Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire, 1683–1918

Abstract

The Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1918) ruled over most of the territories of what is now known as the Middle East. The Ottomans were a Muslim dynasty (the house of Osman) that governed multireligious and multiethnic populations from the steppes of Russia to the Balkans and the Arabian Peninsula as well as North Africa, the Levant, and Turkey from the 1300s to 1918. The Ottoman difference lies in its creation of a ruling class of any and all that joined the sultan’s household, in some cases without even converting to Islam (such as troops that were provided by Ottomans’ vassals in the 14th century through the 16th century). The military power of the dynasty was based initially on the assignment of military fiefs (timars) to a warrior class known as sipahis, and the creation of a unique slave military infantry known as the Janissaries (new troops) and elite formations of household cavalrymen (kapıkulu süvarileri), who have been recognized as the first disciplined standing army of Europe. This combined cavalry and infantry power rapidly conquered Anatolia and the Balkans and absorbed and assimilated existing Byzantine and Islamic institutions. It twice fought its way to the gates of Vienna, the second time in 1683 when a coalition of European monarchs turned the tide in favor of Christendom. The date 1683 has ever since served as one of the great turning points of civilization in having come to represent the moment when “the Turk” was definitively turned back from the gates of Europe. The defeat led to a century of crisis and introspection on the part of the Ottomans, further disastrous defeats, and the gradual realization that the power of the once formidable Janissaries and fief-holding cavalrymen had weakened. Over the next century and a half, the entire premise of Ottoman rule, structured on patrimonial rule and sultanic largesse, would be altered in the struggle for survival. The results of that struggle included the decentralization of state revenues, the building of local paramilitary armies, and the blurring of the traditional categories of bureaucrat-warrior service class (askeri) and tax-paying class (reaya). In addition, the period saw the creation of wealthy state officials and local power holders who engineered (or resisted), largely from the 1790s to the 1830s, the destruction of the traditional armed forces and the creation of a new European-style disciplined, regimental force based on conscription of the Muslim population. The political contract that emerged in the era known as the Tanzimat period (1839–1876) constituted an Ottoman-style constitutional monarchy pledging equality of citizenship and taxation before the law even to non-Muslims, who had previously been tolerated as zimmi (people of the book) and largely excluded from military service and high-level administration. Despite such achievements, economic mismanagement, Christian and Muslim sectarianism, and continuous military pressure from Russia, coupled with empire-wide nationalist movements, led to further crushing defeats and the rise of a militarized and racialized Turkish nationalism in the Young Turks movement. More specifically, the Committee of Union and Progress, which relied on German financing and know-how to reorganize and arm the military at the turn of the 19th century, entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers in 1914, and collapsed into ashes along with the monarchies of Russia and Austria-Hungary at the end of that war in 1918.