THE MUGHAL EMPIRE
After the death of Genghis Khan his lands were divided among his sons. The East wen to grandson Kublai Khan (1215- 94) added China to his possessions and became its emperor. Influenced by Chinese culture as well as being rather good-natured he ruled wisely and well and China attained its Medival peak under him.
To the West son Chagatai ruled all the way to middle Russia under the name of Altinordu (Golden Horde) empire for that was the name of his armies. From that beginning came the Tatar or Tartar element in Russian history. These people spoke a dialect of Turkish and ruled as kingdoms from Kazan in the north to Crimea in the south. All except the khanate of Crimea were mopped up by the rising Russians from the 16th century onwards but Crimea escaped the same fate another two centuries thanks to its acceptance of Ottoman suzerainty.
To the south we find the greatest of all eastern Islamic empires, namely the great Mughals or Moguls. They ruled large parts of India from 1526 to 1858. The dynasty was founded by Babur shah, a grandson of Timur who descended from Genghis Khan. For his part Timur (the Lame) had founded a great but short- lived empire based at Samarkand and had reached at one stage to Izmir (on Aegean Turkey) in the west to almost China in the east. Almost as ferocious as his great grandfather Genghis he had almost finished the Ottoman Empire but had hurried back home too soon to finish the impious job. As we shall see in the next lessons the Ottomans soon recovered and resumed their great career.
Babur invaded India in 1525 and by 1526 had wrestled Delhi away from its sultan Ibrahim Lodhi. All north India was soon his. He was both a sage and a veritable writer and his memoirs ‘Baburnama’ is one of the classics of Indian Islam. Humayun (1508- 56) and then Akbar (1556- 1605) followed him.
Akbar shah (called the Great) extended his rule by a series of rapid conquests adding to his domains Punjab, Rajput, Gujarat, Bengal, Kashmir and Sind and later Deccan to the south. He was perhaps the most enlightened of the Mughal emperors and worked hard to unite Indians of all faiths under one equal citizenship based on religious tolerance and equality under law. He thus angered the orthodox ulema who suspected and sometimes accused him of heresy. However his endeavours were appreciated neither by Muslims and Hindus and his filling his palace with Hindu friends and savants did nothing to allay the Hindu hatred of Islam or of Mughals which and whom they regarded as usurpers. All the same his just and uplifting rule marks a singular era of success in Indian history. At one point he even played with the idea of fusing Islam and Indian religions into one new religion- indication that when he became too successful and prosperous his dreaming faculty had spilt into his daytime thinking. Perhaps he was after eternalising the Mughal dynasty by reconciling the spiritual contradictions of his only too vast and varied subjects base.
He was succeeded by his son Jihangir shah (1569- 1627).
He continued both his father’s conquering and wise and just ruling. Sports and arts were given additional impetus and India enjoyed its most glorious epoch in more recent history under him. It was during his time that the notorious East India Company was founded, which prepared the way for overtaking of India by England. Playing local rulers against each other and plotting and provoking hostilities were part of its secret mission and portfolio along its commercial activities like trade in Indian spices. Jehangir Shah kept amicable relationships with it, perhaps sure in his strength and flattered by its managers and executives, unaware of the dangers in the making. As the Mughal power declined (surely because of the subversive activities of the company) that of the company grew which company began to look more and more like a power broker and eventually the real government in India except in name. Its powers were eventually taken over by the British government as represented by the ‘British Raj’ as from 1784. in 1873 the greatly restricted company was struck off.
He was succeeded by his son Shah Jehan (1592- 1666) who ruled until 1658. The first thing he did was to put to death some of his nearest relations and then ruled equally ruthlessly. His great passion however was his wife Mumtaz Mahal whose early death led him to build one of the greatest architectural masterpieces of all time, namely her mausoleum near Accra built of white marble between 1631- 53) and surrounded by magnificently landscaped gardens an a huge pond in which the whole edifice is reflected upside down adding more wonder to the sight. It is additionally inlaid with jewels and Jehangir himself is buried there as was his will.
Shah Jehan fell ill in 1657 and could not rule. His youngest son Aurangzeb (1618- 1707) challenged his older brother Dara Shikoh’s claim to the throne and fought him off and ascended the throne in 1658, assuming the title of Alamgir (world seizer). He was an emphatic ortodox muslim but with a ruthless bent of mind and quickly antagonized his Hindu subjects. He also made some conquests whereby the borders of the empire reached their maximum extent. But his alienated Hindu subjects as well as fearful and envious Muslim rivals proved easy game for the intriguing British and their marshalling forces against the Mughal power prepared the end for the empire.
It is these emperors from Akbar to Aurangzeb who are called the Great Mughals which term survives today in the form of ‘mogul’ to desribe great business tycoons.
The last Mughal emperor was Bahadur shah II (1775- 1862, reigned 1837- 58) which saw the dwindled empire at its most impotent. On the pretext of the notiorious Indian Mutiny of 1857- 59 when the Indian troops serving under the East India company rebelled against the arrogance and treacheries of their colonial masters Bahadur was deposed by the British and the Mughal empire ceased.
11. OTTOMAN ERA (AND PERSIA)
SOME IMPORTANT MUSLIM DYNASTIES RELAEVANT TO THE OTTOMAN ERA
Ottomans existed as a sovereign power from 1299 to 1922, i.e., more than six centuries and as such represent the longest surviving empire of Muslims. It has also been most successful and most pious as well in general terms. Again it has been the one which touched and impacted the Europe most whose about a quarter it also ruled for between three to five centuries. From its collapse thirty five national states were created representing all Western (i.e., west of Caspian Sea) faiths, namely Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Its many laws are still part of the national laws of all these states whose territories are strewn by its countless architectural remains from castles and palaces to mosques, madrassas, hospitals, caravanserais, aquaducts, bridges and canals. Wherever they went, they did not destroy or depopulate but built up and cultivated.
More or less contemporaneous with them were Persia, the Mamluk Egypt and the Khanate of Crimea and to the east the Mughal empire in India. West north Africa had its own small Muslim dynasties which at times totally succumbed to the Ottoman sultan while at others ruled in vassaldom to it.
PERSIA
Squeezed between the Ottomans to their west and the Mughals to their east by the Mughals Turkish dynasties taking their turns on ruling Persia felt especially jealous of the former. Although Persia had been mainly Sunni until a about a century into the Ottoman era with the accession of the Safavid dynasty founded by Shah Ismail Shiism began to be imposed upon it.
Previous to the Safavids, another Turkish dynasty called the Akkoyunlu (owners of white sheep) ruled Persia and despite being Sunnis like their brethren the Ottomans the rivalry beetween them were hardly less. We shall see more of their wars and relations later when we are studying the Ottoman chronicles but what we must understand is that a large part of Ottoman-Persian rivalry seem to be the result of geography as anything else. Persia had always been the great power of Western Asia and its borders fluctuated from the depths of Central Asia to Sind (today’s Pakistan) in the east to Mezopotamia (today’s Iraq) and sometimes to the Mediterranean. Its counterpoise in the West were the Greeks of the Athenian and Spartan antiquity when at least the western half of Anatolia (Asia Minor) was also in Greek hands. The two powers clashed repetitively from 5th century BC to the 7th CE and only the arrival of the Islamic power cut them off each other’s throat by first conquering and converting Persia and then invading and curbing the last edition of Hellenism the Byzantine empire. So Ottomans now inheriting Byzantium (eastern Romanism) and in fact assuming the epithet of sultanate of Rum (Rome) as also inheritors of the Anatolian Seljouks found themselves in the same position rivalry with the re-invigorated Persian state. Just like between the Greeks and Persians of old the very same territories like Caucasia, Eastern Anatolia and Iraq were fought over and changed hands severally.
A two new elements however were involved in this rivalry of the two Muslim powers. One was the Shia-Sunni rivalry mainly provoked by the Persians who also usually started the hostilities. The second was the new bad habit of the Shia to make common cause with the Christian Western powers in curbing the Ottomans. Powers like the Papacy, Venice, Genoa and Spain constantly corresponded and conspired to frustrate the Ottomans and as a result it became an almost routine event a Persian invasion of the Ottoman territory from the east when the Ottomans advanced to west against European powers. This advance, almost always successful had to be followed by another to the east to punish Persia and recover any lost territories. As a result Azerbaijan, Tebriz and Baghdad changed hands several times at the cost of great losses on both sides and to the delight of the Western powers. Perhaps had Persia and Turkey (as the Ottomans were known to the Western powers) had made common cause instead both Rome and Vienna and perhaps also Spain, if not more beyond could fall to Islam.
We shall see more of Persia when we narrate the Ottoman expeditions. But a brief overall summary can only do good.
Islamic Persia begins its career as advisers to its Arab rulers as from the Abbasid times. From its conquest by Islam to their success in toppling the arrogant Umayyads and insallation of the Abbasids in their place the Persians had little consolation in their new faith. They both fought for Islam under Umayyad and Arab commanders and paid the poll tax as if they weren’t muslims. The same fate was suffered by the Turks as well. So these two races thought that they had everything to gain and nothing to lose if they cast their lot with the Abbasids. They were right. The Abbasids rewarded the Persians with bureaucratic and the Turks with military high offices. Arabs lost out massively and never recovered from this reversal of fortunes. It is very important to remember this momentous watershed in order to understand today’s events in the Muslim world. A century of arrogance cost our Arab brothers almost 14 centuries of subjection and marginalized status. Even most Islamic cultural successes went to the Persians and to a lesser extent to the Turks although the former at least initially writing in Arabic. In fact it was no other than a Persian by the name of Ibn Muqaffa (early Abbasid times) who founded the Arab prose as it subsequently shone. Great and most saintly jurist Imam Abu Hanifa was of Persian origin, which people were called the ‘mawali’ (convert clients of their ex-Arab masters). Sufism, that supreme glory of Islamic spirituality benefited most from the supple and accomplished Persian mind and later the language.
Yet this Persian language of the Islamic era was hardly its pre-Islamic ancestor. It was heavily modified by Arabic and flooded by its words- something like what happened to English after their subjugation by the Normans whose language was French. Subsequent English lost more and more of its Germanic features and was adulterated by great numbers of French words modified in spelling to fit the Germanic mouths. That massive trauma is partly behind the peculiarly arbitrary spelling and pronunciation absurdities of English.
When the Abbasid power began to decline the Persians could not rise to the rulership of Islam. It was the Turks who took over and Persians continued to do under their new masters what they were doing the old. Since than always Turkish dynasties except briefly for a Mongol period (the Ilhanids with Hulagu) ruled Persia with Seljouks, Sawafids and Kajars being the most notable and in that order. Safawids being of Shia persuasion imposed it on Persia as from the 16th century; yet about a third of those living in Persia is estimated to stick to the Sunni persuasion without necessarily however making it much public.
The impositon of Shiism on Persia made impossible its good relations with any of the Sunni powers surrounding it on all sides and represent just another of the many curses Shiism perhaps inadvertently imposed on the Islamic world community. Very sadly and without meaning an insult, Shiism has been the saddest single feature in the chronology of Islam helping nobody including the Shia themselves but instead half breaking the back and tying the hands of the great body of Islam in the face of its spiritual and political rivals. The whole Islam is being punished for centuries now as if for the somehow invincible cruelties of the Umayyads all muslims except the first Shia the Iraqis were responsible. As if forgiveness and conciliation are not part and parcel of Islam but hatred and vengeance are. What a cosmic pity!
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE OTTOMAN STATE
As Turkish tribes continued to pour into the more and more Western parts of the expanding Islam so they helped to expand it even more westward. In the 13th century another tribe, namely the Qayi, a branch of the great Oghuz confederation of tribes arrived at eastern Anatolia under their bey (chieftain) Ertughrul Gazi. It was the reign of the Seljouk sultan Alauddin Kaykubat. They attracted the attention of the Seljouk sultan when they accidentally joined battle on the side of a badly outnumbered party and turned the tables against their enemies. The former happened to be the favourites of the sultan (Anatolia was a battleground for the many small Turkish beys seeking supremacy) and the sultan duly rewarded Ertughrul by settling them near Ankara.
From there they moved West capturing Byzantine territories and eventually settled around Soghut and Domanich not more than a couple of hundred miles to the east of Constantinople the Byzantine capital. Ertugrul died in 1281 and was succeeded by his son Osman (Turkish spelling for ‘Uthman). It is this Osman who is credited with the foundation of the new state which became the most glorious ever of Islamic empires and from whose name the new state took its name ‘Osmanli’ in Turkish which became ‘Ottoman’ to the Westerners via its Italian corruption ‘Ottomano’. For his fresh conquests and other good services the Seljouk sultan Ghiyasaddin Kayhusrev III bestowed on him all three insignia of vassaldom, namely a drum and a standard (flag) and a horse. When the next sultan Alauddin Kaykubat III obeyed an order from his Ilhanid overlord and went to him and did not return all beys declared their independence and Osman did the same (1299).
THE EARLY RISE OF THE OTTOMAN POWER
From the start the Ottoman state was blessed by all the factors leading to growth. All Anatolia was already wrestled away from the Greeks and shared among the Turkish beys who then declared their respective independence and went on to fight each other like fish feeding on other fish. Osman for his part was the only bey sharing a border with the Greeks and instead of cannibalising other beys he could divert all his energies to grabbing more territories from the extremely soft-bellied Greeks. Despite these predatory hostilities it can also be said that the Greeks and Osmanlis had a love-hate relationship like the one between Richard the Lionheart and Salahuddin during the Third Crusade.
Osmanlis were very pious muslims, honest, honourtable and chivalrous as well as greatly charitable towards the weak whatever the faith of the latter. Osman bey would not wink an eye in hesitation if one of his men was accused by a Greek with any wrong and proved it but he would hit out and punish effectively. As had been the routine for centuries now many Greeks falling under Muslim rule, this time Osman’s, converted to Islam and because of the benevolence of the new rule the new converts continued to enjoy their filial relations with their non-converted folks who for their part found Turkish rule far better than the corrupt and unjust Byzantine. Before and after intermarriages between the Greeks and Turks were common which created additional affinity and often private affection between the members of the two communities. Most spoke both Greek and Turkish and an increasing number of Greek heroes cast their lot with their Ottoman counterparts and helped them conquer more Byzantine territories. In the process many converted to Islam and entered the chronicles and legends of Turkish heroism. In other words Ottomans succeeded where the Spanish Umayyads had not. They eventually more than half Islamized Anatolia from both Greek and Armenian stock turkefying the converts in the process.
Among all this Osman continued to conquer and attained his zenith when he took the last remaining star city of the Greeks on the Anatolian side, namely the famous ancient city of Brusa (Bursa in Turkish). At the foot of another snow capped volcanic mountain Olympus (not the one in Greece) this densely green paradise of both natural good fortune and rich cultural heritage surrendered as Osman laid dying and his son Orhan bey took its keys from the defenders (1326).
Osman’s advice to his son on his death bed laid the tone of the Ottoman policies for all the six centuries to come. He said in effect
My son, make sure that justice and charity are the hallmarks of your rule. Protect the weak from the strong and the oppressed from the oppressor. Be kind and just towards your non-muslim subjects as well for they are Allah’s servants entrusted to your piety. Fear Allah in everything you do and make His pleasure your only aim. Also never forget that our cause is not wanton warring or world conquest but the elevating the Word of Allah and making His Will prevail far and wide”.
Orhan took his father advice well, ruled with the same piety and fought with the same prowess adding to Islam’s lands other prize Greek towns like Iznik (Nicaea), Izmit and Gemlik, all around the Marmara Sea, thus tightening the noose around Constantinople. With Ottomans the invincibility of the Turks became axiomatic for the Greeks and Greek lords including the emperor became rival applicants for favours to Ottoman rulers. For example, Cantacusenus asked Orhan’s help to ascend the Greek throne, Orhan saw that he did (1341), calculating that the new emperor would help him back to facilitate his armies crossing the Dardanelles into Europe. Cantacusenus both facilitated the cross and thanked Orhan by giving his daughter in marriage to him- thus starting a tradition until the fall of Constantinople for occasional Greek royal brides marrying into Ottoman royal family and breeding Ottoman princes. The other crucial thing Orhan achieved was starting the process of integrating the numerous Turkish beyliks (petty princedoms) into the Ottoman sultanate for the Ottoman state was becoming a veritable kingdom.
Using the weakened and disordered state of the Karesiogullari beylik he absorbed it first. This process took about half a century more ending with Fatih sultan Mehmed (Muhammad) absorbing the last and most powerful one, that of Karamanogullari based in Konya. The absorption of these beyliks was a must if Islam was had to have a chance to spread into Europe and win millions of more souls to its true faith or at least to its benevolent rule. These beyliks were not only constantly bickering and fighting among themselves but also, like the impious Muslim princelets during the Crusader occupation were not shy of allying themselves with the invaders to punish their equally impious rivals. Both Byzantium and Venice pulled strings among these beyliks to make one knock out the other and prevent them coming together. Ottomans folied all these and merged the beyliks into a single and for a long time to come an invincible imperial race.
CROSSING INTO EUROPE (Rumeli, ‘Roman’ territory)
Thanks to Cantacusens compliance Orhan send his son Suleyman Pasha to gain a foothold in Europe. This auspicious event began with a miracale. The Gelibolu (Gallipoli) castle towering over the Gallipoli peninsula, the first part of Europe facing Turkish Anatolia across the Dardanelles straits collapsed overnight thanks to a timely earthquake and the Muslims had to just walk in and feed and treat their new subjects to their grateful satisfaction. From there for another three centuries it was all go. By mid 16th century the victorious Turkish march reached the walls of Vienna marking its limit.
Suleyman Pasha died of a hunting accident and his younger brother Murad bey continued the conquests. His great prize was Edirne (Adrianopolis) about two hundred miles to the West of Constantinople (1351). Edirne became the new capital of the Ottomans with the accession of Murad to the throne after his father’s death (1362). It was a town as famous as Bursa.
Like Umar RA the second ruler of Ottomans Orhan is credited with the proper organization of the Islamic state of the Ottomans.
MURAD I
He continued the Ottoman blitzkriegs. Incursions into lands which are now in Bulgaria and Thrace (Grece) resulted in bits and pieces of further conquests around fortified castles. Any Bulgarian and Greek opposition were routinely crushed. In desperation the whole Balkan nations like the Serbs, Wallachians, Modavians, Bulgars and Bosnians applied to the Pope for help, despite being Orthodox and not Catholic Christians. Hoping to win them to his parish as well as stop the dangerous Turkish tide the Pope ordered the king of Hungary (at the time the biggest country in Europe, not today’s small country) to organize and lead the defence.
The massive combined army of 200,000 began their carnival like progress towards the Turkish lines, proud of their prowess and absoloutely confident of Divine help as well as ‘infallible help’ from their legion of ever-living saints whose relics, genuine or bogus, they took care to take along. When the news of the Crusader avalanche reached Murad he sent along his aged and famous commander Haji Ilbey (who was a veteran also of Osman and Orhan’s military campaigns) to make surveys of the enemy. Slyly penetrating the enemy environs at nights Haji llbey one night noticed their drunken and unguarded complacency and as they fall asleep raided their camp with his mere few thousand men. Within a couple of hours the blazing camp went up in smoke, thousands of enemy laid dead and more captured and the rest fled in disarray never to regroup. King Ladislas of Hungary barely escaped in his night gown (1364). This battle came to be known as Sirpsindighi battle and caused an extended alarm all over Europe which lasted for at least three centuries on and off.
As such this battle like all battles among religious people showed again that confidence in Divine providence is conditional upon observing the commoner laws of God first and then pray for the rest of the help to arrive. That is why today’s many so-called Islamic warrior (mujahedeen) groups are all biting the dust in the longer run despite small spectacular or even if big, then only temporary hits; they refuse to consider the odds against them and like the above-mentioned faith-drunk army just advance or attack to the chants and shouts of blind confidence unaware that like chicks they are walking into a den of expectantly salivating foxes. The Prophet sws said “First tie up your camel and only then entrust it to Allah”. Who listens?
KOSOVO
By 1389 the Turks were in possession of about half of the whole Balkans, and for good. Only the Serbians, the Albanians and the Bosnians were yet independent kingdoms. They combined forces and defeated by ambush a small force under Shahin Pasha sent by Murad at Ploshnik (1387). As the Christian victory was heard about Bulgarians, Czechs, Slavons, Poles… felt brave enough to join in. Another Ottoman army under Chandarli Ali Pasha attacked the front-liners the Bulgarians and eliminated them from the equation and annexing large parts of their territory.
From far away Murad was on his way with his royal army further augmented by forces from other Anatolian beyliks (who were his vassals in effect) except the powerful Karamanogulari who were in alliance with the Balkan Crusaders. The two massive armies met at Kosovo and as usual the Turks routed the Crusaders after eight hours of pitched battle (1389). Unfortunately Murad became the victim of his charity. A wounded Serbian noble appealed for his attention and as the sultan mercifully bent over to see what the matter was the former stabbed him mortally. He had time however to give a parting advice to his son Bayezit (Aba Yezid) who was there and then declared the new sultan.
YILDIRIM BAYEZID (Bayezid the Thunderbolt)
This nickname was given to him for his almost mad courage and daring which however did nothing to compromise his equally great prowess and brilliant generalship. He was in fact substantially important in winning the battle of Kosovo.
Before Yildirim could continue with his fathers conquests in Europe he felt he had to sort out the Karaman thorn in the flesh first. Taking along the Byzantine emperor with his Greek contingents (for now the emperor was reduced to vassaldom) he went against the Karamanogullari. They offered a stiff defence and perhaps benefited from Byzantine treachery in the form of passing crucial information from the Ottoman camp. Still they were punished enough and Bayezid’s suspicions of both Byzantium and the Balkan Christians licking their wounds was aroused enough to decide that there were more urgent matters to attend to than reducing the Konya beylik. On his return to Edirne he was confirmed in his suspicions when his spies intercepted a letter from emperor to king Ladislas of Hungary offering alliance against Turks. He invested Constantinople for conquest, the first Ottoman to try it (1391). The most progressive of all nations east or west the Ottomans were among the fisrt to adopt fire arms and their biggest member the field cannon. But these were still small fry and were not effective against the massive walls of the Greek capital.
But he had to lift siege and rush to rescue when the same Crusaders alliance threatened the Ottoman stronghold Nicopolis in Bulgaria. After repulsing the Crusaders he reinvested Constantinople which lasted well into 1401 with the same stalemate. Bad news this time came from the east. The mightiest emperor of the age Timur the Lame (Timurileng) ruling a vast territory from Samarkand was on the move against the Ottomans as provoked by the vassal Turkish Anatolian beys to rescue them from Ottoman domination.
Once again crass personal wordly greed and ambition were out to wreck the hard won tenous but most crucial muslim unity. Totally unmoved by the glorious conquests their brothers the Ottomans were in Europe for Islam they imported in the person of Timur a sledgehammer to crush the advancing arm of Allah and His Prophet sws!!!
This very same impious and treacherous disunity still plagues the Muslim powers and explains all the indignities accruing to them among nations no matter how much fabulous wealth some Muslim nations are wielding.
Between the investment of Constantinople and the yet in future coming of Timur the Ottoman sultan did not sit idle. He severally marched in the Balkans conquering and reducing to vassaldom several princes like the Wallachian and altogether annexing Bulgaria. He even tried to expel the Venetians from Mora (southn Greek peninsula) where the latter had great trading interests and indomitable strongholds.
