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43-539: The Ghaza or Ghazi thesis (from Ottoman Turkish : غزا , ġazā , "holy war", or simply "raid") is a since discredited historical paradigm first formulated by Paul Wittek which has been used to interpret the nature of the Ottoman Empire during the earliest period of its history, the fourteenth century, and its subsequent history. The thesis addresses the question of how the Ottomans were able to expand from

86-409: A Persian or Arabic active or passive participle to a neuter verb, to do ( ایتمك etmek ) or to become ( اولمق olmaq ). For example, note the following two verbs: Below table shows some sample conjugations of these two verbs. The conjugation of the verb "etmek" isn't straightforward, because the root of the verb ends in a [t]. This sound transforms into a [d] when followed by a vowel sound. This

129-626: A deliberate holy war, but most often combining a mixture of these elements." This view also appears in Caroline Finkel's 2005 scholarly survey of Ottoman history, Osman's Dream . Ottoman Turkish language Historically, Ottoman Turkish was transformed in three eras: In 1928, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey , widespread language reforms (a part in

172-676: A document but would use the native Turkish word bal ( بال ) when buying it. The transliteration system of the İslâm Ansiklopedisi has become a de facto standard in Oriental studies for the transliteration of Ottoman Turkish texts. In transcription , the New Redhouse, Karl Steuerwald, and Ferit Devellioğlu dictionaries have become standard. Another transliteration system is the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), which provides

215-541: A negative verb, and a positive complex verb expressing ability. In Turkish, complex verbs can be constructed by adding a variety of suffixes to the base root of a verb. The two verbs are یازممق yazmamaq (not to write) and سوه‌بلمك sevebilmek (to be able to love). Another common category of verbs in Turkish (more common in Ottoman Turkish than in modern Turkish), is compound verbs. This consists of adding

258-477: A possessive pronoun if needed, and copula وار var , followed by the 3rd person singular form of the verb 'to do: ایتمك etmek attached as a suffix (or separate as a stanadalone verb); as conjugated in the above section. The verbs 'not to exist' and 'not to have' are created in the exact same manner and conjugation, except that the copula یوق yok is used. Turkish being an agglutinative language as opposed to an analytical one (generally), means that from

301-411: A single root verb, with the addition of a variety of morphemes and suffixes, multiple new and different verbs meanings can be expressed in single but larger words. Below table is a sample from the verb تپمك tepmek meaning 'to kick', whose root (which is also 2nd person imperative) is تپ tep . Each of the produced new verbs below can be made into an infinitive with the addition of ـمك -mek at

344-700: A small principality on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire into a centralized, intercontinental empire. According to the Ghaza thesis, the Ottomans accomplished this by attracting recruits to fight for them in the name of Islamic holy war against the non-believers . Such a warrior was known in Ottoman Turkish as a ghazi , and thus this thesis sees the early Ottoman state as a "Ghazi State," defined by an ideology of holy war. The Ghaza Thesis dominated early Ottoman historiography throughout much of

387-705: A transliteration system for any Turkic language written in Arabic script. There are few differences between the İA and the DMG systems. Colin Imber Colin Imber is a lecturer in Turkish studies at Manchester University , UK. He completed his Oriental studies at Cambridge University , where he defended his doctorate on "The Ottoman Fleet in the Age of Sultan Suleiman I (1520-1566)". His research interest

430-430: A vowel, when it comes to taking case suffixes, a letter - ـنـ [n] comes after the possessive suffix. For singular endings, the final vowel ی is removed in all instances. For plural endings, if the letter succeeding the additional - ـنـ [n] is a vowel, the final vowel ی is kept; otherwise it is removed (note the respective examples for kitaplarını versus kitaplarından ). Examples below : Below table shows

473-490: Is focused on the history of the Ottoman Empire until the 17th century and on Islamic law , in particular on the system of Ottoman law , until the 17th century. He is considered as "perhaps the leading, and...certainly the most productive, of the painfully few Ottoman historians currently working in British universities." He is noted for his opposition to Paul Wittek 's " Ghaza thesis ". This biography article of

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516-530: Is not different from the grammar of modern Turkish .The focus of this section is on the Ottoman orthography; the conventions surrounding how the orthography interacted and dealt with grammatical morphemes related to conjugations, cases, pronouns, etc. Table below lists nouns with a variety of phonological features that come into play when taking case suffixes. The table includes a typical singular and plural noun, containing back and front vowels, words that end with

559-424: Is reflected in conventions of Ottoman orthography as well. In Turkish, there is a verb representing to be , but it is a defective verb. It doesn't have an infinitive or several other tenses. It is usually a suffix. Negative verb to be is created with the use of the word دگل değil , followed by the appropriate conjugation of the to be verb; or optionally used as a standalone for 3rd person. Generally,

602-469: Is the latter's abandonment of compound word formation according to Arabic and Persian grammar rules. The usage of such phrases still exists in modern Turkish but only to a very limited extent and usually in specialist contexts ; for example, the Persian genitive construction takdîr-i ilâhî (which reads literally as "the preordaining of the divine" and translates as "divine dispensation" or "destiny")

645-503: Is the predecessor of modern Turkish. However, the standard Turkish of today is essentially Türkiye Türkçesi (Turkish of Turkey) as written in the Latin alphabet and with an abundance of neologisms added, which means there are now far fewer loan words from other languages, and Ottoman Turkish was not instantly transformed into the Turkish of today. At first, it was only the script that was changed, and while some households continued to use

688-519: Is used, as opposed to the normative modern Turkish construction, ilâhî takdîr (literally, "divine preordaining"). In 2014, Turkey's Education Council decided that Ottoman Turkish should be taught in Islamic high schools and as an elective in other schools, a decision backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , who said the language should be taught in schools so younger generations do not lose touch with their cultural heritage. Most Ottoman Turkish

731-409: The Arabic system in private, most of the Turkish population was illiterate at the time, making the switch to the Latin alphabet much easier. Then, loan words were taken out, and new words fitting the growing amount of technology were introduced. Until the 1960s, Ottoman Turkish was at least partially intelligible with the Turkish of that day. One major difference between Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish

774-541: The Ottoman State , Turkish scholar Cemal Kafadar addressed criticism of the Ghaza thesis by arguing that previous scholars had drawn too great a distinction between "orthodox" and "heterodox" Islam – one could consider oneself a legitimate Muslim without conforming exactly to a scholarly orthodoxy. Furthermore, Kafadar argued that the early Ottomans' very idea of ghaza may have differed from that of "orthodox" Islam. Citing contemporary Anatolian legends, he noted that

817-474: The Persian character of its Arabic borrowings with other Turkic languages that had even less interaction with Arabic, such as Tatar , Bashkir , and Uyghur . From the early ages of the Ottoman Empire, borrowings from Arabic and Persian were so abundant that original Turkish words were hard to find. In Ottoman, one may find whole passages in Arabic and Persian incorporated into the text. It was however not only extensive loaning of words, but along with them much of

860-563: The Turco-Muslim basis of the early Ottoman state, agreeing that it grew out of the already highly developed civilization of Seljuk Anatolia and was fundamentally shaped by the unique conditions of the Byzantine frontier. Yet rather than Turkish ethnicity and tribal connections, he placed his primary emphasis upon the role of Islam. For Wittek, the Ottomans were first and foremost Islamic holy warriors. His primary evidence for this included

903-417: The end. Ottoman Turkish was highly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Arabic and Persian words in the language accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary. As in most other Turkic and foreign languages of Islamic communities, the Arabic borrowings were borrowed through Persian, not through direct exposure of Ottoman Turkish to Arabic, a fact that is evidenced by the typically Persian phonological mutation of

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946-502: The fifteenth century, presenting the earlier Ottoman rulers as ghazis served their political objectives. In emphasizing the mythical and legendary quality of the stories presented by Ottoman writers, the historian Colin Imber has gone so far as to declare the entire period a "black hole," the truth about which can never truly be known. While many scholars criticized the Ghaza thesis, few sought an alternative to replace it. Rudi Paul Lindner

989-422: The grammatical systems of Persian and Arabic. In a social and pragmatic sense, there were (at least) three variants of Ottoman Turkish: A person would use each of the varieties above for different purposes, with the fasih variant being the most heavily suffused with Arabic and Persian words and kaba the least. For example, a scribe would use the Arabic asel ( عسل ) to refer to honey when writing

1032-469: The greater framework of Atatürk's Reforms ) instituted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk saw the replacement of many Persian and Arabic origin loanwords in the language with their Turkish equivalents. One of the main supporters of the reform was the Turkish nationalist Ziya Gökalp . It also saw the replacement of the Perso-Arabic script with the extended Latin alphabet . The changes were meant to encourage

1075-471: The growth of a new variety of written Turkish that more closely reflected the spoken vernacular and to foster a new variety of spoken Turkish that reinforced Turkey's new national identity as being a post-Ottoman state . See the list of replaced loanwords in Turkish for more examples of Ottoman Turkish words and their modern Turkish counterparts. Two examples of Arabic and two of Persian loanwords are found below. Historically speaking, Ottoman Turkish

1118-433: The letter ه ـه ([a] or [e]), both back and front vowels, word that ends in a ت ([t]) sound, and word that ends in either ق or ك ([k]). These words are to serve as references, to observe orthographic conventions: Table below shows the suffixes for creating possessed nouns. Each of these possessed nouns, in turn, take case suffixes as shown above. For third person (singular and plural) possessed nouns, that end in

1161-601: The name of Islam. It was only certain writers, educated in the Islamic tradition, who tried to draw a connection between the secular ghaza of the frontier warriors and the religious ghaza as understood by Muslim intellectuals. While they differ in many particulars, these new perspectives on early Ottoman history share in the belief that early Ottoman expansion was not primarily fueled by an ideology of Islamic holy war. Historians now generally regard ghaza as having been "a much more fluid undertaking, sometimes referring to actions that were nothing more than raids, sometimes meaning

1204-483: The nomadic tribe's need to engage in predation against settled society. The Ottomans were able to incorporate Byzantines and fight against Muslims because their organization was fundamentally tribal, which allowed them to assimilate individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds. Citing various instances of their heterodoxy, Lindner even suggested that the early Ottomans may have been more Pagan than Muslim. In Lindner's view, this tribal inclusiveness began to break down during

1247-399: The positive conjugation for two sample verbs آچمق açmak (to open) and سولمك sevilmek (to be loved). The first verb is the active verb, and the other has been modified to form a passive verb. The first contains back vowels, the second front vowels; both containing non-rounded vowels (which also impacts pronounciation and modern Latin orthograhpy). Below table shows the conjugation of

1290-480: The reign of Osman's son Orhan (r. 1323/4-1362), as the Ottomans began to shift from being nomadic pastoralists into settled agricultural society. Orhan subsequently attracted Islamic scholars to his realm, who brought with them ideas about ghaza , and it was from them that he adopted the ghaza ideology in time for it to appear in his 1337 inscription in Bursa. In his 1995 book Between Two Worlds: The Construction of

1333-690: The role of the Turks in Ottoman state formation, Köprülü formulated what was to become the nationalized view of early Ottoman history. According to Köprülü, the Ottoman polity was formed by Turkish tribes fleeing the advance of the Mongol Empire , built upon Turkish tribal manpower, and administered by men from the Anatolian hinterland experienced in the Turco-Muslim political tradition of the Seljuks . Paul Wittek, responding to Köprülü's claims, accepted

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1376-409: The same figure could be portrayed as a ghazi while still cooperating with Christians. In Kafadar's view, ghaza was a real ideology which gave shape to frontier warriors as a social class, not simply an import from Muslim scholars. However, the terms ghaza and ghazi had a range of different meanings which shifted over time, sometimes referring to religiously motivated warriors and sometimes not. It

1419-797: The techniques of literary criticism , allowing historians to properly analyze Ottoman literary works from later periods. The Ghaza thesis came under attack from numerous scholars beginning in the 1980s. Critics drew attention to the fact that the early Ottomans acted in ways contrary to what one would expect from zealous religious warriors. They were not strictly orthodox Muslims, but rather tolerated many heterodox and syncretic beliefs and practices. They also willingly recruited Byzantines into their ranks and fought wars against other Muslims. Thus rather than describing reality, later Ottoman writers who characterized their ancestors as ghazis were "adorning [them] with higher ideals," when in fact their original motivations had been much more mundane. For Ottomans writing in

1462-441: The terms ghaza and ghazi when used in the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Ottoman context had entirely non-religious meanings, as ghaza was interchangeable with the term akın , simply referring to a military raid. Many akıncıs (raiders) were also Christians, and would thus be very out of place in an army devoted to Islamic holy war. Ottoman warriors were thus motivated by the desire to win plunder and slaves, not to fight in

1505-459: The titles adopted by early Ottoman rulers, including an inscription erected in Bursa in 1337 describing Orhan , the second Ottoman ruler, as "ghazi, son of ghazi." Wittek also relied upon the work of the early fifteenth-century Ottoman poet Ahmedi, who likewise described the early Ottoman rulers as ghazis. Thus in this formulation, the early Ottoman polity was built upon an "ideology of Holy War," and

1548-548: The twentieth century before coming under increasing criticism beginning in the 1980s. Historians now generally reject the Ghaza Thesis, and consequently the idea that Ottoman expansion was primarily fueled by holy war, but disagree about what hypothesis to replace it with. The Ghaza thesis was first formulated in the 1930s by Turkish historian Fuat Köprülü and Austrian historian Paul Wittek . Partly in response to contemporary Orientalist historians, who tried to marginalize

1591-422: The twentieth century. The fundamental problem with the study of the fourteenth-century Ottomans is the lack of surviving documentation from that time period. Not a single authentic written Ottoman document has been found from the time of Osman I , the first Ottoman ruler. Historians are thus forced to rely upon sources produced long after the events they purport to describe. Ottoman studies have thus benefited from

1634-404: The verbs 'to exist' and 'to have' are expressed using what's called an existential copula , the word وار var . The verb 'to have' is expressed in the same way, except that the object noun will take a possessive pronoun, producing sentences that will literally mean "there exists house of mine". The verbs 'to exist' and 'to have' conjugated for other tenses, are expressed in the same way, with

1677-476: The words of Arabic origin. The conservation of archaic phonological features of the Arabic borrowings furthermore suggests that Arabic-incorporated Persian was absorbed into pre-Ottoman Turkic at an early stage, when the speakers were still located to the north-east of Persia , prior to the westward migration of the Islamic Turkic tribes. An additional argument for this is that Ottoman Turkish shares

1720-540: Was able to grow powerful by attracting warriors to join in conquering the Christians of Anatolia and the Balkans. The early Ottomans harnessed the religious and martial energies of the frontier ( uc ) between the crumbling Byzantine and Seljuk states in order to conquer an empire. It was Wittek's formulation which became generally (though not unanimously) accepted among Western historians of the Ottoman Empire for much of

1763-424: Was nevertheless ever present, and served as simply one out of many motivating forces behind Ottoman expansion. Following Kafadar, the next major reformulation of the theory of Ottoman origins was carried out by Heath Lowry in 2003. Lowry attacked Wittek's sources, arguing that Ahmedi's literary work cannot be interpreted as factual history, but rather was a fictionalized idealization of the past. According to Lowry,

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1806-575: Was the first to try in his 1983 publication Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia , in which he argued that the peculiarities of early Ottoman activity could best be explained through tribalism. Lindner saw tribalism through the lens of anthropology , which views tribes as organizations based not on shared bloodlines, but on shared political interests. Early Ottoman raids against the Byzantines were motivated not by religious zeal, but by

1849-451: Was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet ( Ottoman Turkish : الفبا , romanized :  elifbâ ), a variant of the Perso-Arabic script . The Armenian , Greek and Rashi script of Hebrew were sometimes used by Armenians, Greeks and Jews. (See Karamanli Turkish , a dialect of Ottoman written in the Greek script; Armeno-Turkish alphabet ) The actual grammar of Ottoman Turkish

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