Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

Pinar Emiralioglu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138247543
• eBook ISBN: 9781351934213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

Exploring the reasons for a flurry of geographical works in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, this study analyzes how cartographers, travellers, astrologers, historians and naval captains promoted their vision of the world and the centrality of the Ottoman Empire in it. It proposes a new case study for the interconnections among empires in the period, demonstrating how the Ottoman Empire shared political, cultural, economic, and even religious conceptual frameworks with contemporary and previous world empires.

Chapter 1

Negotiating Space and Imperial Ideology in the Sixteenth-century ottoman empire

The first half of the sixteenth century was a period of rapid territorial expansion that put the ottomans in contact with different geographical regions and peoples. New geographies and the urgent need to consolidate their control over newly conquered lands and peoples forced a change in the Ottomans’ understanding of space and empire. Triggered by military conflict and territorial expansion in the East and West, these changes revolutionized the political-cultural perspectives of the ottoman ruling elites and intellectuals. This new era in the history of the Ottoman Empire coincided with the reigns of Selim I (r. 1512-20) and Süleyman I (r. 1520-66). During the reign of these sultans, the Ottomans reached Hungary and took control of strategic islands and ports in the Mediterranean. In the East, the ottoman domains extended to the Red Sea, with the potential to reach the shores of the Indian Ocean. Assimilating the newly conquered territories and peoples into the ottoman domains was simultaneously a political and mental process. As the Ottoman court articulated its sultan’s role as a world conqueror and the sovereign of an ever-expanding empire, intellectuals revised the existing geographical literature to either suit or shape an emerging vision of the empire.

This Ottoman imperial project did not take place in a vacuum but rather in a context shaped by interaction with the Habsburg Empire in the West and the Safavid empire in the east. The ottomans shared a variety of imperial cultural and political strategies with these rival empires, with whom they engaged militarily, politically, and intellectually throughout the sixteenth century. This chapter analyzes these interactions and demonstrates how military and political conflicts with the Habsburgs and the Safavids influenced Ottoman geographical consciousness. It offers a close textual analysis of ottoman chronicles, royal histories, campaign diaries, travel accounts, and geographical works. One of this chapter’s central aims is to show that a distinct group of geographers emerged in the ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century. This select group of intellectuals informed their elite audience, the members of the Ottoman court, on the latest geographical knowledge. In doing so, they tried to shape the political visions of their audience and promote the agenda of their patrons. Understanding the processes of production, the purpose, use, and reception of these geographical accounts will shed light on the intellectual and political networks interlinked in the sixteenth century ottoman Empire. In this period, Ottoman geographers published works that displayed their knowledge and talents and sought patronage from the members of the Ottoman court. The ottoman court, in return, commissioned maps, travel accounts, and cosmographies to articulate their imperial claims to the Ottoman center and beyond.

Selim I and the Formation of Ottoman Imperial Ideology

It shall be known that the superior aim and highest claim of the establishment of the divine caliphate is restricted to empowering the Muslim religion and fending off the vestiges of oppression and erasing unbelief and heresy from the lands of Cairo [...] and by the existence of its glory and pride to serve the holy places and to protect the principles of Islam and provide for purity and unity.¹

Two years after ascending to the Ottoman throne in 1514, Sultan Selim I embarked upon one of the most difficult military campaigns in Ottoman history. His rival was Shah Ismail of the Safavids, who was then in nominal control of Tabriz, Ardabil, Yazd, Kashan, Hamadan, Isfahan, Shiraz, Diyar Bakr, and Baghdad. Ismail, the young and charismatic leader of the Safavid Sufi order, had captured Tabriz in 1501 and declared the city his capital.² His rapid territorial expansion posed a threat to the Ottoman domains. To make matters worse, Ismail proclaimed Twelver Shi’ism as his new realm’s religion, which placed even more pressure on the Ottomans by introducing a religious dimension into the conflict. Ismail’s ascendancy had already affected the Ottoman domains during the reign of Selim’s father, Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512). At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Safavid missionaries tried to influence the Turkmen tribes in eastern Anatolia. Since the reign of Mehmed II, the Ottoman state had been trying to bring the tribal population in eastern Anatolia under the central administration and break up the old order of tribal allegiances.³ Unhappy with the Ottoman state’s taxation and land administration policies, the Turkmen tribes welcomed Ismail’s patronage and Safavid appreciation for their nomadic way of life and readiness to engage in warfare. Selim, who was then a prince in Trebizond, had witnessed these growing religious and military challenges to Ottoman legitimacy, and he vowed to repel anyone who threatened the Ottomans or encroached on their territory.⁴

In the summer of 1514, Selim's armies defeated Shah Ismail at the Battle of Chaldiran. No sooner had he entered the Safavid capital of Tabriz in September 1514 than he immediately launched his next campaign against the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria.⁵ After capturing Aleppo and Damascus in 1516, Selim I ordered immediate preparations for the invasion of Egypt—he entered Cairo in 1517. Following this final triumph, the sharifs (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and governors) of Mecca and Medina recognized Selim's sovereignty.⁶

At first glance, these campaigns, which resulted in the addition of new territories to the Ottoman domains, appeared to be perfect opportunities for Selim to trumpet his talents as a soldier and ruler. But victory presented bigger challenges than Selim had anticipated. During and after these campaigns, Selim I was confronted with a difficult task. While campaigns against Christian empires were noncontroversial given Christendom’s demonstrable hostility to Islam and followed a well-established tradition of frontier warfare known as ghaza, campaigns against Muslim powers presented unique challenges.⁷ When the Ottomans expanded into Anatolia in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, they fought against Muslim principalities such as Karasi. But, the early Ottomans were still early converts. They moved and acted within the liminal spaces between the monotheistic faiths. In this period, there was no overarching political or religious structure to define how the state religion should be observed or which actions by the rulers should be considered against Islam.⁸ However, the political conditions had now changed. War with the Safavids in the sixteenth century clashed with the Ottomans' social, economic, and ideological expectations. Now, Selim would have to legitimize his actions before the Janissaries, Ottoman subjects, and neighboring Muslim rulers. Selim simply could not ignore the Safavid threat. Safavid military power and Shi'i proselytizing activities put Ottoman sovereignty in eastern Anatolia at risk. Shah Ismail's charisma and popularity in the region prompted the Ottoman ruler to obtain a fatwa (legal opinion) from his Çeyhülislam (the grand mufti of Constantinople), declaring Ismail and his followers to be heretics whose destruction was not merely legitimate but obligatory.⁹

Shah Ismail openly challenged the ottoman sultan’s worldly and spiritual authority. His sympathizers proliferated in Anatolia and tried to subvert Selim’s political authority in the region. Ismail’s own poetry reveals that the young shah used Persian and Mediterranean cultural references and Twelver Shi’ism simultaneously to create an image of and for himself. In his poems, he referred to himself as Faridun, Khusraw, Rustam, Alexander, and Jesus and he also claimed to be the Mahdi (the guided one), who would emerge from hiding and drastically reform the world.¹⁰ By openly claiming to be the Mahdi, Ismail combined political and religious authority in himself.¹¹

Shah Ismail’s image as challenger to the mighty Selim I resonated in Europe, traveling beyond the Ottoman and Safavid domains. In Venice and France, reports about the Safavid Shah emphasized his sympathetic stance toward Christians. In these reports, Ismail was deemed a messianic figure who would stop Ottoman expansion from the east.¹² european powers thus sought economic and political alliances with the Safavids, grateful for any potential check to the ottomans’ seemingly unstoppable western expansion. Selim had reasons to believe that enemies surrounded the ottoman realm, a situation that military might alone could not resolve.

The ottoman response to the Safavid threat generated a new political and cultural discourse in Constantinople. After conquering Egypt and Syria, Selim became an active champion of Islam, defending his realm against the “heretics” and “infidels”—in other words, Safavids and Mamluks—whose intransigence hindered the empire’s struggle against its Christian enemies.¹³ In response to Shah Ismail’s embodiment of important Mediterranean religious and political figures, the Ottoman sultan and his ruling elites began to refer to Selim as “the protector of the two holy cities and the pilgrimage routes, and of all Muslims of the world,” the Mahdi,¹⁴ and sahib-kiran-i heft iklim (master of the auspicious conjunction in seven climes), pertaining to his status as universal ruler.¹⁵ These claims by Selim I not only challenged Ismail’s image and popularity but also quieted the unruly troops. Thus began the transformation of the office of the sultan from a temporal political ruler to an idealized spiritual force. Some contemporary historians believed that if Selim had lived longer, he would have become the next Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan.¹⁶ The Ottoman Empire became a major player in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea through his conquests.

Selim’s World: The Mediterranean and the Red Sea

Selim’s conquests extended Ottoman control to the major trade ports of the eastern Mediterranean. Control of the Mediterranean was essential, if the Ottomans were to implement their economic and political policies in the region.¹⁷ As the Ottoman territories reached the Red Sea, the demographics of the empire changed so that the majority of its population was now Muslim. Prior to these conquests, the ostensibly Muslim Ottoman Empire was comprised mainly of old Byzantine lands and mostly populated with Christian subjects. The changing demographics and geographical positioning of the empire led to the reformulation of its political and economic policies. Provisioning the urban centers and keeping the trade and pilgrimage routes safe became an unequivocal priority for the Ottoman state. This ambitious task required military might in the Mediterranean.

The creation of a stronger Ottoman navy had already started during the reign of Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512).¹⁸ Bayezid increased the size of the fleet and established a close link between the corsairs of the Mediterranean and the imperial fleet.¹⁹ Ottoman sea captains of that era had directly confronted the Knights of Rhodes, the Venetians, and the Spanish Habsburgs in the Mediterranean.²⁰ After Selim's conquests in the East, the Ottomans controlled Egypt—a major source of grain in the Mediterranean—and the major port cities of Alexandria and Tripoli. The communication lines between Anatolia and Arab lands (especially the holy cities of Mecca and Medina) and the Egyptian markets and ports had to be kept open. As soon as he returned from his eastern campaign, Selim I instructed his grand vizier Piri Mehmed Pasha (d. 1532/33) to enlarge the shipyards in Kasimpaça space in her analysis, argued that the Ottoman Empire was a formidable power in the early modern Levantine world. Brummett maintained that the Ottoman Empire aimed at control of trade as well as territory in this region. Accordingly, the empire reached these aims through economic and political alliances as well as milit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• List of Maps
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Pronunciation
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Eye of the World: Textual and Visual Repertoires of the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire
• chapter1 Negotiating Space and Imperial Ideology in the Sixteenth-century ottoman empire
• chapter 2 Mapping and Describing ottoman constantinople
• chapter3 Charting the Mediterranean: The ottoman Grand Strategy
• chapter4 Projecting the Frontiers of the Known World
• Epilogue Ottoman Geographical Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Bibliography
• Index