Chapter 15: The Muslim Empire
In the late thirteenth century, a new group of Turks under their leader Osman began to build power in the northwest corner of the Anatolian Peninsula
At first, the Osman Turks were relatively peaceful and engaged in pastoral activities.
From their location in the northwestern corner of the peninsula, the Ottomans expanded westward and eventually controlled the Bosporus and the Dardanelles.
These two straits (narrow passageways), separated by the Sea of Marmara, connect the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, which leads to the Mediterranean.
The Byzantine Empire had controlled this area for centuries.
In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks expanded into the Balkans.
Ottoman rulers claimed the title of sultan and began to build a strong military by developing an elite guard called janissaries.
As knowledge of firearms spread in the late four- teenth century, the Ottomans began to master the new technology.
Over the next three hundred years, Ottoman rule expanded to include large areas of Western Asia, as well as North Africa and additional lands in Europe.
Under the leadership of Mehmet II, the Ottomans moved to end the Byzantine Empire.
The attack began on April 6, 1453, with an Ottoman bombardmen
The Byzantine emperor died in the final battle, and a great three-day sack of the city began.
With their new capital at Constantinople (later renamed Istanbul), the Ottoman Turks now dominated the Balkans and the Anatolian Peninsula.
From approximately 1514 to 1517, Sultan Selim I took control of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Arabia—the original heartland of Islam.
Controlling several of the holy cities of Islam, including Jerusalem, Makkah (Mecca), and Madinah, Selim declared himself to be the new caliph, defender of the faith and successor to Muhammad.
After their victories in the east, Ottoman forces spent the next few years advancing westward along the African coast, eventually almost reaching the Strait of Gilbraltar.
Like their predecessors, the Ottomans were Muslims.
Where possible, they preferred to administer their conquered regions through local rulers.
The central government appointed officials, called pashas, who collected taxes, maintained law and order, and were directly responsible to the sultan’s court in Constantinople.
After their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks tried to complete their conquest of the Balkans.
The reign of Süleyman I, beginning in 1520, led to new Ottoman attacks on Europe.
The Ottomans then conquered most of Hungary, moved into Austria, and advanced as far as Vienna, where they were finally defeated in 1529.
During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe remained a “sleeping giant.”
By mid-1683, the Ottomans had marched through the Hungarian plain and laid siege to Vienna.
Like the other Muslim empires in Persia and India, the Ottoman Empire is often labeled a “gunpowder empire.”
Gunpowder empires were formed by outside conquerors who unified the regions that they conquered.
As the name suggests, such an empire’s success was largely based on its mastery of the technology of firearms.
At the head of the Ottoman system was the sultan, who was the supreme authority in both a political and a military sense.
As the empire expanded, the status and prestige of the sultan increased, and the position took on the trappings of imperial rule.
The private domain of the sultan was called the harem (“sacred place”).
When a son became a sultan, his mother became known as the queen mother and acted as a major adviser to the throne.
The sultan controlled his bureaucracy through an imperial council that met four days a week.
A chief minister, known as the grand vizier, led the meetings of the council.
The empire was divided into provinces and districts, each governed by officials.
In practice, the sultans gave their religious duties to a group of religious advisers known as the ulema.
This group administered the legal system and schools for educating Muslims.
Islamic law and customs were applied to all Muslims in the empire.
The Ottoman system was generally tolerant of non-Muslims, who made up a significant minority within the empire.
The subjects of the Ottoman Empire were divided by occupation.
In addition to the ruling class, there were four main occupational groups: peasants, artisans, merchants, and pastoral peoples.
Technically, women in the Ottoman Empire were subject to the same restrictions as women in other Muslim societies, but their position was somewhat better.
Women were allowed to own and inherit property.
They could not be forced into marriage and, in certain cases, were permitted to seek divorce.
The Ottoman Empire reached its high point under Süleyman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 to 1566.
The problems of the Ottoman Empire did not become visible until 1699, when the empire began to lose some of its territory.
After the death of Süleyman, sultans became less involved in government and allowed their ministers to exercise more power.
Another sign of change within the empire was the exchange of Western and Ottoman ideas and customs.
Some sultans attempted to counter these trends.
One sultan in the early seventeenth century issued a decree outlawing both coffee and tobacco.
The Ottoman sultans were enthusiastic patrons of the arts.
The period from Mehmet II to the early eighteenth century witnessed a flourishing production of pottery; rugs, silk, and other textiles; jewelry; and arms and armor.
By far the greatest contribution of the Ottoman Empire to world art was in architecture, especially the magnificent mosques of the last half of the sixteenth century.
In the mid-sixteenth century, the greatest of all Ottoman architects, Sinan, began building the first of his 81 mosques.
The sixteenth century also witnessed the flourishing of textiles and rugs.
After the collapse of the empire of Timur Lenk (Tamerlane) in the early fifteenth century, the area extending from Persia into central Asia fell into anarchy.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, a new dynasty known as the Safavids took control.
The Safavid dynasty was founded by Shah Ismail, the descendant of Safi al-Din (thus the name Safavid).
In the early fourteenth century, Safi al-Din had been the leader of a community of Turkish ethnic groups in Azerbaijan, near the Caspian Sea.
In 1501, Ismail used his forces to seize much of Iran and Iraq.
He then called himself the shah, or king, of a new Persian state.
Alarmed by these activities, the Ottoman sultan, Selim I, advanced against the Safavids in Persia and won a major battle near Tabriz.
During the following decades, the Safavids tried to consolidate their rule throughout Persia and in areas to the west.
In the 1580s, the Ottomans went on the attack.
They placed Azerbaijan under Ottoman rule and controlled the Caspian Sea with their fleet.
Under Shah Abbas, who ruled from 1588 to 1629, the Safavids reached the high point of their glory
In the early seventeenth century, Shah Abbas moved against the Ottomans to regain lost territories.
After the death of Shah Abbas in 1629, the Safavid dynasty gradually lost its vigor.
While intellectual freedom had marked the height of the empire, the pressure to conform to traditional religious beliefs, called religious orthodoxy, increased.
In the early eighteenth century, during the reign of Shah Hussein, Afghan peoples invaded and seized the capital of Isfahan.
The Turks took advantage of the situation to seize territories along the western border.
Persia sank into a long period of political and social anarchy (lawlessness and disorder).
Persia under the Safavids was a mixed society.
The Safavids had come to power with the support of nomadic Turkish groups, but the majority of the people were Persian.
The Safavid political system, like that in most empires, was organized in the shape of a pyramid
The Safavid rulers were eagerly supported by Shiites, who believed that the founder of the empire (Shah Ismail) was a direct successor of the prophet Muhammad.
Visitors reported that the shahs were more avail- able to their subjects than were rulers elsewhere.
Strong-minded shahs firmly controlled the power of the landed aristocracy.
The Safavid shahs played an active part in trade and manufacturing activity.
Most goods in the empire traveled by horse or camel caravans.
At its height, Safavid Persia was a worthy succes- sor to the great Persian empires of the past
Knowledge of science, medicine, and mathematics under the Safavids was equal to that of other societies in the region.
In addition, Persia witnessed an extraordinary flowering of the arts during the reign of Shah Abbas from 1588 to 1629.
The capital of Isfahan, built by Shah Abbas, was a grandiose planned city with wide spaces and a sense of order.
Silk weaving based on new techniques flourished throughout the empire.
Above all, carpet weaving flourished, stimulated by the great demand for Persian carpets in the West.
Made primarily of wool, these carpets are still highly prized all over the world.
Persian painting enjoyed a long tradition, which continued in the Safavid Era.
Riza-i-Abbasi, the most famous artist of this period, created exquisite works on simple subjects, such as oxen plowing, hunters, and lovers.
In 1500, the Indian subcontinent was still divided into a number of Hindu and Muslim kingdoms.
The founder of the Mogul dynasty was Babur.
His father was descended from the great Asian conqueror Timur Lenk, and his mother, from the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan.
Thirteen years later, his forces crossed the Khyber Pass to India.
Babur’s forces were far smaller than those of his enemies, but they had advanced weapons, including artillery, and used them to great effect.
With twelve thousand troops against an enemy force nearly ten times that size, Babur captured Delhi and established his power in the plains of North India.
Babur’s grandson Akbar was only 14 when he came to the throne.
By using heavy artillery, Akbar’s armies were able to overpower the stone fortresses of their rivals.
The Moguls were also successful negotiators.
Akbar’s conquests created the greatest Indian empire since the Mauryan dynasty nearly two thousand years earlier.
Akbar was probably the greatest of the conquering Mogul monarchs, but he is best known for the humane character of his rule.
Akbar was also tolerant in his administration of the government
It became common practice to give the lower- ranking officials plots of farmland for their temporary use.
These local officials, known as zamindars, kept a portion of the taxes paid by the peasants in lieu of a salary.
Overall, the Akbar Era was a time of progress, at least by the standards of the day.
The era was an especially prosperous one in the area of foreign trade
Akbar died in 1605 and was succeeded by his son Jahangir.
Jahangir was able and ambitious.
During the early years of his reign, he continued to strengthen the central government’s control over his vast empire.
Eventually, however, his grip began to weaken when he fell under the influence of one of his wives, Persian-born Nur Jahan.
The empress used her position to enrich her own family.
She arranged the marriage of her niece to her husband’s third son and ultimate successor, Shah Jahan.
During his reign from 1628 to 1658, Shah Jahan maintained the political system established by earlier Mogul rulers.
He also expanded the boundaries of the empire through successful campaigns in the Deccan Plateau and against the city of Samarkand, north of the Hindu Kush.
Shah Jahan’s rule was marred by his failure to deal with growing domestic problems, however.
Shah Jahan’s troubles worsened with his illness in the mid-1650s, which led to a struggle for power between two of his sons.
One of Shah Jahan’s sons, Aurangzeb, had his brother put to death and imprisoned his father.
Aurangzeb then had himself crowned emperor in 1658.
Aurangzeb is one of the most controversial rulers in the history of India.
He forbade both the Hindu custom of suttee (cremating a widow on her hus- band’s funeral pyre) and the levying of illegal taxes.
He tried to forbid gambling and drinking as well.
Aurangzeb was a devout Muslim and adopted a number of measures that reversed the Mogul policies of religious tolerance.
Aurangzeb’s policies led to Hindu outcries and domestic unrest.
The arrival of the British hastened the decline of the Mogul Empire.
By 1650, British trading forts had been established at Surat, Fort William (now the city of Calcutta), and Chennai (Madras)
British success in India attracted rivals, especially the French.
The British were saved by the military genius of Sir Robert Clive, an aggressive British empire builder.
Clive eventually became the chief represen- tative in India of the East India Company, a private company empowered by the British Crown to act on its behalf
While fighting the French, Clive was also consoli- dating British control in Bengal, the state in which Fort William was located.
In 1757, Clive led a small British force numbering about three thousand to victory over a Mogul-led army more than ten times its size in the Battle of Plassey in Bengal.
Britain’s rise to power in India, however, was not a story of constant success.
In the late eighteenth century, the East India Company moved inland from the great coastal cities.
The Moguls were foreigners in India. In addition, they were Muslims ruling a largely Hindu population.
Women had long played an active role in Mogul tribal society, and some actually fought on the battlefield alongside the men.
To a degree, these Mogul attitudes toward women affected Indian society.
At the same time, the Moguls placed certain restrictions on women under their interpretations of Islamic law.
In other ways, however, Hindu practices remained unchanged by Mogul rule.
The Mogul era saw the emergence of a wealthy landed nobility and a prosperous merchant class.
Most of what we know about the daily lives of ordinary Indians outside of the cities comes from the observations of foreign visitors.
The Moguls brought together Persian and Indian influences in a new and beautiful architectural style.
This style is best symbolized by the Taj Mahal, which was built in Agra by the emperor Shah Jahan in the mid-seventeenth century.
The Taj Mahal is widely considered to be the most beautiful building in India, if not in the entire world.
All the exterior and interior surfaces are decorated with cut-stone geometric patterns, delicate black stone tracery, or intricate inlays of colored precious stones in floral mosaics.
Another major artistic achievement of the Mogul period was in painting.
The Mogul emperors were dedicated patrons of the arts, and going to India was the goal of painters, poets, and artisans from as far away as the Mediterranean.
In the late thirteenth century, a new group of Turks under their leader Osman began to build power in the northwest corner of the Anatolian Peninsula
At first, the Osman Turks were relatively peaceful and engaged in pastoral activities.
From their location in the northwestern corner of the peninsula, the Ottomans expanded westward and eventually controlled the Bosporus and the Dardanelles.
These two straits (narrow passageways), separated by the Sea of Marmara, connect the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, which leads to the Mediterranean.
The Byzantine Empire had controlled this area for centuries.
In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks expanded into the Balkans.
Ottoman rulers claimed the title of sultan and began to build a strong military by developing an elite guard called janissaries.
As knowledge of firearms spread in the late four- teenth century, the Ottomans began to master the new technology.
Over the next three hundred years, Ottoman rule expanded to include large areas of Western Asia, as well as North Africa and additional lands in Europe.
Under the leadership of Mehmet II, the Ottomans moved to end the Byzantine Empire.
The attack began on April 6, 1453, with an Ottoman bombardmen
The Byzantine emperor died in the final battle, and a great three-day sack of the city began.
With their new capital at Constantinople (later renamed Istanbul), the Ottoman Turks now dominated the Balkans and the Anatolian Peninsula.
From approximately 1514 to 1517, Sultan Selim I took control of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Arabia—the original heartland of Islam.
Controlling several of the holy cities of Islam, including Jerusalem, Makkah (Mecca), and Madinah, Selim declared himself to be the new caliph, defender of the faith and successor to Muhammad.
After their victories in the east, Ottoman forces spent the next few years advancing westward along the African coast, eventually almost reaching the Strait of Gilbraltar.
Like their predecessors, the Ottomans were Muslims.
Where possible, they preferred to administer their conquered regions through local rulers.
The central government appointed officials, called pashas, who collected taxes, maintained law and order, and were directly responsible to the sultan’s court in Constantinople.
After their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks tried to complete their conquest of the Balkans.
The reign of Süleyman I, beginning in 1520, led to new Ottoman attacks on Europe.
The Ottomans then conquered most of Hungary, moved into Austria, and advanced as far as Vienna, where they were finally defeated in 1529.
During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe remained a “sleeping giant.”
By mid-1683, the Ottomans had marched through the Hungarian plain and laid siege to Vienna.
Like the other Muslim empires in Persia and India, the Ottoman Empire is often labeled a “gunpowder empire.”
Gunpowder empires were formed by outside conquerors who unified the regions that they conquered.
As the name suggests, such an empire’s success was largely based on its mastery of the technology of firearms.
At the head of the Ottoman system was the sultan, who was the supreme authority in both a political and a military sense.
As the empire expanded, the status and prestige of the sultan increased, and the position took on the trappings of imperial rule.
The private domain of the sultan was called the harem (“sacred place”).
When a son became a sultan, his mother became known as the queen mother and acted as a major adviser to the throne.
The sultan controlled his bureaucracy through an imperial council that met four days a week.
A chief minister, known as the grand vizier, led the meetings of the council.
The empire was divided into provinces and districts, each governed by officials.
In practice, the sultans gave their religious duties to a group of religious advisers known as the ulema.
This group administered the legal system and schools for educating Muslims.
Islamic law and customs were applied to all Muslims in the empire.
The Ottoman system was generally tolerant of non-Muslims, who made up a significant minority within the empire.
The subjects of the Ottoman Empire were divided by occupation.
In addition to the ruling class, there were four main occupational groups: peasants, artisans, merchants, and pastoral peoples.
Technically, women in the Ottoman Empire were subject to the same restrictions as women in other Muslim societies, but their position was somewhat better.
Women were allowed to own and inherit property.
They could not be forced into marriage and, in certain cases, were permitted to seek divorce.
The Ottoman Empire reached its high point under Süleyman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 to 1566.
The problems of the Ottoman Empire did not become visible until 1699, when the empire began to lose some of its territory.
After the death of Süleyman, sultans became less involved in government and allowed their ministers to exercise more power.
Another sign of change within the empire was the exchange of Western and Ottoman ideas and customs.
Some sultans attempted to counter these trends.
One sultan in the early seventeenth century issued a decree outlawing both coffee and tobacco.
The Ottoman sultans were enthusiastic patrons of the arts.
The period from Mehmet II to the early eighteenth century witnessed a flourishing production of pottery; rugs, silk, and other textiles; jewelry; and arms and armor.
By far the greatest contribution of the Ottoman Empire to world art was in architecture, especially the magnificent mosques of the last half of the sixteenth century.
In the mid-sixteenth century, the greatest of all Ottoman architects, Sinan, began building the first of his 81 mosques.
The sixteenth century also witnessed the flourishing of textiles and rugs.
After the collapse of the empire of Timur Lenk (Tamerlane) in the early fifteenth century, the area extending from Persia into central Asia fell into anarchy.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, a new dynasty known as the Safavids took control.
The Safavid dynasty was founded by Shah Ismail, the descendant of Safi al-Din (thus the name Safavid).
In the early fourteenth century, Safi al-Din had been the leader of a community of Turkish ethnic groups in Azerbaijan, near the Caspian Sea.
In 1501, Ismail used his forces to seize much of Iran and Iraq.
He then called himself the shah, or king, of a new Persian state.
Alarmed by these activities, the Ottoman sultan, Selim I, advanced against the Safavids in Persia and won a major battle near Tabriz.
During the following decades, the Safavids tried to consolidate their rule throughout Persia and in areas to the west.
In the 1580s, the Ottomans went on the attack.
They placed Azerbaijan under Ottoman rule and controlled the Caspian Sea with their fleet.
Under Shah Abbas, who ruled from 1588 to 1629, the Safavids reached the high point of their glory
In the early seventeenth century, Shah Abbas moved against the Ottomans to regain lost territories.
After the death of Shah Abbas in 1629, the Safavid dynasty gradually lost its vigor.
While intellectual freedom had marked the height of the empire, the pressure to conform to traditional religious beliefs, called religious orthodoxy, increased.
In the early eighteenth century, during the reign of Shah Hussein, Afghan peoples invaded and seized the capital of Isfahan.
The Turks took advantage of the situation to seize territories along the western border.
Persia sank into a long period of political and social anarchy (lawlessness and disorder).
Persia under the Safavids was a mixed society.
The Safavids had come to power with the support of nomadic Turkish groups, but the majority of the people were Persian.
The Safavid political system, like that in most empires, was organized in the shape of a pyramid
The Safavid rulers were eagerly supported by Shiites, who believed that the founder of the empire (Shah Ismail) was a direct successor of the prophet Muhammad.
Visitors reported that the shahs were more avail- able to their subjects than were rulers elsewhere.
Strong-minded shahs firmly controlled the power of the landed aristocracy.
The Safavid shahs played an active part in trade and manufacturing activity.
Most goods in the empire traveled by horse or camel caravans.
At its height, Safavid Persia was a worthy succes- sor to the great Persian empires of the past
Knowledge of science, medicine, and mathematics under the Safavids was equal to that of other societies in the region.
In addition, Persia witnessed an extraordinary flowering of the arts during the reign of Shah Abbas from 1588 to 1629.
The capital of Isfahan, built by Shah Abbas, was a grandiose planned city with wide spaces and a sense of order.
Silk weaving based on new techniques flourished throughout the empire.
Above all, carpet weaving flourished, stimulated by the great demand for Persian carpets in the West.
Made primarily of wool, these carpets are still highly prized all over the world.
Persian painting enjoyed a long tradition, which continued in the Safavid Era.
Riza-i-Abbasi, the most famous artist of this period, created exquisite works on simple subjects, such as oxen plowing, hunters, and lovers.
In 1500, the Indian subcontinent was still divided into a number of Hindu and Muslim kingdoms.
The founder of the Mogul dynasty was Babur.
His father was descended from the great Asian conqueror Timur Lenk, and his mother, from the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan.
Thirteen years later, his forces crossed the Khyber Pass to India.
Babur’s forces were far smaller than those of his enemies, but they had advanced weapons, including artillery, and used them to great effect.
With twelve thousand troops against an enemy force nearly ten times that size, Babur captured Delhi and established his power in the plains of North India.
Babur’s grandson Akbar was only 14 when he came to the throne.
By using heavy artillery, Akbar’s armies were able to overpower the stone fortresses of their rivals.
The Moguls were also successful negotiators.
Akbar’s conquests created the greatest Indian empire since the Mauryan dynasty nearly two thousand years earlier.
Akbar was probably the greatest of the conquering Mogul monarchs, but he is best known for the humane character of his rule.
Akbar was also tolerant in his administration of the government
It became common practice to give the lower- ranking officials plots of farmland for their temporary use.
These local officials, known as zamindars, kept a portion of the taxes paid by the peasants in lieu of a salary.
Overall, the Akbar Era was a time of progress, at least by the standards of the day.
The era was an especially prosperous one in the area of foreign trade
Akbar died in 1605 and was succeeded by his son Jahangir.
Jahangir was able and ambitious.
During the early years of his reign, he continued to strengthen the central government’s control over his vast empire.
Eventually, however, his grip began to weaken when he fell under the influence of one of his wives, Persian-born Nur Jahan.
The empress used her position to enrich her own family.
She arranged the marriage of her niece to her husband’s third son and ultimate successor, Shah Jahan.
During his reign from 1628 to 1658, Shah Jahan maintained the political system established by earlier Mogul rulers.
He also expanded the boundaries of the empire through successful campaigns in the Deccan Plateau and against the city of Samarkand, north of the Hindu Kush.
Shah Jahan’s rule was marred by his failure to deal with growing domestic problems, however.
Shah Jahan’s troubles worsened with his illness in the mid-1650s, which led to a struggle for power between two of his sons.
One of Shah Jahan’s sons, Aurangzeb, had his brother put to death and imprisoned his father.
Aurangzeb then had himself crowned emperor in 1658.
Aurangzeb is one of the most controversial rulers in the history of India.
He forbade both the Hindu custom of suttee (cremating a widow on her hus- band’s funeral pyre) and the levying of illegal taxes.
He tried to forbid gambling and drinking as well.
Aurangzeb was a devout Muslim and adopted a number of measures that reversed the Mogul policies of religious tolerance.
Aurangzeb’s policies led to Hindu outcries and domestic unrest.
The arrival of the British hastened the decline of the Mogul Empire.
By 1650, British trading forts had been established at Surat, Fort William (now the city of Calcutta), and Chennai (Madras)
British success in India attracted rivals, especially the French.
The British were saved by the military genius of Sir Robert Clive, an aggressive British empire builder.
Clive eventually became the chief represen- tative in India of the East India Company, a private company empowered by the British Crown to act on its behalf
While fighting the French, Clive was also consoli- dating British control in Bengal, the state in which Fort William was located.
In 1757, Clive led a small British force numbering about three thousand to victory over a Mogul-led army more than ten times its size in the Battle of Plassey in Bengal.
Britain’s rise to power in India, however, was not a story of constant success.
In the late eighteenth century, the East India Company moved inland from the great coastal cities.
The Moguls were foreigners in India. In addition, they were Muslims ruling a largely Hindu population.
Women had long played an active role in Mogul tribal society, and some actually fought on the battlefield alongside the men.
To a degree, these Mogul attitudes toward women affected Indian society.
At the same time, the Moguls placed certain restrictions on women under their interpretations of Islamic law.
In other ways, however, Hindu practices remained unchanged by Mogul rule.
The Mogul era saw the emergence of a wealthy landed nobility and a prosperous merchant class.
Most of what we know about the daily lives of ordinary Indians outside of the cities comes from the observations of foreign visitors.
The Moguls brought together Persian and Indian influences in a new and beautiful architectural style.
This style is best symbolized by the Taj Mahal, which was built in Agra by the emperor Shah Jahan in the mid-seventeenth century.
The Taj Mahal is widely considered to be the most beautiful building in India, if not in the entire world.
All the exterior and interior surfaces are decorated with cut-stone geometric patterns, delicate black stone tracery, or intricate inlays of colored precious stones in floral mosaics.
Another major artistic achievement of the Mogul period was in painting.
The Mogul emperors were dedicated patrons of the arts, and going to India was the goal of painters, poets, and artisans from as far away as the Mediterranean.
