Empires of the Islamic World

Islamic civilization crystallized into 5 major states or empires:

• Mughal (India)

• Safavids (Persia)

• Ottomans (E. Europe, Middle East, some parts of N. Africa)

• Minor Empires:

  • Songhay

  • Moroccan

The Ottoman Empire

Major Islamic state centered on Anatolia that came to include the Balkans, parts of the Middle East, and much of North Africa; lasted in one form or another from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.

• Islamic world’s most significant empire

• Capital: Istanbul (before was Constantinople)

• Sultan combined the roles of a Turkic warrior prince, a Muslim caliph, and a conquering emperor

• responsibility and the prestige of protecting Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem

• Central Asian pastoral women:

  • lost rights as Turks adopted Islam

  • elite Turkish women found themselves secluded and often veiled

  • imperial censuses didn’t count women

  • restriction of women religious gatherings

• 1550-1650: women of the royal court had such an influence in political matters that their critics referred to the “sultanate of women.”

  • women actively used the Ottoman courts to protect their legal rights in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance

• 1500: 90 percent of Anatolia’s inhabitants were Muslims and Turkic speakers.

• In the Balkans, only about 19 percent of the area’s people were Muslims, and 81 percent were Christians.

  • Christians had welcomed Ottoman conquest because taxes were lighter and oppression less pronounced than under their former Christian rulers.

• Christian men became part of the Ottoman elite, sometimes without converting to Islam.

• Jewish refugees left Spain, went to the Ottoman Empire where they became prominent in trade and banking circles.

• The Ottoman Siege of Vienna, 1683

  • The siege marked the end of a serious Muslim threat to Christian Europe.

• The devshirme also represented a means of upward mobility within the Ottoman Empire.

  • Devshirme - A term that means “collection or gathering”; it refers to the Ottoman Empire’s practice of removing young boys from their Christian subjects and training them for service in the civil administration or in the elite Janissary infantry corps.

• Timar: sultans granted land and tax revenues to individuals in return for military service.

  • tax farming was practices as well

• The French government, ally with the Ottoman Empire against its common enemy of Habsburg Austria

• European merchants willingly violated a papal ban on selling firearms to the Turks.

The Safavid Empire (1501-1736)

• Shah: absolute monarch

  • claimed direct descendant of Muhammed

• Shah Ismail: founder

• Shia version of Islam as the official religion of the state

• Important trade product: silk products such as luxurious Persian carpets

• Culture flourished in art, literature, philosophy, architecture, and formal gardens

  • Persian culture in poetry, painting, and traditions of imperial splendor were important in the eastern Islamic world

• 1534–1639: military conflict erupted between the Ottoman and Safavid empires (territorial and religious conflict)

• the Safavid-Mughal war between 1649 and 1653:

  • Sunni Islam prevailed, and resulted in a sharp military encounter

The Mughal Empire (1526–1707)

A successful state founded by Muslim Turkic-speaking peoples who invaded India and provided a rare period of relative political unity. Invaders were Central Asian warriors who were Muslims in religion and Turkic in culture

• Zamindars played a crucial role in extending imperial authority by collecting taxes on behalf of the emperor.

• central division within Mughal India was religious

  • 20 percent of the population were Muslims

  • rest were Hindus

• Akbar

  • Married several Hindu-Rajputs’ princesses but didnt force convertion

  • incorporated a substantial number of Hindus into the political-military elite

  • supported the building of Hindu temples as well as mosques, palaces, and forts

  • Softened some Hindu restrictions on women

    • encouraging the remarriage of widows and discouraging child marriages and sati

  • Nur Jahan

    • widely regarded as the power behind the throne of her husband, Emperor Jahangir

  • Imposed a policy of toleration

  • deliberately restraining the more militantly Islamic ulama (religious scholars)

  • removed the special tax (jizya) on non-Muslims.

  • House of Worship creation

• The overall style of the Mughal Empire was that of a blended elite culture in which both Hindus and various Muslim groups could feel comfortable.

• Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi; philosopher

  • a “renewer” of authentic Islam in his time, strongly objected to this cultural synthesis.

  • “Women: introduces these deviations from Sufi Islam and Hinduism

• Aurangzeb

  • reversed Akbar’s policy of accommodation and sought to impose Islamic supremacy

  • Forbade sati

  • Music and dance were now banned at court

  • Some Hindu temples were destroyed

  • Dancing girls were ordered to get married or leave the empire altogether

  • The jizya was reimposed.

  • He demanded high taxes

  • Hindu Maratha Confederacy (1680-1707)

    • opposition movements,

    • fractured the Mughal Empire and opened the way for a British takeover in the second half of the eighteenth century.

The Songhay Empire; 1460s - 1590s

Major Islamic state of West Africa that formed in the second half of the fifteenth century.

• Founder: Sonni Ali

  • Declared himself a Muslim to accomodate to the merchants

  • Was a lukewarm believer in order to appear neutral to rural subjects

  • Muslim scholars regarded him as tyrannical, cruel, and impious and labeled him an infidel or unbeliever.

• Largest and the latest of a series of imperial states

• Relied on trade

  • dominated the Sand Road Commerce

  • Gold and salt were traded; horses were needed for cavalry

  • trans-Saharan commerce in enslaved people took thousands of Africans across the desert to new lives in Islamic North Africa.

• Gao and Timbuktu

  • major cosmopolitan cities

  • centers of both commerce and Islamic learning.

• Islam in Songhay was largely limited to urban elites

• majority of the population in the countryside remained loyal to older ways of living and religious practices.

• conversion in the Songhay and Mughal empires was less widespread than in the Ottoman and Safavid empires.

• Askiya Muhammad

  • Did the Mecca and got the tittle of Caliph

• Islam flourished in the major cities of the empire, especially Timbuktu.

• early 1590s, the Songhay Empire was weakening.

  • Political instability, succession conflicts, rebellion in outlying regions, and continued tension between Muslims and traditionalists made Songhay vulnerable to external invasion

• 1591: Moroccan sultanate defeated Songhay

  • had possession of gunpowder weapons, which the Songhay forces lacked.