got to the court or for training in state institutions and could rise to the heights of power. This path was passed by many prominent people, and often the mighty Ottoman Empire was ruled by those who were born in Christianity.

Turkish Janissaries

But most of the young people entered the Janissary Guards regiments. All their lives, from childhood, they lived in the barracks - they were forbidden to marry and start a family, so that their devotion to the Sultan remained undivided. In his position, the Janissary was no different from a slave; the barracks was his home, Islam his faith, the sultan his master, and war his service. In the early centuries of the empire, the Janissaries resembled an order of fanatical warrior monks who took a vow to fight the enemies of Allah and the Sultan. In the Ottoman army, they formed a steel corps of superbly trained, reliable infantry, and there were no troops in all of Europe equal to the Janissaries until the new French army of Louis XIV appeared.

The detachment of the Janissaries was a picturesque sight. They wore red caps embroidered with gold, white shirts, puffy trousers and yellow boots. The Janissaries of the personal guard of the Sultan were distinguished by red boots. IN Peaceful time they were armed only with a curved saber, but, going into battle, the Janissaries could choose weapons to their taste - a spear, sword, arquebus or, later, a musket.

In the XIV century there were 12,000 Janissaries, and in 1653 there were 51,647 of them. Over time, Janissaries of respectable age were allowed to retire and start a family. Both Muslim and Christian families dreamed of having their sons enrolled in the corps, and in the end, the circle of those to whom this privilege extended was limited to the sons and relatives of former Janissaries. Janissaries have become a hereditary caste of free people. In peacetime, they, like the archers, were engaged in crafts and trade. Gradually, like the guards in many other countries, they became more dangerous for their own masters than for their enemies. Grand viziers and even sultans came to power and were overthrown at the whim of the Janissaries, until the corps was disbanded in 1826.

From the sea, ancient Constantinople seemed boundless blooming garden. Above blue waters Bosphorus and the Sea of ​​Marmara, above the dark green of cypresses and flowering fruit trees rose the domes and minarets of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And today Istanbul is full of life, but it is no longer the capital. The government of the Republic of Turkey has moved to the austere modern cleanliness of Ankara in the middle of the Anatolian Plateau. In the 17th century, Constantinople was the capital of the Muslim world, the military, administrative, commercial and cultural center of the mighty Ottoman Empire. Its population reached 700,000 - there were no such number of inhabitants in any European city, just as there were no such number of various races and religions. Majestic buildings of mosques, madrasas, libraries, hospitals and public baths were seen everywhere. The bazaars and marinas were heaped with goods from all over the world. The parks and gardens were fragrant with flowers and fruit trees. In the spring, rose hips bloomed, and nightingales overflowed in dense thickets of hedges.

Where the Golden Horn Bay separates the Bosporus and the Sea of ​​Marmara, Topkapi Saray, the Sultan's palace, or rather the palace complex, rose above the city. Here, behind high walls, countless mansions, barracks, kitchens, mosques, gardens with babbling fountains, and long avenues of cypress lined with roses and tulips* were hidden.

It was the center of the political and administrative life of the empire, here, as in the Moscow Kremlin, all central state institutions were concentrated, all state affairs were decided. There were three parts in Topkapi - three courtyards. The first courtyard housed the financial administration, the archive, the mint, and the arsenal. The second housed the Divan - an advisory council under the sultan, as well as the sultan's office and the state treasury. The third courtyard was the residence of the Sultan, his harem and treasury. The grand vizier lived near Topkapi, and the barracks of the Janissary corps numbering up to 12 thousand people were also located.

A city within a city that existed solely for the pleasure of one person, the palace was incredibly expensive for the subjects of the Sultan. Every year ships sailed here from all the provinces of the empire and wagons loaded with rice, sugar, peas, lentils, peppers, coffee, almonds, dates, saffron, honey, salt, plums in lemon juice, vinegar, watermelons. Once they even brought 780 carts of snow. Inside this city, 5,000 people served the Sultan. The chief keeper of the tablecloth was in charge of the Sultan's table, who was assisted by the elder over the tray carriers, fruit, pickles and marinades, sherbet, the foreman of the coffee makers and the water dispenser (Muslim sultans were teetotalers). There was also a senior turban winder with a staff of assistants, a custodian of the Sultan's dress, heads of washers and bath attendants. The staff of the senior barber included a manicurist, who every Thursday tidied up the nails of the Sultan. In addition, there were pipe lighters, door openers, musicians, gardeners, grooms, and a whole army of dwarfs and deaf-mutes - the latter used by the Sultan as messengers, but they were especially indispensable as servants when strict confidentiality was required.

polygamy

But this palace itself, carefully hidden from the eyes of its subjects, served only as an outer shell of the inner, even more closely guarded private world - the harem. The Arabic word "haram" means "forbidden", and the Sultan's harem was forbidden to everyone except the Sultan himself, his guests, the inhabitants of the harem and the eunuchs - their guards. From the palace it was possible to get there only through a single passage, which was blocked by four doors, two iron and two bronze. Each door was guarded day and night by eunuchs who were entrusted with a single set of keys. This passage led to an intricate labyrinth of luxurious chambers, corridors, stairs, secret doors, courtyards, gardens and pools. Many rooms were adjoined on all sides by other rooms, and therefore the light seeped into them from above, through stained-glass windows in glazed domes and roofs. The walls and ceilings of the Sultan's chambers were covered with intricate patterns of blue and green Nicene tiles. The floors were covered with bright carpets, here and there were low sofas on which the inhabitants could sit cross-legged "Turkish" - sip strong coffee or eat fruit. In those rooms where the Sultan liked to talk face to face with his adviser, there were fountains that, with their murmur, did not allow curious ears to hear what was being said.

The harem was a closed world of veils, gossip, intrigues and, whenever the Sultan wished, bodily pleasures. But it was also a world subject to strict rules of protocol and chain of command. Before Suleiman the Magnificent, sultans officially married; Islam allowed them to have four wives. But Suleiman's wife, a red-haired Slav named Roksolana, interfered in state affairs with such perseverance that since then the Ottoman sultans stopped marrying and the sultan's mother became the ruler of the harem. The Turks believed that “under the feet of the mother lies the sky” and that no matter how many wives and concubines you have, you have only one mother and no one in the world can replace her. Sometimes, if the sultan was too young or weak in character, his mother herself gave orders on his behalf to the grand vizier. The place after the mother of the sultan was occupied by the mother of the heir to the throne, if there was one, and after her - other women who gave birth to sons from the sultan, and only then all the other odalisques, or concubines. All these women, at least formally, were slaves, and since it was not supposed to enslave a Muslim woman, therefore, the entire harem was made up of foreign women - Russians, Circassians, Venetians, Greeks. From the end of the 16th century, most women entered the harem from the Caucasus - the inhabitants of these places were famous for their beauty. Once having crossed the threshold of the harem, the woman remained in it forever. There could be no exceptions. Once in the harem, usually at the age of ten or eleven, the girl diligently learned the science of seduction from experienced mentors. Having completed the full course, the girl waited with hope for the moment of preliminary approval, when the sultan threw a scarf at her feet, and she became “gozde” (“seen”). Not every “gezde” waited for a happy moment when she was called to the Sultan and she turned into an “ikbal” (“who had been on the bed”), but those who were lucky received their own chambers, servants, jewelry, outfits and monetary support. And since the women of the harem were completely dependent on how pleased the Sultan was with them, they all longed to get into his bed, and once there, they tried their best to please him. They were so zealous that several sultans, fed up with endless days and nights of passion with these hordes of passionate, adoring women, simply went crazy. Not a single man was allowed to penetrate into this secluded female world, except for the Sultan. Eunuchs stood guard over the harem. At first, the eunuchs were white - they were mostly taken out from the Caucasus, as well as women for the harem. But to early XVII for centuries, all two hundred eunuchs guarding the harem were blacks. Usually they were bought as children when the annual caravan with slaves came from the upper Nile, and along the way, near Aswan, they were castrated. It is curious that, since this is prohibited by Islam, the operation was carried out by the Copts, a Christian sect living in the area. The crippled boys were then presented to the Sultan as a gift from his deputies and governors of Lower Egypt.

Theoretically, eunuchs were slaves and servants of slaves - the inhabitants of the harem. But often they acquired great power due to their proximity to the Sultan. In the incessant circulation of palace intrigues, women, in alliance with eunuchs, could seriously influence the ebb and flow of the Sultan's favors, and the distribution of posts. Over time, the chiefs of black eunuchs, who had the title of "kyzlar agasy" - "lord of the girls", or "aga of the House of Bliss", often began to play a large role in public affairs, turning into a thunderstorm of the entire palace, and sometimes occupied the third place in the imperial hierarchy after the sultan and the grand vizier. Aga black eunuchs has always been surrounded by magnificent luxury, had many privileges and a large staff of servants, which included several of his own concubines, whose functions, it must be admitted, are hard to imagine.

In the harem, as in the whole empire, the Sultan was looked upon as a demigod. No woman was allowed to come to him without being summoned. When he approached, everyone was supposed to quickly hide. One of the sultans, in order to announce his approach, wore shoes with silver soles that rang on the stone slabs of the passages. When preparing to bathe, the sultan first went to the dressing room, where young slave girls took off his clothes; then to the massage room, where his body was anointed with oils; then to a bath with a marble bath, fountains of hot and cold water and golden taps: here, if he wished, he was washed - usually this duty was assigned to rather old women; finally, he was dressed and smeared with incense - again young women. When the Sultan wanted to have fun, he went to the reception hall - a chamber in blue tiles, covered with crimson carpets. There he sat on the throne, his mother, sisters and daughters sat on the sofas, and the concubines - on cushions on the floor, at the feet of the Sultan. If dancing dancers were arranged, they could call on court musicians, but in this case they were carefully blindfolded to protect the harem from male gazes. Later, a balcony was built over the hall for the musicians, with a side so high that curious glances could not penetrate it, but the music was clearly audible.

In this hall, the Sultan sometimes received foreign ambassadors, sitting on a marble throne in a long brocade robe with sable trim and a white turban, decorated with a black and white plume and a giant emerald. He usually turned in profile so that not a single infidel would dare to look directly into the face of the Sultan - the earthly Shadow of Allah. As long as the Ottoman Empire existed, it always remained a conquering state. All power was in the hands of the Sultan. If the sultan was a strong and gifted man, the empire prospered. If he was weak, the empire began to crumble. It is not surprising that from a harem life among ardent women and eunuchs indulging any whim, the breed that came from victorious conquerors almost completely degenerated. Another circumstance, acting gradually over the long history of the Ottoman Empire, led to a deterioration in the personal qualities of the sultans. It began, oddly enough, with an act of mercy. Until the 16th century, there was an Ottoman tradition, according to which one of the numerous Sultan's sons who came to power immediately ordered all his brothers to be strangled so that not one could encroach on the throne. Sultan Murad III, who ruled from 1574 to 1595, produced more than a hundred children, twenty of whom survived him. The elder, having ascended the throne under the name of Mehmet III, destroyed nineteen of his brothers, and in addition, in an effort to get rid of possible rivals, he killed seven pregnant concubines of his father. However, in 1603, the new sultan, Ahmed I, ended this nightmarish custom by refusing to strangle the brothers. Instead, in order to neutralize them, he walled everyone up in a special pavilion, the so-called "cage", where they lived, deprived of any connection with the outside world. Since then, all the Ottoman princes spent their days idle there, surrounded by eunuchs and concubines, who, in order to avoid the appearance of offspring, were incapable of childbearing due to their age. If, nevertheless, due to an oversight, a child was born, then he was killed so as not to complicate the genealogical tree of the ruling family. Therefore, if the sultan died (or was dismissed) without leaving a son, then his brother was called from the “cage” and declared the new earthly Shadow of Allah. Among this collection of ignorant, relaxed princes of the blood, the Janissaries and Grand Viziers could rarely find a man with sufficient mental development and political maturity to rule the empire.

At all times, but especially when the Sultan was weak, in fact the Grand Vizier ruled the Ottoman Empire on his behalf. From an imposing building erected in 1654 next to the palace and known to Europeans as the High Port, the grand vizier oversaw the administration and army of the empire - he controlled everything except the Sultan's palace. Officially, the Grand Vizier was considered a servant of the Sultan. Assuming office, he accepted a ring with a seal from the Sultan's hands; the signal for his resignation was the demand to return state seal. In fact, the grand vizier was the true ruler of the empire. In the days of peace, he was the head of the executive and judiciary. During the war, he acted as the commander-in-chief of the army, and with him were the Janissary agha and the kapudan pasha, that is, the admiral. He led the meetings of his council - the Divan - in a large vaulted hall, the walls of which were decorated with mosaics, arabesques, blue and gold draperies. Here sat on benches that ran in a circle along the walls, the highest officials of the empire, and the colors of their fur-trimmed robes with wide sleeves - green, purple, silver, blue, yellow - meant their rank. In the middle sat the grand vizier himself in a white satin outfit and a turban with a gold border.

The position of grand vizier gave great power - it happened that grand viziers overthrew sultans - but it was also extremely dangerous, so that its owner had little chance of dying a natural death. The blame for the military defeat was laid on the grand vizier, and then his removal, exile, and often strangulation inevitably followed. Only outstanding masters of intrigue could achieve this post and hold on to it. Between 1683 and 1702 the twelve grand viziers succeeded each other at Diwan and at the High Port. And yet, in the 17th century, it was the grand viziers who saved the empire, while the sultans basked in harems, indulging their inclinations and whims *. By this time, the central government had become so sickly that the Venetian ships cruised near the Dardanelles, and the Dnieper Cossacks on their "seagulls" robbed the Bosphorus. The empire was choking in corruption, spreading to pieces, plunging into anarchy, and it was saved by three representatives of the same kind - and in fact, a dynasty - grand viziers: father, son and son-in-law

* One sultan, Ibrahim the Mad, encased his beard in a diamond net and spent his time tossing gold coins to fish in the Bosporus. He did not want to see and touch anything except furs, and introduced a special tax that was used to buy sables from Russia in order to upholster the walls in the Sultan's chambers with these precious furs. Believing that the larger the woman, the more pleasant she is, he sent out messengers to look for the fattest women throughout the empire. An Armenian woman of incredible size was brought to him, who delighted the Sultan so much that he showered her with riches and honors and finally made her the ruler of Damascus.

In 1656, when the empire was on the verge of collapse, the harem camarilla was forced to appoint a stern Albanian of seventy-one years old, Mehmed Köprül, to the post of Grand Vizier, who set to work without pity. By executing 50,000-60,000 people, ca. completely cleared the Ottoman administration of bribery and corruption. When he died five years later, the collapse of the empire had already stopped. Under his son Ahmed Köprülü, and later under his son-in-law Kara Mustafa, there was a brief revival of the Ottoman Empire. The fleets and armies of the Christian powers - Austria, Venice and Poland - were thrown back from its borders. In 1683, in response to the call of the Hungarians for help against Emperor Leopold, Kara Mustafa decided to take Vienna. More than 200,000-strong army, raising banners and bunchuks, led by Kara Mustafa himself, climbed the Danube, conquered all of Hungary and, for the second time in the history of the Ottoman Empire, approached the walls of the Austrian capital. Throughout the summer of 1683, Europe followed the events with excitement. Regiments of soldiers from the German states rose under the banner of the Austrian emperor to fight the Turks. Even Louis XIV, the sworn enemy of the Habsburgs and the secret ally of the Turks, could not but help in saving the great Christian city. On September 12, 1683, the allied army came to the rescue, attacked the Turkish siege lines from the rear and put the Turks to flight down the Danube. By order of Sultan Kara Mustafa was strangled. After the defeat at Vienna, the Turks were pursued by continuous misfortunes. Buda fell, followed by Belgrade, the Austrian troops approached Adrianople. The famous Venetian admiral Francesco Morosini captured the Peloponnese, crossed the Isthmus of Corinth and laid siege to Athens. Unfortunately, during the shelling of the city, one shot hit the Parthenon, where the Turks set up a powder warehouse, and on September 26, 1687, this temple, which until then had remained almost in its original state, exploded and acquired its present appearance.

In 1703, the Janissaries deposed Sultan Mustafa II in favor of his thirty-year-old brother Ahmed III, who ascended the throne after imprisonment in a "cage" and ruled for twenty-seven years. Gloomy, unbalanced, all his life under the great influence of his mother, this esthete loved women and poetry; He also liked to draw flowers. He also had a taste for architecture, building beautiful mosques to please his subjects, and planting beautiful gardens to please himself. Along the banks of the Golden Horn, he erected a chain of luxurious pavilions - some in Chinese style, some in French - where he sat in the shade of trees, surrounded by his favorite concubines, and listened to poetry. Ahmed loved theatrical performances; in winter, intricate performances of Chinese shadow theater were staged at the court, after which gems, sweets and honorary robes were distributed to guests. In the summer, skilful amusing naval battles and fireworks were arranged. His yard was engulfed in tulip mania. On spring evenings, the sultan and courtiers, accompanied by musicians, strolled through the garden, hung with lanterns or pierced by moonlight, stepping carefully among hundreds of turtles that crawled in tulips and grass with lighted candles on their shells.

In a city with more than 400 fountains, Sultan Ahmed III's fountain is considered one of the most beautiful. This architectural masterpiece that adorns Yusküdar Square is built in the Ottoman Baroque style, highlighting the European influence on classical Ottoman architecture.

Located in front of the Imperial Gate of Topkapı Palace, the fountain was built in 1728. This unusual building with a gabled roof covers an area of ​​10x10 meters. The extraordinary lightness and beauty of the building is given by the original reliefs, elegant vaults, decorated with tiles, and a hinged roof.

On the days of Ramadan and religious holidays, free sherbet was distributed to the population at the walls of the fountain. And on the main facade of the building, everyone could read the instruction of Ahmed III: "Pray for Khan Ahmed and drink this water after saying your prayers."

In this closed, fragrant atmosphere, Ahmed III existed in the same years that witnessed the active, stormy reign of Peter in Russia. Ahmed's reign lasted longer than that of Peter's, and in the end acquired a typically Ottoman flavor. In 1730, the empire was again in turmoil, and Ahmed thought to calm his enemies by ordering the then Grand Vizier to be strangled - and at the same time his son-in-law - and to give his body to the crowd. But this only temporarily postponed the Sultan's own death. Soon he was deposed and replaced on the throne by his nephew - it was he who poisoned Ahmed.

It makes sense to raise a separate topic about the Russian-Turkish wars and the gradual degradation of the empire. And not one.

Here I will limit myself to stating the fact that already outside the period under review, the described processes of weakening the power of the Sultan and the entire Ottoman Empire forced the next Sultan to renounce absolute power and introduce a constitution:

• Proclamation of the constitution in Istanbul on December 23, 1876. Engraving. 1876

• On December 23, 1876, the solemn announcement of the constitution of the Ottoman Empire took place.
  The 1876 constitution, known as the Midhat constitution, proclaimed the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Turkey. It provided for the creation of a bicameral parliament, members of the Senate were appointed by the Sultan for life, the Chamber of Deputies was elected on the basis of a high property qualification. The Sultan had the power to appoint and dismiss ministers, declare war, make peace, impose martial law, and terminate civil laws.
  All subjects of the empire were declared Ottomans and were considered equal before the law. The constitution recognized Turkish as the state language and Islam as the state religion.