183-527: The House of Széchenyi or Széchényi is the name of a wealthy Hungarian noble family which produced many politicians, landowners, and influential figures within Austro-Hungarian Empire . It is not to be confused with other Szécsényi family that became extinct. The family first appeared in the documents at the beginning of the 16th century and derived its name from the town of Szécsény . First prominent member and founder of family wealth
366-593: 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 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
549-516: A crushing defeat on the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683. The Ottomans were expelled from Buda in 1686 . Michael I Apafi , the prince of Transylvania ( r. 1661–1690 ), acknowledged the suzerainty of Emperor Leopold I , who was also king of Hungary ( r. 1657–1705 ), in 1687. Grateful for the liberation of Buda , the Diet abolished the noblemen's right to resist the monarch for
732-699: 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
915-537: A charter of ennoblement, but not a single plot of land – and peasant-nobles continued to pay taxes, for which they were collectively known as taxed nobility. Nobility could be purchased from the kings who were often in need of funds. Landowners also benefitted from the ennoblement of their serfs, because they could demand a fee for their consent. The Diet was officially divided into two chambers in Royal Hungary in 1608. All adult male members of
1098-484: A consultative body into an important institution of law making in the 1440s. The magnates were always invited to attend it in person. Lesser noblemen were also entitled to attend the Diet, but in most cases they were represented by delegates, who were almost always the magnates' familiares . Hunyadi was the first noble to receive a hereditary title from a Hungarian king, when Ladislaus the Posthumous granted him
1281-500: 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
1464-403: A dozen castles were erected on the royal demesne. Most castles consisted of a tower, surrounded by a fortified courtyard, but the tower could also be built into the walls. Noblemen who could not erect fortresses were occasionally forced to abandon their inherited estates or seek the protection of more powerful lords, even through renouncing their liberties. The lords of the castles had to hire
1647-483: A due legal process; furthermore, they were exempt from all taxes and were entitled to resist the king if he attempted to interfere with their privileges. Werbőczy also implied that Hungary was actually a republic of nobles headed by a monarch, stating that all noblemen "are members of the Holy Crown" of Hungary. Quite anachronistically, he emphasized the idea of all noblemen's legal equality, but he had to admit that
1830-496: 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
2013-549: 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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#17327722293852196-454: A formal league with the aristocrats who had elected him king in early 1387. Initially, when his position was weak, he gave away more than half of the 150 royal castles to his supporters, although this abated when he strengthened his authority in the early 15th century. His favorites were foreigners, but old Hungarian families also took advantage of his magnanimity. The wealthiest noblemen, known as magnates , built comfortable castles in
2379-460: A hostage for himself. His authority ended only if he divided his estates with his sons, but the division could rarely be enforced. The "betrayal of fraternal blood" (that is, a kinsman's "deceitful, sly, and fraudulent ... disinheritance") was a serious crime, which was punished by loss of honor and the confiscation of all property. Although the Tripartitum did not explicitly mention it,
2562-508: 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)
2745-631: 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
2928-415: A noble woman who was given in marriage to a commoner should receive her inheritance "in the form of an estate in order to preserve the nobility of the descendants born of the ignoble marriage". According to the local customs of certain counties, her husband was also regarded as a nobleman – a noble by his wife. The peasants' legal position had been standardized in almost the entire kingdom by
3111-480: A nobleman's wife was also subject to his authority. She received her dower from her husband at the consummation of their marriage. If her husband died, she inherited his best coach-horses and clothes. Demand for foodstuffs grew rapidly in Western Europe in the 1490s. The landowners wanted to take advantage of the growing prices. They demanded labour service from their peasant tenants and started to collect
3294-494: A piece of land. Unlike a conditional noble, a familiaris remained de jure an independent landholder, only subject to the monarch. From the 1270s, the monarchs' coronation oath included a promise to respect the noblemen's liberties. The counties gradually transformed into an institution of the noblemen's local autonomy. Noblemen regularly discussed local matters at the counties' general assemblies. The sedria (the counties' law courts) became important elements in
3477-446: A professional staff for the defence of the castle and the management of its appurtenances. They primarily employed nobles who held nearby estates, which gave rise to the development of a new institution, known as familiaritas . A familiaris was a nobleman who entered into the service of a wealthier landowner in exchange for a fixed salary or a portion of revenue, or rarely for the ownership or usufruct (right to enjoyment) of
3660-455: A quarter of the territory of the kingdom when Corvinus died in 1490. A further tenth of all lands in the kingdom was in the possession of about 55 wealthy noble families. Other nobles held almost one third of the lands, but this group included 12–13,000 peasant-nobles who owned a single plot (or a part of it) and had no tenants. The Diets regularly compelled the peasant-nobles to pay tax on their plots. Average magnates held about 50 villages, but
3843-503: A reference to their (actual or presumed) common ancestor with the words de genere ("from the kindred"). Families descending from the same kindred adopted similar insignia. The author of the Gesta Hungarorum fabricated genealogies for them and emphasized that they could never be excluded from "the honor of the realm", that is from state administration. The new owners of the transferred royal estates wanted to subjugate
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#17327722293854026-419: A reliable source. Stephen I ( r. 997–1038 ), who was crowned the first king of Hungary in 1000 or 1001, defeated the last resisting tribal chieftains. Earthen forts were built throughout the kingdom and most of them developed into centers of royal administration. About 30 administrative units, known as counties , were established before 1040; more than 40 new counties were organized during
4209-521: 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
4392-755: A significant group in the 10th century. The highest-ranking Hungarians were buried either in large cemeteries (where hundreds of their men were buried without weapons around their leader's burial place), or in small cemeteries with 25–30 graves. The wealthy warriors' burial sites yielded richly decorated horse harness, and sabretaches ornamented with precious metal plaques. Rich women's graves contained their braid ornaments and rings made of silver or gold and decorated with precious stones. The most widespread decorative motifs which can be regarded as tribal totems – the griffin , wolf and hind – were rarely applied in Hungarian heraldry in
4575-612: 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 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
4758-459: 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
4941-465: Is always dependent on the will of the kingdom's inhabitants, in whose consent both the effectiveness and the force of the crown reside". Vladislaus died fighting the Ottomans during the Crusade of Varna in 1444 and the Diet elected seven captains in chief to administer the kingdom. The talented military commander, John Hunyadi (d. 1456), was elected the sole regent in 1446. The Diet developed from
5124-459: Is well-documented from the 1170s. The monarchs granted immunities, exempting the grantee's estates from the jurisdiction of the ispáns , or even renouncing royal revenues that had been collected there. Béla III ( r. 1172–1196 ) was the first Hungarian monarch to give away a whole county to a nobleman: he granted Modrus in Croatia to Bartholomew of Krk in 1193, stipulating that
5307-619: 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 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
5490-639: 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
5673-465: 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
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5856-728: 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
6039-610: 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
6222-599: 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
6405-662: The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which established the Second Constitutional Era and introduced competitive multi-party elections under 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
6588-545: 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
6771-856: 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
6954-545: 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
7137-795: 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
7320-520: The Habsburg dynasty in Royal Hungary, but prevented the Transylvanian noblemen from challenging their own authority. Ennoblement of whole groups of people was not unusual in the 17th century. Examples include the 10,000 hajdú who received nobility as a group in 1605. After the Diet was divided into two chambers in Royal Hungary in 1608, noblemen with a hereditary title had a seat in
7503-506: 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
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7686-669: 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,
7869-708: 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
8052-641: 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
8235-648: The Ottoman Empire reached the southern frontiers in the 1390s. A large anti-Ottoman crusade ended with a catastrophic defeat near Nicopolis in 1396. Next year, Sigismund held a Diet in Temesvár (now Timișoara in Romania) to strengthen the defence system. He confirmed the Golden Bull, but without the two provisions that limited the noblemen's military obligations and established their right to resist
8418-534: 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
8601-549: The Saxon district of Bistritz (now Bistrița in Romania) with the title perpetual count in 1453. Hunyadi's son, Matthias Corvinus ( r. 1458–1490 ), who was elected king in 1458, rewarded further noblemen with the same title. Fügedi states that 16 December 1487 was the "birthday of the estate of magnates in Hungary", because an armistice signed on this day listed 23 Hungarian "natural barons", contrasting them with
8784-689: 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
8967-512: 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
9150-608: 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 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
9333-454: The borderlands . Official documents from the end of the 12th century only mentioned court dignitaries and ispáns as noblemen. This group had adopted most elements of chivalric culture. They regularly named their children after Paris of Troy , Hector , Tristan , Lancelot and other heroes of Western European chivalric romances . The first tournaments were held around the same time. The regular alienation of royal estates
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#17327722293859516-441: The upper house , other nobles sent delegates to the lower house . After the Ottomans' defeat in the Great Turkish War in the late 17th century, Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary were integrated into the Habsburg monarchy . The Habsburgs confirmed the nobles' privileges several times, but their attempts to strengthen royal authority regularly brought them into conflicts with the nobility, who represented nearly five percent of
9699-559: The 1350s. The free peasant tenants were to pay seigneurial taxes, but were rarely obliged to provide labour service . In 1351, the king ordered that the ninth – a tax payable to the landowners – was to be collected from all tenants, thus preventing landowners from offering lower taxes to persuade tenants to move from other lords' lands to their estates. In 1328, all landowners were authorized to administer justice on their estates "in all cases except cases of theft, robbery, assault or arson" which remained under
9882-461: The 13th century. Thereafter the division of inherited property became the standard practice. Even families descended from wealthy clans could become impoverished through the regular divisions of their estates. Medieval documents mention the basic unit of estate organization as praedium or allodium . A praedium was a piece of land (either a whole village or part of it) with well-marked borders. Archaeologist Mária Wolf identifies
10065-440: The 1630s. The Calvinist princes of Transylvania supported their co-religionists. Gabriel Bethlen granted nobility to all Calvinist pastors. The kings and the Transylvanian princes regularly ennobled commoners, but often without granting landed property to them. Jurisprudence maintained that only those who owned land cultivated by serfs could be regarded as fully fledged noblemen. Armalists – noblemen who held
10248-424: The 1670s. Mercenaries replaced the Hungarian garrisons, and they frequently plundered the countryside. The monarch also supported Cardinal Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch 's attempts to restrict the Protestants' rights. Tens of thousands of Catholic Germans and Orthodox Serbs were settled in the reconquered territories. The outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715) provided an opportunity for
10431-431: 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, 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
10614-486: 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
10797-445: 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
10980-461: The Carpathian Basin in the 10th century, but fortresses were also rare in Western Europe during the same period. A larger log cabin – measuring five by five metres (16 ft × 16 ft) – which was built on a foundation of stones in Borsod was tentatively identified as the local leader's household. More than a 1,000 graves yielding sabres , arrow-heads and bones of horses show that mounted warriors formed
11163-446: 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
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#173277222938511346-444: 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,
11529-506: The Crown's interests: only kin within the third degree could inherit a nobleman's property and noblemen who had only more distant relatives could not dispose of their property without the king's consent. Louis I emphasized all noblemen enjoyed "one and the selfsame liberty" in his realms and secured all privileges that nobles owned in Hungary proper to their Slavonian and Transylvanian peers. He rewarded dozens of Vlach knezes with true nobility for military merits. The vast majority of
11712-482: 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
11895-442: The Golden Bull in 1318 and claimed that noblemen had to fight in his army at their own expense. He ignored customary law and regularly " promoted a daughter to a son ", granting her the right to inherit her father's estates. The King reorganized the royal household, appointing pages and knights to form his permanent retinue. He established the Order of Saint George , which was the first chivalric order in Europe. Charles I
12078-473: The Hungarian royal prerogative of prefection the kings could promote "a daughter to a son", allowing her to inherit her father's lands. Noblewomen who had married a commoner could also claim their inheritance – the daughters' quarter (that is one-quarter of their father's possessions) – in land. Although the Tripartitum – a frequently cited compilation of customary law published in 1514 – reinforced
12261-405: 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
12444-664: 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
12627-413: 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
12810-402: 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
12993-447: The Magyars spoke both Hungarian and "the tongue of the Chazars " (a powerful steppe people ), showing that at least their leaders were bilingual . The Magyars lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic life but archaeological research shows that most settlements consisted of small pit-houses and log cabins in the 10th century. Tents in use are only mentioned in 12th-century literary sources. No archeological finds evidence fortresses in
13176-541: 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
13359-651: 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
13542-615: 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 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
13725-518: 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,
13908-541: 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
14091-555: 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
14274-455: 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 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
14457-600: 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
14640-563: 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
14823-626: 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
15006-588: The Székely and Saxon territories in Transylvania. Székelys and Saxons could only enjoy the liberties of noblemen if they held estates outside the lands of the two privileged communities. Most noble families failed to adopt a strategy to avoid the division of their inherited estates into dwarf-holdings through generations. Daughters could only demand the cash equivalent of the quarter of their father's estates, but younger sons rarely remained unmarried. Impoverished noblemen had little chance to receive land grants from
15189-521: 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
15372-631: The Upper Hungarian "noble sons of servants" achieved the status of true noblemen without a formal royal act, because the memory of their conditional landholding fell into oblivion. Most of them preferred Slavic names even in the 14th century, showing that they spoke the local Slavic vernacular . Other groups of conditional nobles remained distinguished from true noblemen. They developed their own institutions of self-government, known as seats or districts . Louis decreed that only Catholic noblemen and knezes could hold landed property in
15555-727: The Vlach knezes (or chieftains) also endured. Neither of these hypotheses are universally accepted. Around 950, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus ( r. 913–959 ) wrote that the Hungarians were organized into " tribes ", and each had its own "prince". The tribal leaders most probably bore the title úr (now "lord"), as it is suggested by Hungarian terms deriving from this word, such as ország (now "realm") and uralkodni ("to rule"). The Emperor noted
15738-456: The administration of justice. They were headed by the ispáns or their deputies, but they consisted of four (in Slavonia and Transylvania, two) elected local noblemen, known as judges of the nobles. Hungary fell into a state of anarchy because of the minority of Ladislaus IV ( r. 1272–1290 ) in the early 1270s. To restore public order, the prelates convoked the barons and
15921-537: 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
16104-578: 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,
16287-433: The amount of the taxes to be collected in Hungary and demanded almost one third of the taxes (1.25 million florins) from the clergy and the nobility. The palatine, Prince Paul Esterházy (d. 1713), convinced the monarch to reduce the noblemen's tax burden to 0.25 million florins, but the difference was to be paid by the peasantry. Leopold did not trust the Hungarians, because a group of magnates had conspired against him in
16470-433: The ancestral lands. Even if they could present documents, they were to pay a fee – a tenth of the value of the claimed property – as compensation for the costs of the liberation war. Few noblemen could meet the criteria and more than half of the recovered lands were distributed among foreigners. They were naturalized, but most of them never visited Hungary. The Habsburg administration doubled
16653-489: 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
16836-472: The battlefield and two claimants, John Zápolya ( r. 1526–1540 ) and Ferdinand of Habsburg ( r. 1526–1564 ), were elected kings. Ferdinand tried to reunite Hungary after Zápolya died in 1540, but the Ottoman Sultan , Suleiman the Magnificent ( r. 1520–1566 ), intervened and captured Buda in 1541. The sultan allowed Zápolya's widow, Isabella Jagiellon (d. 1559), to rule
17019-600: 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
17202-444: The central regions to the unoccupied territories. Peasants who lived along the borders paid taxes both to the Ottomans and their former lords. Commoners were regularly recruited to serve in the royal army or in the magnates' retinues to replace the noblemen who had perished during fights. The irregular hajdú foot-soldiers – mainly runaway serfs and dispossessed noblemen – became important elements of
17385-642: 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
17568-448: 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
17751-634: 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
17934-689: 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
18117-537: The condition that they were to equip jointly a fixed number of knights. The nobles of the Church formed the armed retinue of the wealthiest prelates. The nobles of Turopolje in Slavonia were required to provide food and fodder to high-ranking royal officials. Two privileged groups, the Székelys and Saxons firmly protected their communal liberties, which prevented their leaders from exercising noble privileges in
18300-463: The consent of the owner's kinsmen who could potentially inherit them. From the early 12th century, only family lands traceable back to a grant made by Stephen I could be inherited by the deceased owner's distant relatives; other estates escheated to the Crown if their owner did not have offspring or brothers. Aristocratic families held their inherited domains in common for generations before
18483-504: The consent of the royal council. After he died in 1439, a civil war broke out between the partisans of his son, Ladislaus the Posthumous ( r. 1440–1457 ), and the supporters of the child king's rival, Vladislaus III of Poland ( r. 1440–1444 ). Ladislaus the Posthumous was crowned without election with the Holy Crown of Hungary , but the Diet proclaimed the coronation invalid, stating that "the crowning of kings
18666-503: The countryside which became important centers of social life. These fortified manor houses always contained a hall for representative purposes and a private chapel. Sigismund regularly invited the magnates to the royal council, even if they did not hold higher offices. He founded a new chivalric order, the Order of the Dragon , in 1408 to reward his most loyal supporters. The expansion of
18849-443: The county level. In 1232, the royal servants of Zala County asked Andrew II to authorize them "to judge and do justice", stating that the county had slipped into anarchy. The king granted their request and Bartholomew, Bishop of Veszprém , sued one Ban Oguz for properties before their community. The first Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241 proved the importance of well-fortified locations and heavily armored cavalry. In
19032-424: The defence forces. Stephen Bocskai , Prince of Transylvania ( r. 1605–1606 ), settled 10,000 hajdús in seven villages and exempted them from taxation in 1605, which was the "largest collective ennoblement" in the history of Hungary. In addition to the Székely and Saxon leaders, the noblemen formed one of the three nations (or Estates of the realm) in Transylvania, but they could rarely challenge
19215-422: The defense of their liberties. In 1688, the Diet authorized the aristocrats to establish a special trust , known as fideicommissum , with royal consent to prevent the distribution of their landed wealth among their descendants. In accordance with the traditional concept of aviticitas , inherited estates could not be subject to the trust. Estates in fideicommissum were always held by one person, but he
19398-471: The delegates of the noblemen and the nomadic Cumans who had settled in Hungary to a general assembly near Pest in 1277. This first Diet (or parliament) declared the fifteen-year-old monarch to be of age in an attempt to put en end to the anarchy. In the early 1280s, Simon of Kéza associated the Hungarian nation with the nobility in his Deeds of the Hungarians , emphasizing that the community of noblemen held real authority. The barons took advantage of
19581-410: The development of heavy cavalry in Hungary. Their descendants were labelled as newcomers for centuries, but intermarriage between natives and newcomers was not rare, which enabled their integration in two or three generations. The monarchs pursued an expansionist policy from the late 11th century. Ladislaus I ( r. 1077–1095 ) seized Slavonia – the plains between
19764-495: The development of a "supranational aristocracy" in the Habsburg monarchy . Foreign aristocrats regularly received Hungarian citizenship , and Hungarian noblemen were often naturalized in the Habsburgs' other realms. The Habsburg kings rewarded the most powerful magnates with hereditary titles such as baron from the 1530s. The aristocrats supported the spread of the Reformation . Most noblemen adhered to Lutheranism in
19947-522: 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 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
20130-419: The discontented Hungarians to rise against Leopold. They regarded one of the wealthiest aristocrats, Prince Francis II Rákóczi (d. 1735), as their leader. Rákóczi's War of Independence lasted from 1703 to 1711. Although the rebels were forced to yield, the Treaty of Szatmár granted a general amnesty for them and the new Habsburg monarch, Charles III ( r. 1711–1740 ), promised to respect
20313-643: The district of Karánsebes (now Caransebeș in Romania) in 1366, but Eastern Orthodox landowners were not forced to convert to Catholicism in other territories of the kingdom. Even the Catholic bishop of Várad (now Oradea in Romania) authorized his Vlach voivodes (leaders) to employ Orthodox priests. The king granted the Transylvanian district of Fogaras (around present-day Făgăraș in Romania) to Vladislav I of Wallachia ( r. 1364–1377 ) in fief in 1366. In his new duchy, Vladislav donated estates to Wallachian boyars ; their legal status
20496-655: 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
20679-514: 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
20862-544: 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
21045-523: 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
21228-438: The first half of the 20th century. Hungarian nobility The Kingdom of Hungary held a noble class of individuals, most of whom owned landed property , from the 11th century until the mid-20th century. Initially, a diverse body of people were described as noblemen, but from the late 12th century only high-ranking royal officials were regarded as noble. Most aristocrats claimed ancestry from chieftains of
21411-484: 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
21594-506: The following centuries. Defeats during the Hungarian invasions of Europe and clashes with the paramount rulers from the Árpád dynasty had decimated the leading families by the end of the 10th century. The Gesta Hungarorum , a chronicle written around 1200, claimed that dozens of noble kindred flourishing in the late 12th century had been descended from tribal leaders, but most modern scholars do not regard this list as
21777-470: The following decades, Béla IV of Hungary ( r. 1235–1270 ) gave away large parcels of the royal demesne , expecting that the new owners would build stone castles there. Béla's burdensome castle-building program was unpopular, but achieved his aim: almost 70 castles were built or reconstructed during his reign. More than half of the new or reconstructed castles were in noblemen's domains. Most new castles were erected on rocky peaks, mainly along
21960-480: The freemen, castle warriors and other privileged groups of people living in or around their domains. The threatened groups wanted to achieve confirmation of their status as royal servants , emphasizing that they were only to serve the king. Béla III issued the first extant royal charter about the grant of this rank to a castle warrior. Andrew II's Golden Bull of 1222 enacted royal servants' privileges. They were exempt from taxation; they were to fight in
22143-404: The grantee was to equip warriors for the royal army. Béla's son, Andrew II ( r. 1205–1235 ), decided to "alter the conditions" of his realm and "distribute castles, counties, lands and other revenues" to his officials, as he narrated in a document in 1217. Instead of granting the estates in fief , with an obligation to render future services, he gave them as allods , in reward for
22326-441: The grantee's previous acts. The great officers who were the principal beneficiaries of his grants were mentioned as barons of the realm from the late 1210s. Donations of such a large scale accelerated the development of a wealthy group of landowners, most descending from a high-ranking kindred. Some wealthy landowners could afford to build stone castles. Closely related aristocrats were distinguished from other lineages through
22509-430: The high officers of state, who were mentioned as "barons of office". Corvinus' successor, Vladislaus II ( r. 1490–1516 ), and Vladislaus' son, Louis II ( r. 1516–1526 ), formally began to reward important persons of their government with the hereditary title of baron. Differences in the nobles' wealth increased in the second half of the 15th century. About 30 families owned more than
22692-435: The high officers of the realm, whom he mentioned as "true barons", were legally distinguished from other nobles. He also mentioned the existence of a distinct group, who were barons "in name only", but without specifying their peculiar status. The Tripartitum regarded the kindred as the basic unit of nobility. A noble father exercised almost autocratic authority over his sons, because he could imprison them or offer them as
22875-518: The highest-ranking royal official. The kings from the Árpád dynasty appointed their officials from among the members of about 110 aristocratic clans. These aristocrats were descended either from native (that is, Magyar, Kabar , Pecheneg or Slavic) chiefs, or from foreign knights who had migrated to the country in the 11th and 12th centuries. The foreign knights had been trained in the Western European art of war, which contributed to
23058-417: The idea that all noblemen were equal, the monarchs granted hereditary titles to powerful aristocrats, and the poorest nobles lost their tax exemption from the mid-16th century. In the early modern period, because of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire , Hungary was divided into three parts: Royal Hungary , Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary . The princes of Transylvania supported the noblemen's fight against
23241-648: 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
23424-411: The jurisdiction of the sedria . The kings started to grant noblemen the right to execute or mutilate criminals who were captured in their estates. The most influential noblemen's estates were also exempted of the jurisdiction of the counties' law courts. Royal power quickly declined after Louis I died in 1382. His son-in-law, Sigismund of Luxembourg ( r. 1387–1437 ), entered into
23607-476: The kings, because they were unable to participate in the monarchs' military campaigns, but commoners who bravely fought in the royal army were regularly ennobled. The historian Erik Fügedi noted that "castle bred castle" in the second half of the 13th century: if a landowner erected a fortress, his neighbors would also build one to defend their own estates. Between 1271 and 1320, noblemen or prelates built at least 155 new fortresses. In comparison, only about
23790-466: The lands east of the river Tisza on behalf of her infant son, John Sigismund ( r. 1540–1571 ), in return for a yearly tribute. His decision divided Hungary into three parts: the Ottomans occupied the central territories ; John Sigismund's eastern Hungarian Kingdom developed into the autonomous Principality of Transylvania ; and the Habsburg monarchs preserved the northern and western territories (or Royal Hungary ). Most noblemen fled from
23973-515: 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
24156-481: The last male member of the Árpád dynasty, died in 1301, about a dozen lords held sway over most parts of the kingdom. Ladislaus IV's great-nephew, Charles I ( r. 1301–1342 ), who was a scion of the Capetian House of Anjou , restored royal power in the 1310s and 1320s. He seized the oligarchs' castles mainly by force, which again secured the preponderance of the royal demesne. He refuted
24339-545: 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
24522-414: The limitation of military obligations. From the 1220s, royal servants were associated with the nobility and the highest-ranking officials were known as barons of the realm. Only those who owned allods – lands free of obligations – were regarded as true noblemen, but other privileged groups of landowners, known as conditional nobles , also existed. In the 1280s, Simon of Kéza
24705-526: 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
24888-702: The lowlands along the Middle Danube , annihilated Moravia and defeated the Bavarians in the 900s. According to some scholarly theories, at least three Hungarian noble clans were descended from Moravian aristocrats who survived the Magyar conquest . Historians who are convinced that the Vlachs (or Romanians ) were already present in the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century propose that
25071-404: The monarch if he ignored its provisions. Most provisions of the Golden Bull were first confirmed in 1231. The clear definition of the royal servants' liberties distinguished them from all other privileged groups, whose military obligations remained theoretically unlimited. From the 1220s, the royal servants were regularly called noblemen and started to develop their own corporate institutions at
25254-476: The monarchs. The Diet obliged all landowners to equip one archer for every 20 peasant plots on their domains to serve in the royal army. Sigismund granted large estates in Hungary to neighboring Orthodox rulers to secure their alliance. They established Basilite monasteries on their estates. Sigismund's son-in-law, Albert of Habsburg ( r. 1438–1439 ), was elected king in early 1438, but only after he promised always to make important decisions with
25437-546: 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
25620-421: 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
25803-466: 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
25986-456: The newly established Zselicszentjakab Abbey in 1061. The establishment of monasteries by wealthy individuals was common. Such proprietary monasteries served as burial places for their founders and the founders' descendants, who were regarded as the co-owners, or from the 13th century, co-patrons , of the monastery. Serfs cultivated part of the praedium , but other plots were hired out in return for in-kind taxes. The term "noble"
26169-404: The next centuries. Each county was headed by a royal official, the ispán . The royal court provided further career opportunities. As the historian Martyn Rady noted, the "royal household was the greatest provider of largesse in the kingdom" where the royal family owned more than two thirds of all lands. The palatine – the head of the royal household – was
26352-424: The peasant war were tortured and executed, but most rebels received a pardon. The Diet punished the peasantry as a group, condemning them to perpetual servitude and depriving them of the right of free movement. The Diet also enacted the serfs' obligation to provide one day's labour service for their lords each week. The Ottomans annihilated the royal army at the Battle of Mohács . Louis II died fleeing from
26535-448: The period preceding the establishment of the kingdom around 1000; others were descended from western European knights who settled in Hungary. The lower-ranking castle warriors also held landed property and served in the royal army. From the 1170s, most privileged laymen called themselves royal servants to emphasize their direct connection to the monarchs. The Golden Bull of 1222 established their liberties, especially tax exemption and
26718-406: 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
26901-748: The population. Reformist noblemen demanded the abolition of noble privileges from the 1790s, but their program was enacted only during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 . Most noblemen lost their estates after the emancipation of their serfs, but the aristocrats preserved their distinguished social status. State administration employed thousands of impoverished noblemen in Austria-Hungary . Prominent (mainly Jewish) bankers and industrialists were awarded with nobility, but their social status remained inferior to traditional aristocrats. Noble titles were abolished only in 1947 , months after Hungary
27084-494: The princes' authority. In Royal Hungary, the magnates successfully protected the noble privileges, because their vast domains were almost completely exempt from royal officials' authority. Their manors were fortified in the "Hungarian manner" (with walls made of earth and timber) in the 1540s. Noblemen in Royal Hungary could also count on the support of the Transylvanian princes against the Habsburg monarchs. Intermarriages among Austrian, Czech and Hungarian aristocrats gave rise to
27267-399: The principle of "one and the selfsame liberty" of all noblemen, but legal distinctions between true noblemen and conditional nobles prevailed. The most powerful nobles employed lesser noblemen as their familiares (retainers) but this private link did not sever the familiaris ' direct subjection to the monarch. According to customary law , only males inherited noble estates, but under
27450-557: The privileges of the Estates of the realm. Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire ( / ˈ ɒ t ə m ə n / ), also called the Turkish Empire , 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
27633-400: The regular division of inherited landed property could lead to the impoverishment of aristocratic families. Strategies applied to avoid this – family planning and celibacy – led to the extinction of most aristocratic families after a few generations. The Diet ordered the compilation of customary law in 1498. The jurist István Werbőczy (d. 1541) completed
27816-578: 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
27999-633: The river Drava and the Dinaric Alps – in the 1090s. His successor, Coloman ( r. 1095–1116 ), was crowned king of Croatia in 1102. Both realms retained their own customs, and Hungarians rarely received land grants in Croatia. According to customary law , Croatians could not be obliged to cross the river Drava to fight in the royal army at their own expense. The earliest royal decrees authorized landowners to dispose freely of their private estates, but customary law prescribed that inherited lands could only be transferred with
28182-430: The royal army without proper compensation only if enemy forces invaded the kingdom; only the monarch or the palatine could judge their cases. According to the Golden Bull, only royal servants who died without a son could freely will their estates, but even in this case, their daughters were entitled to the daughters' quarter . The final article of the Golden Bull authorized the bishops, barons and other nobles to resist
28365-589: The seigneurial taxes in kind. The Diets passed decrees that restricted the peasants' right to free movement and increased their burdens. The peasants' grievances unexpectedly culminated in a rebellion in May 1514. The rebels captured manor houses and murdered dozens of noblemen, especially on the Great Hungarian Plain . The voivode of Transylvania , John Zápolya , annihilated their main army at Temesvár on 15 July. György Dózsa and other leaders of
28548-467: 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
28731-493: The small motte forts , built on artificial mounds and protected by a ditch and a palisade that appeared in the 12th century, as the centers of private estates. Most wealthy landowners' domains consisted of scattered praedia , in several villages. Due to the scarcity of documentary evidence, the size of the private estates cannot be determined. The descendants of Otto Győr , the ispán of Somogy County remained wealthy landowners even after he donated 360 households to
28914-483: 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
29097-562: 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
29280-533: The task, presenting a law-book at the Diet in 1514. His Tripartitum – The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary in Three Parts – was never enacted, but it was consulted at the law courts for centuries. It summarized the noblemen's fundamental privileges in four points: noblemen were only subject to the monarch's authority and could only be arrested in
29463-512: 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
29646-698: The titled noble families had a seat in the Upper House. The lesser noblemen elected two or three delegates at the general assemblies of the counties to represent them in the Lower House. The Croatian and Slavonian magnates also had seats at the Upper House, and the sabor (or Diet) of Croatia and Slavonia sent delegates to the Lower House. Forces from the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth inflicted
29829-417: The tribal followers of Osman in 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
30012-511: The true noblemen. They held their estates conditionally, as they were required to provide well-defined services to another lord, hence their groups are now collectively known as conditional nobles . The noble Vlach knezes who had landed property in the Banate of Severin were obliged to fight in the army of the ban (or royal governor). Most warriors known as the "noble sons of servants" were descended from freemen or liberated serfs who received estates from Béla IV in Upper Hungary on
30195-466: 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,
30378-402: The weakening of royal authority and seized large, contiguous territories. The monarchs could not appoint and dismiss their officials at will anymore. The most powerful barons – known as oligarchs in modern historiography – appropriated royal prerogatives, combining private lordship with their administrative powers. When Andrew III ( r. 1290–1301 ),
30561-704: The western and northern borderlands. The spread of stone castles profoundly changed the structure of landholding, because castles could not be maintained without proper income. Lands and villages were legally attached to each castle, and castles were thereafter always transferred and inherited along with these " appurtenances ". The royal servants were legally identified as nobles in 1267. That year "the nobles of all Hungary, called royal servants" persuaded Béla IV and his son, Stephen V ( r. 1270–1272 ), to hold an assembly and confirm their collective privileges. Other groups of land-holding warriors could also be called nobles, but they were always distinguished from
30744-399: The western regions of Royal Hungary, but Calvinism was the dominant religion in Transylvania and other regions. John Sigismund promoted Unitarian views, but most Unitarian noblemen perished in battles in the early 1600s. The Habsburgs remained staunch supporters of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the most prominent aristocratic families converted to Catholicism in Royal Hungary in
30927-410: 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,
31110-427: Was György Széchenyi (1603–1695), who served as Archbishop of Esztergom . The family received the title of Imperial Count in 1697 by Emperor Leopold I . In 1777 Count Ferenc Széchényi purchased the lands of Sárvár and Felvidék and from then on the family members bore the name Count Széchényi de Sárvár-Felsövidek . The elder, non-comital, branch of the family bore the name Széchényi-Szabó but became extinct in
31293-400: 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
31476-414: 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
31659-484: 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
31842-479: Was not a member of 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
32025-409: 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
32208-423: 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
32391-410: Was proclaimed a republic . The Magyars (or Hungarians) lived in the Pontic steppes when they first appear in written sources from the mid-9th century. Muslim merchants described them as wealthy nomadic warriors, but they also noticed the Magyars had extensive arable lands. The Magyars crossed the Carpathian Mountains after the Pechenegs invaded their lands in 894 or 895. They settled in
32574-532: Was rarely used and poorly defined before the 13th century: it could refer to a courtier, a landowner with judicial powers, or even to a common warrior. The existence of a diverse group of warriors, who were subjected to the monarch, royal officials or prelates is well documented. The castle warriors , who were exempt from taxation, held hereditary landed property around the royal castles. Lightly armored horsemen, known as lövők (or archers), and armed castle folk , mentioned as őrök (or guards), defended
32757-511: Was required to hold his own banderium (or armed retinue), distinguished by his own banner. In 1351, Charles's son and successor, Louis I ( r. 1342–1382 ) confirmed all provisions of the Golden Bull, save the one that authorized childless noblemen to freely will their estates. Instead, he introduced an entail system, prescribing that childless noblemen's landed property "should descend to their brothers, cousins and kinsmen". This new concept of aviticitas also protected
32940-444: Was responsible for the proper boarding of his relatives. The liberation of central Hungary continued, and the Ottomans were forced to acknowledge the loss of the territory in 1699. Leopold set up a special committee to distribute the lands in the reconquered territories. The descendants of the noblemen who had held estates there before the Ottoman conquest were required to provide documentary evidence to substantiate their claims to
33123-412: Was similar to the position of the knezes in other regions of Hungary. Royal charters customarily identified noblemen and landowners from the second half of the 14th century. A man who lived in his own house on his own estates was described as living "in the way of nobles", in contrast with those who did not own landed property and lived "in the way of peasants". A verdict of 1346 declared that
33306-435: Was the first Hungarian monarch to grant coats of arms (or rather crests ) to his subjects. He based royal administration on honors (or office fiefs), distributing most counties and royal castles among his highest-ranking officials. These "baronies", as the historian Matteo Villani (d. 1363) recorded it in about 1350, were "neither hereditary nor lifelong", but Charles rarely dismissed his most trusted barons. Each baron
33489-412: Was the first to claim that noblemen held authority in the kingdom. The counties developed into institutions of noble autonomy, and the nobles' delegates attended the Diets (parliaments). The wealthiest barons built stone castles allowing them to control vast territories, but royal authority was restored in the early 14th century. In 1351, King Louis I introduced an entail system and enacted
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