The Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian Uprising

Janissaries, Modernisation and Rebellion in the Nineteenth Century

Fatma Sel Turhan

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781780761114
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857736765
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Bosnia enjoyed a special status within the Ottoman Empire. Many of the empire's 'janissaries', an elite military stratum of soldiers and nobleman, hailed from this Balkan region. So when Sultan Mehmet II abolished this warrior class in 1826, and this curtailed the regions access to influence in Constantinople, Bosnia rebelled. Under the leadership of Husein Gradascevic, the 'dragon of Bosnia', the kingdom declared independence and waged war with the Ottoman Empire. For the first time, Fatma Sel Turhan illuminates a period of crucial importance to the Balkan regions. She argues convincingly that the uprising was a response to Ottoman moves towards modernization designed to save the Ottoman Empire from decline, but which eventually led to its demise. She assesses how far the uprising can be considered a nationalist movement, who the rebels were, and how the central authorities dealt with and punished the perpetrators. "The Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian Uprising" is a major fresh contribution to our understanding of the late Ottoman world and the history of the Balkans.

CHAPTER 1

BOSNIA: GEOGRAPHY AND SOCIETY

The land

Vilâyet-i Bosna bir memleket-i vasî‘ ekseri cibâl-i râsiyâttur; tağları refî‘ ve kılâ‘ı menî‘, maâdin-i fidda vü zehebi müștemil bir memlekettür. Âb ü havâsı letâfetinden menba‘-ı mahâbîb cins-i ins olmıștur ki her geh ki teșbîh-i mehâbîb olunmalu olsa müșebbehün bih anı iderler; ‘Bosna mahbûbına benzer’ dirler. Mesel-i sâyirdür. Mahbûb oğlanlar ve mahbûbe câriyeleri kâmet-i bâlâ ve sûret-i zîbâ ve talat-ı beyzâ, meylâ, șehlâ sıfatları ile âlemde güneș gibi meșhûrlardur.¹

Bosnia, vast in extent and mountainous in character, has often been described in this way, with a heavy emphasis on the country’s natural wealth and its geostrategic position. Very mountainous, Bosnia stretches from the dense forest and rich high plateau pastures of north-central Bosnia to the dry and barren landscape of western Herzegovina, and is divided by rivers, most of which are non-navigable. As Braudel states in his great work, The Mediterranean, ‘The traveler crossing from the bare stones of Herzegovina to the wooded slopes of Bosnia enters a different world, as Jean Brunhes has noted’.² It is mainly because of this characteristic of Bosnia that the nineteenth-century Austrian geologist Ami Boué, who made three trips to the Balkan lands, called Bosnia the ‘Switzerland of Turkey’.³

Geographically, the Bosnian lands were a long way from the centre of Ottoman authority. The city of Saray in the Bosnia eyalet was almost twice as far from Istanbul as it was from Vienna, then the capital of the Habsburg Empire. Belgrade, then the Serbian capital, was four times closer than Istanbul; and the northern borders of Bosnia then were closer to Berlin than they were to Istanbul. Due to the territory’s mountainous character, even small groups of defenders would be able to cope with large armies.⁴

Thus while the mountains encouraged localism and division into small units, at the same time they acted as places of exile or refuge for defeated groups. The term ‘Balkan’ derived through Turkish from two Persian words meaning ‘high house’ or ‘mountain’; it corresponds to an area of four or five different mountain systems, namely the Pindus and Dinaric Alps in the west, the Rhodope Mountains in the centre and southeast, and the Carpatho-Transylvanian and Balkan Alps in the northeast.⁵ The hazardous nature of the mountains led local people to warn visitors that ‘it is very dangerous to pass through the Balkans at night’, as in the case of Mustafa, the courier of the mutasarrıf of Çirmen who wanted to return there by night.⁶ Matija Mažuranić (1817–81), the youngest brother of two leaders of the Illyrian national movement in Croatia, gives detailed information about his journey to Bosnia, his life in Sarajevo and the return journey to Croatia between 1839 and 1840 after travelling there on a secret political mission on behalf of the Illyrian national movement.⁷ He describes the dangerous position of the roads as follows:

I left Zvornik in the afternoon at around eight o’clock Turkish time, but when I got to the outskirts two kavazi came up to me and asked me for the teskera (passport). I showed it to them, but – unable to read the teskera and seeing that I was German – they became worried that I might be a spy, so they searched me all over to see what I was carrying. They found two maps on me and said: ‘What is this then? Are you not a spy?’ This gave me something of a fright. Waiting for me to say something, they grabbed one each with their fingers and pretended that they were about to tear them up: ‘Talk, for otherwise we shall start tearing now.’ ‘Please don’t, Turks, please don’t, they’re my icons, I pray for them.’ ‘Ahaa! Peke, peke!’ they said, wrapped them up neatly and handed them back to me. They then told me to make haste, because the inn was far away and the land full of hajduks, and there was also a forest ahead of me. I gathered my things and hurried across the field, but did not manage to reach the forest before night caught up with me. I crossed the forest in darkness and arrived at a mehana to spend the night. They were surprised: whence was I coming so late? ‘From Zvornik’, I said. ‘But how come you managed to cross the forest without any trouble at all, when no one has done so before during day or night?’ they asked. ‘You were indeed very lucky.’⁸

It is important to note that among more than 1,000 documents that I studied, the term ‘Balkan’ appeared in very few.⁹ This is directly related to the fact that the term ‘Balkans’ gained currency only after the mid-nineteenth century following its use by the German geographer, Johann August Zeune, of the word Balkanhalbinsel (Balkan Peninsula) in 1808, and the publication by Major George Thomas Keppel of a book entitled Narrative of a Journey across the Balcan in 1831.¹⁰ According to one document, ‘although great efforts were made to catch fugitives among Saray bandits, they could not be seized since they were walking and riding in the Balkans’.¹¹ These statements reveal much about the difficult terrain of the Balkans. This rugged character was seen as an obstacle to the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia as well. According to the memoirs of Konstantin Mihailović:

And Mahmud Pașa said to İshak Pașa: ‘What must we do? What kind of response must we give the Bosnian king?’ İshak Pașa said: None other than this: Let us grant him a truce for fifteen years, and immediately, without delay we will march after them. And otherwise we would not be able to conquer Bosnia, for it is a mountainous land, and besides he will have the Hungarian king for help, and the Croats, and other rulers, and he will have taken measures so that then we will be able to do nothing against him.¹²

Apart from mountains, rivers also became natural barriers especially in winter. Once, due to the overflowing of the Mat River, the courier who was bringing new orders from the Sultan to Bosnia had to wait on the other side of the river for seven days from 27 May 1832 for the waters to recede, and reported this time loss to the Porte.¹³ Extreme winters with excessive cold and snow hindered comings and goings even to nearer places like İșkodra.¹⁴ This was also the main obstacle in the reciprocal transmission of news and information picked up by people who became a part of the communication networks either as official functionaries or merchants. Besides geographic obstacles, the considerable distance of the province from the Ottoman centre hampered communications via this network.

According to the couriers’ notes, the two-way journey between Bosnia and Istanbul took 20–40 days and the time gap was directly related to seasonal differences as well as the courier’s length of stay in Bosnia, according to his mission and his speed. According to one document, at least 22 days were needed in order to receive news from the Porte.¹⁵ On the other hand, in a courier’s note, it was said that since Bosnia was very distant from Istanbul, going and coming back would take at least 40 days.¹⁶ High speeds could substantially reduce this time span. According to another courier, for example, the one-way journey from Istanbul to Bosnia took nine days.¹⁷

Remoteness from the Ottoman centre as part of its northwest borderland was also a very decisive factor in the history of Bosnia. The border between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires was very flexible and shifted easily, mainly because of the difficulties of each empire in holding and garrisoning the region¹⁸ and due to the demographic mobility which was supported by these empires because of the sparsely populated character of the region.¹⁹ This is even true for the sixteenth century, a period which was characterized by a high level of centralization.²⁰ Mustafa Âli, for example, who had been a military commander in the serhad of Bosnia during the second half of the sixteenth century, complained that the Sultan’s orders could not be carried out along the remote Bosnian borders.²¹ There had always been demographic movement from Dalmatia to Bosnia and from Bosnia to the Habsburg lands, mainly on the part of Christian groups. Commerce, wars and propaganda catalysed this human traffic and created a more fluid borderland in which neither empire could succeed in maintaining stable conditions.²²

Moreover, while remoteness from the Ottoman centre strength-ened the particularity and regionalism in which state intervention became more complicated, Bosnia’s position as a frontier land compelled the Porte to enforce its policies directly in that province. The documents reflect the situation well: ‘Bosnia, being the farther frontier of Islam is enclosed by enemies on all four sides.’²³ ‘Being the frontier and the key to the countries of Islam, this eyalet attracts the evil eyes of rivals. In that sense, it necessitates being well protected and guarded from traces of obstruction and wretchedness.’²⁴ ‘However, this eyalet was actually a place for reciprocating the attacks of enemies and an efficient barrier on the imperial frontier. That is why there is absolutely no royal toleration of any mutiny and rebellion there.’²⁵ In another document it was said that:

Since the imperial conquest, Bosnia has been the amulet and the final frontier of the empire; so loyalty and generosity have been its characteristics. The inhabitants of Bosnia are expected to greatly appreciate the benefactions of the state and show obedience and loyalty. In that case, they will keep their famous courage and valor and will retain their devotion in their services to the state.²⁶

Within these statements we see how the state, after starting to lose land by the end of the seventeenth century, was forced to adopt a defensive strategy²⁷ that brought changes in its perceptions of the borderlands. The concentration in the control of land led the state to expand its authority over the borderlands and resulted in the pressures of centralization. While these frontier regions were seen to be continuously expanding in previous centuries before the first land losses began and were thought of as becoming more integrated with every expansion,²⁸ from then on they were to be accepted as expendable in the face of any attack. The reaction of the state was also directly related to the changing status of the frontiers where, previously, the state had been hemmed in by the enemy or challenged to go beyond, and then witnessed porous and overlapping boundaries. Darling, concentrating on the Mediterranean borderlands, underlines the differences between frontier and borderland, saying that ‘unlike a frontier, the edge of society looking outward from the centre, the borderland looks backward over its shoulder at the metropole, because the borderland is the meeting place of two societies, not the edge of one’.²⁹

This description fits Bosnia well as a place that in previous centuries had usually been accepted as a frontier between Christian and Muslim civilizations, where relations between the two had been restricted mainly to war, especially small-scale fighting, which had become a way of life. It was later regarded as a place where interactions became more complex through trade or education and international intervention became more prevalent. As Karpat points out, for their own strategic, economic and commercial reasons, Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy encouraged the discontented people of the borderlands to seek autonomy by providing them with armed protection or directly occupying the land.³⁰ Within this process, the threats came not only from ‘outside enemies’; any internal uprising that would weaken the relations of the borderlands with the Ottoman centre was perceived as ‘the enemy’ of the state as well.

The people

After the mid-tenth century, the term ‘Bosnia’ was primarily used to refer to a geographical area. Later on, the name ‘Bosnian’ was used to define the people that inhabited this ar...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• 1. Bosnia: Geography and Society
• 2. The First Stage of the Rebellion Period, 1826–1831
• 3. The Second Stage of the Rebellion Period, 1831–1836
• 4. Rebels
• 5. Leadership
• 6. Conclusion
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back Cover