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The gunpowder empires , or Islamic gunpowder empires , is a collective term coined by Marshall G. S. Hodgson and William H. McNeill at the University of Chicago, referring to three early modern Muslim empires: the Ottoman Empire , Safavid Empire and the Mughal Empire , in the period they flourished from mid-16th to the early 18th century. These three empires were among the most stable empires of the early modern period , leading to commercial expansion, and patronage of culture, while their political and legal institutions were consolidated with an increasing degree of centralization. They stretched from Central Europe and North Africa in the west to Bengal and Arakan in the east. Hodgson's colleague William H. McNeill expanded on the history of gunpowder use across multiple civilizations including East Asian, South Asian and European powers in his "The Age of Gunpowder Empires". Vast amounts of territory were conquered by the gunpowder empires with the use and development of the newly invented firearms , especially cannon and small arms, in the course of imperial expansion. Like in Europe , the introduction of gunpowder weapons prompted changes such as the rise of centralized monarchical states.

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152-636: According to G. S. Hodgson , in the gunpowder empires these changes went well beyond military organisation. The Mughals, based in the Indian subcontinent , inherited in part the Timurid Renaissance , and are recognised for their lavish architecture and for having heralded in Bengal an era of what some describe as proto-industrialization . The Safavids created an efficient and modern state administration for Iran and sponsored major developments in

304-494: A World Civilization , has become one of the most influential texts in the field. Published posthumously by the University of Chicago Press with contributions from Reuben Smith and colleagues, The Venture of Islam redefined academic approaches to Islamic studies. Hodgson used "Islamicate" to refer to cultural aspects rooted in an Arabic and Persian literary tradition yet encompassing a broader social and cultural complex within

456-699: A calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna . The alliance of the Holy League pressed home

608-680: A considerably modified fashion" in China, Korea, and Japan. More recently, the Hodgson–McNeill "gunpowder empire" hypothesis has been called into disfavour as a neither "adequate [n]or accurate" explanation, although the term remains in use. Reasons other than (or in addition to) military technology have been offered for the nearly simultaneous rise of three centralized military empires in contiguous areas dominated by decentralized Turkic tribes. One explanation, called "Confessionalization" by historians of fifteenth century Europe, invokes examination of how

760-591: A constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars , the CUP became increasingly radicalized and nationalistic, leading a coup d'état in 1913 that established a one-party regime. The CUP allied with the German Empire hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation that had contributed to its recent territorial losses; it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers . While

912-500: A coup, but he did see the need for military mobilization. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers, who played a notable role in the politics of the empire's last years. From 1894 to 1896, between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as

1064-450: A different refinement process. It entailed adding a wet substance to the gunpowder and then drying it as a mixture. With this improved gunpowder technology, German friar Berthold Schwarz invented the first European cannon in 1353. Due to constant warfare, Europe saw an exponential growth innovation of gunpowder firearms, making it the most advanced in the whole world. Europeans improved the gunpowder firearms which had been made in China and

1216-494: A distinguished academic career. Hodgson joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, where he rose through the ranks to become a professor and received tenure in 1961. In 1964, he was appointed chairman of both the Committee on Social Thought and the newly established Committee on Near Eastern Studies. His course on Islamic civilizations, established in 1957, expanded beyond traditional Orientalist perspectives by covering

1368-464: A divinely-favored ruler on an open cavalry charge against a fixed Ottoman position. The Ottomans deployed their cannons between the carts that carried them, which also provided cover for the armed Janissaries. The result of the charge was devastating losses to the Safavid cavalry. The defeat was so thorough that the Ottoman forces were able to move on and briefly occupy the Safavid capital, Tabriz . Only

1520-496: A fairly modern conscripted army , banking system reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law, and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, issued by Sultan Abdülmecid , who personally tested the invention. The reformist period peaked with

1672-549: A figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. Author Norman Stone suggests that the Arabic alphabet, in which Turkish was written until 1928 , was ill-suited to reflect the sounds of Turkish (which is a Turkic as opposed to Semitic language), which imposed further difficulty on Turkish children. In turn, Christians' higher educational levels allowed them to play

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1824-459: A global context. Hodgson’s concept of the "Islamicate" was one of his most distinctive contributions, developed to describe cultural elements influenced by Islamic civilization but not confined to religious practices. Historian Bruce B. Lawrence has described Hodgson as a scholar with a "moral vision of world history" and highlighted how the concept of the "Islamicate" challenged conventional Eurocentric frameworks, reframing Islamic civilization as

1976-510: A key component within wider, interconnected world history. Lawrence argues that Hodgson's approach reoriented the focus on the West as the central axis of global civilization, instead presenting Islamicate civilization as influential in shaping modernity. Historian Richard Maxwell Eaton observed that while Hodgson aimed to decentralize Islamic studies, his “cores” and “peripheries” model introduced inconsistencies. By emphasizing certain regions as

2128-508: A larger role in the economy, with the rise in prominence of groups such as the Sursock family indicative of this. In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks. In many cases, Christians and Jews gained protection from European consuls and citizenship, meaning they were protected from Ottoman law and not subject to the same economic regulations as their Muslim counterparts. The Crimean War (1853–1856)

2280-687: A major center for its trade, contributing to its continued prosperity throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century. Under Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian regions at the expense of the Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray , commanded by the Ottomans, burned Moscow . The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at

2432-549: A major height of Indian history . By the time of Aurangzeb, the Mughal army was predominantly composed of Indian Muslims, with tribal elements like the Sadaat-e-Bara forming the vanguard of the Mughal cavalry. The Mughal Empire became a powerful geopolitical entity with at times, 24.2% of the world population. The Mughals inherited elements of Persian culture and art, as did the Ottomans and Safavids. Indian Muslims maintained

2584-576: A method for deploying them. Babur had employed Ottoman expert Ustad Ali Quli , who showed Babur the standard Ottoman formation—artillery and firearm-equipped infantry protected by wagons in the center, and mounted archers on both wings. Babur used this formation at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, where the Afghan and Rajput forces loyal to the Delhi sultanate, though superior in numbers but without

2736-554: A revered Ming military leader, drilled his soldiers to extremes so that their performance in battle would be successful. In addition, Qi Jiguang also used innovative battle techniques like volleys, countermarchs, and division into teams, and it even encouraged flexible formation to adapt to the battlefield. During the Sino-Dutch War beginning in 1661, Southern Ming commander Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) used similar tactics to Qi Jiguang effectively in battle. The Chinese defeated

2888-521: A sense of Turkish nationalism. In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example, in 1860–1861 only 0.2% of the total budget was invested in education. As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. As the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to

3040-498: A substantial impact on the fields of Islamic studies and world history, influencing generations of scholars and continuing to be viewed as foundational. His work largely avoided later ideological debates within Middle Eastern studies, allowing it to be assessed on its scholarly merits. The New York Times characterized Hodgson’s approach to Islamic studies as focused on understanding Islam’s broad historical contributions within

3192-459: A victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships. It was a startling, if mostly symbolic, blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the Knights of Malta over the Ottoman invaders in the 1565 siege of Malta had recently set about eroding. The battle

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3344-465: Is preserved at the University of Chicago Library’s Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. Spanning from 1940 to 1971, this archive includes correspondence, teaching materials, research notes, and writings that reflect his contributions to Islamic and world history. Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire ( / ˈ ɒ t ə m ə n / ), also called the Turkish Empire ,

3496-639: The Anatolian Beyliks . One of these, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I ( d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along

3648-583: The Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II , which marked the Ottomans' emergence as a major regional power. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the empire reached the peak of its power, prosperity, and political development. By

3800-465: The Battle of Molodi . The Ottoman Empire continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids , and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century. The Ottomans decided to conquer Venetian Cyprus and on 22 July 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved. On 15 September 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before

3952-728: The Bosporus Strait made it difficult to conquer. In 1402, the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the Turco-Mongol leader Timur , founder of the Timurid Empire , invaded Ottoman Anatolia from the east. In the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated Ottoman forces and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as

4104-665: The Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin in 1396, regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages , failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottomans. As the Turks expanded into the Balkans, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Ottomans had already wrested control of nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the strong defense of Constantinople's strategic position on

4256-599: The Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. Despite the growing European presence in the Indian Ocean, Ottoman trade with the east continued to flourish. Cairo, in particular, benefitted from the rise of Yemeni coffee as a popular consumer commodity. As coffeehouses appeared in cities and towns across the empire, Cairo developed into

4408-545: The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system ( electoral law ) under the Ottoman parliament . The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernise the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform

4560-856: The Great Northern War of 1700–1721). Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia. After the Austro-Turkish War , the Treaty of Passarowitz confirmed the loss of the Banat, Serbia, and "Little Walachia" (Oltenia) to Austria. The Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire

4712-545: The Greek revolt (1821–1829) that ultimately ended with the formal independence of Greece in 1830. It was a costly enterprise for Muhammad Ali, who had lost his fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Thus began the first Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833) , during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha , defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into Anatolia , reaching

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4864-795: The Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese , which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth , became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded the Deylik of Algiers . The campaign that took 21 days, resulted in over 5,000 Algerian military casualties, and about 2,600 French ones. Before

5016-576: The Habsburg and Russian empires. The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, culminating in the loss of both territory and global prestige . This prompted a comprehensive process of reform and modernization known as the Tanzimat ; over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organized internally, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in

5168-506: The Hamidian massacres . In 1897 the population was 19   million, of whom 14   million (74%) were Muslim. An additional 20   million lived in provinces that remained under the sultan's nominal suzerainty but were entirely outside his actual power. One by one the Porte lost nominal authority. They included Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lebanon. As

5320-669: The Iberian Union . The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. The Iberians were leaders of the Christian crusaders, and so the two fought in a worldwide conflict. There were zones of operations in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean , where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India and, on their way, wage war upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise,

5472-708: The Köprülü era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of grand viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine , with the strongholds of Khotyn , and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period of renewed assertiveness came to

5624-641: The Oriental Crisis of 1840 . Muhammad Ali had close relations with France , and the prospect of him becoming the Sultan of Egypt was widely viewed as putting the entire Levant into the French sphere of influence. As the Sublime Porte had proved itself incapable of defeating Muhammad Ali, the British Empire and Austrian Empire provided military assistance, and the second Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841) ended with Ottoman victory and

5776-534: The Sakarya River . A Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbors, due to the lack of sources surviving. The Ghaza thesis popular during the 20th century credited their success to rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam , but it is no longer generally accepted. No other hypothesis has attracted broad acceptance. In

5928-689: The Spanish garrison of Castelnuovo on the Adriatic coast ; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties, but Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the Aegean and the Morea . France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule, became allies. The French conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between French king Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by

6080-512: The Treaty of Nasuh Pasha , which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into the possession of Safavid Iran . The treaty ending the Cretan War cost Venice much of Dalmatia , its Aegean island possessions, and Crete . (Losses from the war totalled 30,985 Venetian soldiers and 118,754 Turkish soldiers.) During his brief majority reign, Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and recaptured Iraq (1639) from

6232-464: The cannon , improved rifles and other advancements to China, hundreds of years after gunpowder's original invention in China, bringing gunpowder's journey through Asia full circle. Harry Turtledove wrote " Gunpowder Empire ", an alternative history novel whose premise is that, had the Roman Empire survived until the invention of gunpowder, it might have become a "Gunpowder Empire" similar to

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6384-538: The "Islamicate." Marshall Hodgson was born in Richmond, Indiana , on April 11, 1922. Raised as a practicing Quaker , he adhered to a strictly vegetarian lifestyle, reflecting his commitment to Quaker values. During World War II, he served in the Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector from 1943 to 1946. He earned his Ph.D in 1951 from the University of Chicago, where he would later build

6536-460: The 1440s. The musket later appeared in the Ottoman Empire by 1465. Damascus steel was later used in the production of firearms such as the musket from the 16th century. At the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Janissaries equipped with 2000 tüfenks (usually translated as musket) "formed nine consecutive rows and they fired their weapons row by row," in a "kneeling or standing position without

6688-499: The 14th century, the Ottomans had adopted gunpowder artillery . The adoption of the gunpowder weapons by the Ottomans was so rapid that they "preceded both their European and Middle Eastern adversaries in establishing centralized and permanent troops specialized in the manufacturing and handling of firearms ." But it was their use of artillery that shocked their adversaries and impelled the other two Islamic empires to accelerate their weapons programs. The Ottomans had artillery at least by

6840-406: The Arabic name ʿUthmān ( عثمان ). In Ottoman Turkish , the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عليه عثمانیه ), lit.   ' Sublime Ottoman State ' , or simply Devlet-i ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عثمانيه‎ ), lit.   ' Ottoman State ' . The Turkish word for "Ottoman" ( Osmanlı ) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in

6992-668: The Balkan Peninsula during the Congress of Berlin , and in return, Britain assumed the administration of Cyprus in 1878. Britain later sent troops to Egypt in 1882 to put down the Urabi Revolt (Sultan Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilize his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état), effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II was so fearful of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as cover for

7144-553: The Balkans . Osman's son, Orhan , captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis for

7296-402: The Balkans, where a number of new states emerged. Beginning in the late 19th century, various Ottoman intellectuals sought to further liberalize society and politics along European lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which established the Second Constitutional Era and introduced competitive multi-party elections under

7448-446: The Conqueror , reorganized both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered Constantinople , ending the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed allowed the Eastern Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, most of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule, as preferable to Venetian rule. Albanian resistance

7600-444: The Constitution, called the Kanûn-u Esâsî . The empire's First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. The empire's Christian population, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with 140,000 pupils in total,

7752-456: The Dutch forces through their strict adherence to discipline and ability to stay in formation. Ultimately, it was their technique and training that defeated the Dutch weapons. In 1631, "Heavy Troops" that could build and operate European-style cannon, The imported cannons in the Qing dynasty had a high reputation such as hongyipao . The Manchu elite did not concern themselves directly with guns and their production, preferring instead to delegate

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7904-408: The Europeans so much military success included the use of superior drilling techniques. The drilling technique he was speaking of was the musketeer volley technique. The volley technique was said to have been invented by Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga. He used the same technique that Japanese archers used, but the effect that the technique had to allow soldiers to reload at the same time others could fire

8056-482: The French invasion the total population of Algeria was most likely between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000. By 1873, the population of Algeria (excluding several hundred thousand newly arrived French settlers) had decreased to 2,172,000. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt revolted against Sultan Mahmud II due to the latter's refusal to grant him the governorships of Greater Syria and Crete , which the Sultan had promised him in exchange for sending military assistance to put down

8208-416: The Great reformed the army (around 1598), the Safavid forces had an artillery corps of 500 cannons as well as 12,000 musketeers. The Safavids first put their gunpowder arms to good use against the Uzbeks, who had invaded eastern Persia during the civil war that followed the death of Ismail I. The young shah Tahmasp I headed an army to relieve Herat and encountered the Uzbeks on 24 September 1528 at Jam, where

8360-418: The Hodgson–McNeill theory is that the acquisition of firearms does not seem to have preceded the initial acquisition of territory constituting the imperial critical mass of any of the three early modern Islamic empires, except in the case of the Mughal empire. Moreover, it seems that the commitment to military autocratic rule pre-dated the acquisition of gunpowder weapons in all three cases. Nor does it seem to be

8512-405: The Iberians passed through newly-Christianized Latin America and had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific to Christianize the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to attack the Muslims in the Far East . In this case, the Ottomans sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia. During the 1600s, the world conflict between

8664-664: The Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy . In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis. In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha , the Grand Mufti , and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and Muteferrika was later granted by Sultan Ahmed III permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders). Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies. In North Africa, Spain conquered Oran from

8816-413: The Janissary revolted . Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II , who eliminated the Janissary corps in 1826. The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question . In 1811, the fundamentalist Wahhabis of Arabia, led by

8968-437: The Koreans faced the Manchus alone, again showing their competency in battle by using their musket tactics. Again, they lost in battle to the Manchus in both battles. In 1654 and 1658, the Koreans aided the Qing in battle against the Russians for control over land in Manchuria. In these instances, the Koreans showed their superior tactics and were the reason for the Russians' defeat. Comparatively little attention has been made to

9120-402: The Magnificent (1520–1566) captured Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars , and, after his historic victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Ottoman rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other Central European territories. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take

9272-470: The Middle East, creating much stronger and more durable rifles using advanced European metalworking techniques. They learned how to calculate the amount of force exerted by the gas contained in a gun's chamber , which led to guns with the power to fire greater distances. Improved gunpowder from Europe later, in 1520, reached China on a Portuguese ship, though Turkish arquebuses may have reached China before Portuguese ones. The Ottomans and Portuguese introduced

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9424-439: The Muslim world, even when found among non-Muslims. In this work, Hodgson used "Islamicate" to describe cultural aspects rooted in an Arabic and Persian literary tradition yet encompassing a broader social and cultural complex within the Muslim world, even when found among non-Muslims. For example, he classified wine poetry as "Islamicate" rather than strictly "Islamic." The terminology has been both influential and debated within

9576-423: The Opium War of 1840, at which point smoothbore cannons were already starting to become obsolete as a result of rifled barrels. The Japanese adopted the use of the Portuguese arquebus in the middle of the 16th century. Multiple accounts have said that Portuguese men working for Chinese pirates ended up in Japan by chance and impressed the local ruler with the weapons. Soon after, the Japanese started mass-producing

9728-413: The Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since both were at similar population , technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the Roman Empire , despite the difference in size, by the likes of contemporary Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino and French political philosopher Jean Bodin . In the second half of

9880-467: The Ottoman Empire gradually shrank, 7–9   million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus, Crimea , Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace . After the Empire lost the First Balkan War (1912–1913), it lost all its Balkan territories except East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from cholera brought by

10032-406: The Ottoman Empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, modern academic consensus posits that the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind those of its chief European rivals,

10184-403: The Ottoman admirals Hayreddin Barbarossa and Dragut . France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman died of natural causes during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Following his death,

10336-432: The Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests. The Ottoman bashi-bazouks suppressed the Bulgarian uprising of 1876, massacring up to 100,000 people in the process. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with a decisive victory for Russia. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply: Bulgaria

10488-488: The Ottomans were said to be declining, although this has been rejected by many scholars. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately 877,888 sq mi (2,273,720 km ), extending over three continents. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea . The Empire was now a major part of European politics. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under

10640-404: The Portuguese style weapon for themselves. In other accounts, this firearm technology may have trickled in to Japan as early as 1540 from the constant in and out flow of Japanese mercenaries who could have picked up firearms in their travels. Soon, Japanese soldiers carrying firearms would greatly outnumber those with other weapons. Tonio Andrade cited that the Military Revolution Model that gave

10792-483: The Russian intervention, Sultan Mahmud II could have faced the risk of being overthrown and Muhammad Ali could have even become the new Sultan. These events marked the beginning of a recurring pattern where the Sublime Porte needed the help of foreign powers to protect itself. In 1839, the Sublime Porte attempted to take back what it lost to the de facto autonomous, but de jure still Ottoman Eyalet of Egypt , but its forces were initially defeated, which led to

10944-616: The Russians. After this treaty the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace in Europe, as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of Prussia . Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University . In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but

11096-602: The Safavid army on both flanks, the Safavid center held (because it was not directly engaged by the Uzbeks). Rallying under Tahmasp's personal leadership, the infantry of the center engaged and scattered the Uzbek center and secured the field. By the time he was invited by the Lodi governor of Lahore Daulat Khan to support his rebellion against Lodi Sultan Ibrahim Khan , Babur was familiar with gunpowder firearms and field artillery and

11248-569: The Safavids decisively beat the Uzbeks. The shah's army deployed cannons (swivel guns on wagons) in the center protected by wagons with cavalry on both flanks. Mughal emperor Babur described the formation at Jam as "in the Anatolian fashion." The several thousand gun-bearing infantry also massed in the center as did the Janissaries of the Ottoman army. Although the Uzbek cavalry engaged and turned

11400-626: The Safavids. The resulting Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively divided the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya. The Sultanate of Women (1533–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice , whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651. During

11552-521: The Turks, but was again defeated at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. According to modern historiography, there is a direct connection between the rapid Ottoman military advance and the consequences of the Black Death from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. Byzantine territories, where the initial Ottoman conquests were carried out, were exhausted demographically and militarily due to

11704-575: The West, underscoring the significance of his terms like "Islamdom" and "Islamicate" for advancing a nuanced understanding of Islamic civilization. Posthumously, Hodgson was awarded the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Scholars like Edmund Burke III continue to engage with Hodgson’s ideas, contributing to the ongoing development of his intellectual legacy. A collection of Hodgson’s papers

11856-558: The above and survived into the 21st Century. Marshall Hodgson Marshall Goodwin Simms Hodgson (April 11, 1922 – June 10, 1968) was an American historian and scholar of Islamic studies best known for his pioneering work on Islamic civilization and his contributions to world history. He was a professor at the University of Chicago , where he developed a yearlong course on Islamic civilizations and served as chairman of

12008-498: The academic community. Hodgson’s contributions to world history, particularly his critiques of Eurocentrism and Orientalism , were rediscovered and later published under the title Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History , edited by Edmund Burke III . In this work, he argued that the “Rise of Europe” was not unique but rather the outcome of long-term developments across Eurasian civilizations. He proposed that other regions, like 12th-century China, were on

12160-592: The advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently. Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–1696 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697. Aside from

12312-578: The al-Saud family, revolted against the Ottomans. Unable to defeat the Wahhabi rebels, the Sublime Porte had Muhammad Ali Pasha of Kavala , the vali (governor) of the Eyalet of Egypt , tasked with retaking Arabia, which ended with the destruction of the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818. The suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged de jure in 1830. In 1821,

12464-496: The ancient relics with propellant and projectiles and fired them at the British ships. The British squadron suffered 28 casualties from this bombardment. At Chaldiran, the Ottomans met the Safavids in battle for the first time. Sultan Selim I moved east with his field artillery in 1514 to confront what he perceived as a Twelver Shi'a threat instigated by Shah Ismail in favor of Selim's rivals. Ismail staked his reputation as

12616-489: The autonomous Deylik of Algiers . The Bey of Oran received an army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture Oran ; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Deylik of Algiers. In 1768 Russian-backed Ukrainian Haidamakas , pursuing Polish confederates, entered Balta , an Ottoman-controlled town on

12768-652: The beginning of a Korean military revolution in which the Koreans could combat their enemies using modern equipment and methods of warfare. There were many instances where the Korean military used their new techniques effectively. In 1619, the Koreans aided the Ming against the Manchus, a great military force. While the Koreans and Ming lost, a Korean unit did exhibit their techniques successfully in battle. Then, in 1627 and 1636,

12920-617: The birthplace of the “Great Western Transmutation.” By attributing modernity solely to Europe, Eaton contends that Hodgson may have inadvertently reinforced Eurocentric views, potentially establishing a dichotomy between Islam and Europe that Hodgson originally sought to counter. Hodgson’s terms "Islamdom" and "Islamicate," coined to distinguish between religious and cultural elements of Islamic civilization, have received mixed responses. While some scholars consider these constructs innovative, Eaton argues that such terms might territorialize Islamic civilization, imposing rigid boundaries that overlook

13072-600: The border of Bessarabia in Ukraine, massacred its citizens, and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 . The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the war and provided freedom of worship for the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. By the late 18th century, after a number of defeats in

13224-517: The brink of an industrial revolution that was interrupted by events like the Mongol invasions. He wrote: The two most significant influences on Hodgson’s thought were the French orientalist and priest Louis Massignon , who instilled in him empathy and respect for Islam, and the 18th-century American Quaker John Woolman , whose views on Eurocentrism and ethics mirrored Hodgson’s Quaker ideals. Hodgson’s work, particularly The Venture of Islam , has had

13376-466: The case that the acquisition of gunpowder weapons and their integration into the military was influenced by which variety of Islam the particular empire promoted. Whether or not gunpowder was inherently linked to the existence of any of these three empires, it cannot be questioned that each of the three acquired artillery and firearms early in their history and made such weapons an integral part of their military tactics. Michael Axworthy has pointed out that

13528-642: The century after Osman I, Ottoman rule had begun to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans . The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars , waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century, followed by the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the Serbian–Ottoman wars in the mid-14th century. Much of this period was characterised by Ottoman expansion into

13680-471: The chief military families. Such states grew "out of Mongol notions of greatness", but "[s]uch notions could fully mature and create stable bureaucratic empires only after gunpowder weapons and their specialized technology attained a primary place in military life." McNeill argued that whenever such states "were able to monopolize the new artillery, central authorities were able to unite larger territories into new, or newly consolidated, empires." Monopolization

13832-448: The city of Kütahya within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital, Constantinople. In desperation, Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional arch-rival Russia for help, asking Emperor Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to assist him. In return for signing the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi , the Russians sent the expeditionary force which deterred Ibrahim Pasha from marching any further towards Constantinople. Under

13984-634: The city. In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the siege of Güns . Transylvania , Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia , became tributary principalities of the Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf . In 1555, the Caucasus became partitioned for

14136-689: The civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The last of the Ottoman censuses was performed in 1914 . Despite military reforms which reconstituted the Ottoman Modern Army , the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The Empire faced continuous unrest in

14288-532: The contributions of Persianate and Turkic dynasties, as well as broader Islamic culture. Throughout his career, he collaborated with historians such as Gustave von Grunebaum, Muhsin Mehdi, William McNeill, and John U. Nef. Hodgson was married and had three daughters. He passed away in 1968 while jogging on the University of Chicago campus. Although Hodgson published sparingly during his life, his three-volume work, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in

14440-454: The core of Islamic civilization, Hodgson’s framework inadvertently reasserts traditional geographic hierarchies. Eaton suggests that this approach may create an inconsistency within Hodgson’s otherwise inclusive framework, which intended to highlight Islam's role as a dynamic, cross-regional civilization. Eaton also critiqued Hodgson’s treatment of modernity, particularly his emphasis on Europe as

14592-399: The defenders. The Ottoman military 's regularized use of firearms proceeded ahead of the pace of their European counterparts. The Janissaries had been an infantry bodyguard using bows and arrows. During the rule of Sultan Mehmed II they were drilled with firearms and became "perhaps the first standing infantry force equipped with firearms in the world." The Janissaries are thus considered

14744-505: The dominance of artillery in India, and even after the fall of the Mughal empire, various non-Muslim Indian kingdoms continued to recruit Hindustani Muslims as artillery officers in their armies. The three Islamic gunpowder empires are known for their quickly gained success in dominating the battle fields using their newly acquired firearms and techniques. East Asian powers and their military success are commonly overlooked in this subject due to

14896-655: The eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran , in the Battle of Chaldiran . Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the Red Sea . After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottomans to become the dominant power in the region. Suleiman

15048-514: The empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Members of Young Turks movement who had once gone underground now established their parties. Among them " Committee of Union and Progress ", and " Freedom and Accord Party " were major parties. On the other end of the spectrum were ethnic parties, which included Poale Zion , Al-Fatat , and Armenian national movement organised under Armenian Revolutionary Federation . Profiting from

15200-637: The empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt . During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians , Assyrians , and Greeks . In the aftermath of World War I , the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France . The successful Turkish War of Independence , led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against

15352-544: The end of the Caucasian Wars , 90% of the Circassians were ethnically cleansed and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus, fleeing to the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in the Ottoman Empire. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Ottoman education and in first promoting both Pan-Turkism and

15504-523: The end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today. In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–1923, when

15656-597: The fine arts. The sultans of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Kaysar-i Rûm , controlled the holy cities of Mecca and Medina , and hence were the recognised Caliphs of Islam; their powers, wealth, architecture, and various contributions significantly influenced the course of Islamic world history. Hodgson's colleague William H. McNeill expanded on the history of gunpowder use across multiple civilizations including East Asian, European, and South Asian powers in his 1993 work The Age of Gunpowder Empires . The phrase

15808-581: The first modern standing armies. The combination of artillery and Janissary firepower proved decisive at Varna in 1444 against a force of Crusaders, Başkent in 1473 against the Aq Qoyunlu , and Mohács in 1526 against Hungary. But the battle which convinced the Safavids and the Mughals of the efficacy of gunpowder was Chaldiran . The matchlock arquebus began to be used by the Janissary corps by

15960-484: The first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a status quo that remained until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) . By this partitioning as signed in the Peace of Amasya , Western Armenia , western Kurdistan , and Western Georgia fell into Ottoman hands, while southern Dagestan , Eastern Armenia , Eastern Georgia , and Azerbaijan remained Persian. In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged

16112-724: The fluid interactions within Islamic societies. According to a critical appraisal of Hodgson's perspective, these terms attempt to capture Islam’s cultural reach but may fall short of conveying the diversity within Muslim societies, presenting challenges in defining complex civilizational identities. In a broader context, Edward Said questioned Hodgson’s place within the Orientalist tradition, arguing that even frameworks intended to be objective can unintentionally project external views onto non-Western societies. Said’s critique underscores

16264-570: The formulas that existed and devising new uses of the substance after it was introduced to Europe via the Silk Road in the thirteenth century. Europeans were improving gunpowder a century after the first gun was invented in China . Roger Bacon , a renowned early European alchemist (1214 – 1292), set forth the marvels of the world; key among them was the ingredients of gunpowder. With these ingredients available, European scientists, inventors and alchemists went on to create corned gunpowder, which had

16416-404: The fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" ( Türk ) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period , an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish speaker who was not a member of

16568-493: The golden age of East Asian Piracy between the 1540s and 1560s, it was most likely that through their battles and other encounters with these pirates, the Ming dynasty forces inevitably got hold of the weapons and copied them. It was also likely that a powerful mariner Wang Zhi, who controlled thousands of armed men eventually surrendered to the Ming in 1558 and they replicated his weapons. This particular account on arquebus technology

16720-473: The gunpowder weapons, were defeated. Similarly Babur also used these gunpowder weapons to win the decisive Battle of Khanwa against the numerically superior Rajput confederacy . The decisive victory of the Timurid forces is one reason opponents rarely met Mughal princes in pitched battle over the course of the empire's history. The reigns of Akbar The Great , Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb have been described as

16872-648: The independence of the Middle East" in the 19th century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks". The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875. By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration , a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of

17024-450: The interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought . His influential three-volume work, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, published posthumously, introduced new frameworks for understanding Islam's global and cultural dimensions. Hodgson's work continues to be foundational in Islamic studies and has influenced approaches to world history, especially through his critique of Eurocentrism and his concept of

17176-482: The label is misleading in the case of the Safavids, as unlike contemporary European armies, the Safavid military mostly used swords, lances, and bows well into the mid-18th century. It was not until the rule of Nader Shah's Afsharid dynasty that the majority of Iran's troops would be equipped with firearms for the first time. The first of the three empires to acquire gunpowder weapons was the Ottoman Empire . By

17328-515: The last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders held out for 11 months against a force that at its peak numbered 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties. Meanwhile, the Holy League consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won

17480-545: The late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government. In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This 1603–1618 war eventually resulted in

17632-546: The limited campaign radius of the Ottoman army prevented it from holding the city and ending the Safavid rule. Although the Chaldiran defeat brought an end to Ismail's territorial expansion program, the shah nonetheless took immediate steps to protect against the real threat from the Ottoman sultanate by arming his troops with gunpowder weapons. Within two years of Chaldiran, Ismail had a corps of musketeers ( tofangchi ) numbering 8,000, and by 1521, possibly 20,000. After Abbas

17784-526: The loss of the Banat and the temporary loss of Belgrade (1717–1739), the Ottoman border on the Danube and Sava remained stable during the eighteenth century. Russian expansion , however, presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of

17936-459: The military-administrative class typically referred to themselves neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk , but rather as a Rūmī ( رومى ), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish speakers, this term began to fall out of use at

18088-484: The need for additional support or rest." The Chinese later adopted the Ottoman kneeling position for firing. In 1598, Chinese writer Zhao Shizhen described Turkish muskets as being superior to European muskets. The Ming-era Chinese work the Wubei Zhi or "Treatise on Armament Technology or Records of Armaments and Military Provisions" of 1621 later described Turkish muskets that used a rack and pinion mechanism, which

18240-546: The need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved. Irregular sharpshooters ( Sekban ) were also recruited, and on demobilisation turned to brigandage in the Celali rebellions (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in

18392-421: The new conditions of the seventeenth century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically. Historians of the mid-twentieth century once characterised this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics. The discovery of new maritime trade routes by Western European states allowed them to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly. The Portuguese discovery of

18544-466: The newly established Ankara -based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. At present, most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character. As the Rum Sultanate declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as

18696-463: The occupying Allies, led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy in 1922, formally ending the Ottoman Empire. The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I , the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of

18848-406: The plague, which facilitated Ottoman expansion. In addition, slave hunting was the main economic driving force behind Ottoman conquest. Some 21st-century authors re-periodize conquest of the Balkans into the akıncı phase , which spanned 8 to 13 decades, characterized by continuous slave hunting and destruction, followed by administrative integration into the Empire. The son of Murad II, Mehmed

19000-404: The reign of Bayezid I and used them in the sieges of Constantinople in 1399 and 1402. They finally proved their worth as siege engines in the successful siege of Salonica in 1430. The Ottomans employed Middle-Eastern as well as European foundries to cast their cannons, and by the siege of Constantinople in 1453, they had large enough cannons to batter the walls of the city, to the surprise of

19152-403: The relation of church and state "mediated through confessional statements and church ordinances" lead to the origins of absolutist polities. Douglas Streusand uses the Safavids as an example: The Safavids from the beginning imposed a new religious identity on their general population; they did not seek to develop a national or linguistic identity, but their policy had that effect. One problem of

19304-578: The restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt Eyalet and the Levant . By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the " sick man of Europe ". Three suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia , Wallachia and Moldavia – moved towards de jure independence during the 1860s and 1870s. During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to

19456-467: The sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government. The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to

19608-633: The soldiers), and 400,000 non-Muslims fled territory still under Ottoman rule. Justin McCarthy estimates that from 1821 to 1922, 5.5   million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5   million. The defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908—1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era , a moment of hope and promise established with the Young Turk Revolution . It restored

19760-572: The start of the 17th century, the Ottomans presided over 32 provinces and numerous vassal states , which over time were either absorbed into the Empire or granted various degrees of autonomy. With its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin , the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. While

19912-459: The success of not only the Islamic empires, but also European empires. The success and innovation of gunpowder combat in East Asia, however, are worth mentioning in the same context as that of the Islamic gunpowder empires for their military advancements. The first firearms originated in 10th-century China, and there were various ways that more modern forms of small firearms came to China. During

20064-673: The sultan and restored Ottoman power. The Balkan territories lost by the Ottomans after 1402, including Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo, were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad repelled the Crusade of Varna by defeating the Hungarian, Polish, and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna , although Albanians under Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army of Hungarian and Wallachian forces to attack

20216-465: The task to Han-Chinese craftsmen, who produced for the Qing a similar composite metal cannon known as the "Shenwei grand general." Cannons and muskets are also widely used in wars known as ' Ten Great Campaigns '. However, after the Qing gained hegemony over East Asia in the mid-18th century, the practice of casting composite metal cannons fell into disuse until the dynasty faced external threats once again in

20368-811: The tension in Western scholarship between striving for neutrality and reinforcing external interpretations of Islamic civilization. Despite these critiques, Hodgson’s work remains foundational in Islamic studies. His concepts continue to stimulate scholarly discussions, leading others to refine and build upon his ideas to enhance understanding of Islamic civilization within a global context. Hodgson’s approach to Islamic history, while celebrated for its depth, presents challenges in undergraduate education. According to Lawrence, The Venture of Islam can be difficult for students due to its complex language and original terminology. Despite this, Lawrence sees Hodgson’s work as an essential tool for moving beyond binary views of Islam and

20520-512: The terms of the Convention of Kütahya , signed on 5 May 1833, Muhammad Ali agreed to abandon his campaign against the Sultan, in exchange for which he was made the vali (governor) of the vilayets (provinces) of Crete , Aleppo , Tripoli , Damascus and Sidon (the latter four comprising modern Syria and Lebanon ), and given the right to collect taxes in Adana . Had it not been for

20672-421: The unstable, geographically limited confederations of Turkic tribal confederations , which prevailed in post-Mongol times. Hodgson defined a "military patronage state" as one having three characteristics: first, a legitimization of independent dynastic law; second, the conception of the whole state as a single military force; third, the attempt to explain all economic and high cultural resources as appanages of

20824-549: The use and innovation of gunpowder in the expansion of Vietnam. It is theorised that the Vietnamese, after adopting firearms from China, also introduced some innovations in firearms to China — although other scholars disagree. Regardless, the use of gunpowder technology has left an undeniable mark in Vietnamese history, allowing the " southward march " and significant expansion of Vietnamese territory. Europeans are said to have pushed gunpowder technology to its limits, improving

20976-466: The wars with Russia, some people in the Ottoman Empire began to conclude that the reforms of Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats. Selim III (1789–1807) made the first major attempts to modernise the army , but his reforms were hampered by the religious leadership and the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change,

21128-410: The years leading up to World War I , including the 31 March Incident and two further coups in 1912 and 1913 . The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The Ottoman participation in the war began with the combined German-Ottoman surprise attack on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Empire on 29 October 1914. Following the attack,

21280-463: Was a devastating defeat to the Koreans, this war forced the Koreans to realize that they needed to adopt the use of the musket as well as Japanese and Chinese methods. The Koreans quickly issued the musket as the base of their military tactic, and their musketeers became more than 50 percent of the military by 1594. They trained using manuals based on Qi Jiguang's techniques, such as the volley, while incorporating their own methods, too. These events marked

21432-400: Was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of expansion . The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans . It flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded

21584-508: Was also illustration and description of how the Chinese had adopted the Ottoman kneeling position in firing. Zhao Shizhen described the Turkish muskets as being superior to the European muskets. The Wubei Zhi (1621) later described Turkish muskets that used a rack-and-pinion mechanism, which was not known to have been used in any European or Chinese firearms at the time. The Chinese intensively practiced tactical strategies based on firearm use, which resulted in military success. Qi Jiguang ,

21736-473: Was an imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe , West Asia , and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe , between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a beylik , or principality , founded in northwestern Anatolia in c.  1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I . His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into

21888-401: Was coined by Marshall Hodgson and his colleague William H. McNeill at the University of Chicago . Hodgson used the phrase in the title of Book 5 ("The Second Flowering: The Empires of Gunpowder Times") of his highly influential three-volume work, The Venture of Islam (1974). Hodgson saw gunpowder weapons as the key to the "military patronage states of the Later Middle Period" which replaced

22040-466: Was devastating to their enemies. Koreans used Chinese and Korean firearms as early as the late 14th century. They were also quite adept and innovative with their strategies on the battlefield. There were accounts of Koreans using a type of volley technique in 1447. But the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) between the Japanese against the Koreans and the Ming starting in 1592 and ending in 1598 would change Joseon perspectives on warfare. While it

22192-414: Was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire; Romania achieved full independence; and Serbia and Montenegro finally gained complete independence, but with smaller territories. In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar . British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated restoring the Ottoman territories on

22344-484: Was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced. The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defenses. The Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created

22496-433: Was key. Although Europe pioneered the development of new artillery in the fifteenth century, no state monopolized it. Gun-casting know-how had been concentrated in the Low Countries near the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine rivers. France and the Habsburgs divided those territories, resulting in an arms standoff. By contrast, such monopolies allowed states to create militarized empires in West Asia , Russia, and India, and "in

22648-435: Was not known to have been used in any European or Chinese firearms at the time. The Dardanelles Gun ( Ottoman Turkish : شاهی , romanized :  Şahi , lit.   'Royal') was designed and cast in bronze in 1464 by Munir Ali. The Dardanelles Gun was still present for duty more than 340 years later in 1807, when a Royal Navy force appeared and commenced the Dardanelles operation . Turkish forces loaded

22800-409: Was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe. The Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739), which was ended by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, resulted in the Ottoman recovery of northern Bosnia , Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade), Oltenia and the southern parts of the Banat of Temeswar ; but the Empire lost the port of Azov , north of the Crimean Peninsula, to

22952-423: Was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. The financial burden of the war led the Ottoman state to issue foreign loans amounting to 5   million pounds sterling on 4 August 1854. The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars , about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward

23104-406: Was the first to spark the interest of Ming officials for the Chinese to broaden their use of these weapons. Turkish arquebuses may have reached China before Portuguese ones. In Zhao Shizhen's book of 1598, the Shenqipu , there were illustrations of Ottoman Turkish musketmen with detailed illustrations of their muskets, alongside European musketeers with detailed illustrations of their muskets. There

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