Abstract
Langlois explores the ways that the Ottoman Empire navigated a turbulent seventeenth century and what Geoffrey Parker terms a “Global Crisis,” through novel policies of marriage-brokering and networking, changes in the system of economic administration, a growth of charitable patronage, and new forms of political leadership, all of which ultimately contributed to the survival of the Ottoman dynastic system. This century is set apart due to the degree to which historians can correlate climate change and conflict throughout the world. It bore witness to multiple imperial collapses. This chapter also closely surveys the role female agency played in the empire’s endurance and draws attention to the high-ranking women who were instrumental in shaping the direction of the empire throughout the period by extending and securing loyalty to the dynasty.
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- 1.
“The General Crisis” was a label used to explain widespread conflict and instability throughout the seventeenth century. In 1959, an article by Hugh Trevor Roper titled “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century” helped coin the term. Geoffrey Parker’s book (Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)) is a comparative study that places the chaos of the seventeenth century in a global perspective.
- 2.
During the seventeenth century, China experienced the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, which had lasted more than three hundred years. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth also never recovered from the crisis. See Parker, Global Crisis, 115–84.
- 3.
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Penguin Group, 2011), 10–20.
- 4.
Climate resilience theory analyzes how systems adapt to change, stemming from ecological or climate change, that evolves in a beneficial way to the system. See Donald R. Nelson, W. Neil Adger, and Katrina Brown, “Adaptation to Environmental Change: Contributions of a Resilience Framework,” The Annual Review of Environment and Resources 32 (2007): 395–419.
- 5.
Eric Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), xv–xviii, 10–11.
- 6.
Peter Christiansen, The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environment in the Middle East, 500 BC–AD 1500 (New York: I.B. Tauris, revised 2016), 1–8.
- 7.
Ronnie Ellenblum, The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950–1072 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
- 8.
Sam White, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 13.
- 9.
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 143.
- 10.
Parker, Global Crisis, 188.
- 11.
White (Climate of Rebellion, 140–62) examines the drought that afflicted the Ottoman Empire during the 1590s in his chapter titled “The Great Drought.”
- 12.
Parker, Global Crisis, 33.
- 13.
White, Climate of Rebellion, 97–9.
- 14.
In 1580, 60 silver coins could be converted into one gold coin, but at the height of the crisis in 1640 it took 250, a 416 percent increase in the value of gold. Parker, Global Crisis, 71–3.
- 15.
Leslie P. Peirce, “Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power,” in Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History, edited by Dorothy O. Helly and Susan M. Reverby (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 53. Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 145.
- 16.
Peirce, “Beyond Harem Walls,” 45.
- 17.
Peirce, Imperial Harem, 148.
- 18.
The three Grand Viziers were Ӧküz Mehmed Pasha (d. 1619), Topal Recep Pasha (d. 1632), and Abaza Siyavusṃ Pasha (d. 1656). Pierce, Imperial Harem, 105.
- 19.
Mustafa Naima, Tarih-i Naima, 6 vols. (Istanbul, 1280/1863–4), 6: 4–99.
- 20.
Parker, Global Crisis, 227. Robert Dankoff, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman, Melek Ahmed Pasha, (1588–1662: As Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 107–166.
- 21.
Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 178–81.
- 22.
Parker, Global Crisis, 197–8. The avariz tax was levied upon all adult males, Muslim and non-Muslim. For more detailed information, see: Douglas Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010), 127.
- 23.
Parker, Global Crisis, 198.
- 24.
For a more detailed account of the changing timar system to tax farming, see Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, 126–30. For a more detailed account of the extension of tax farming after the seventeenth century, see Barkey, Empire of Difference, 229–35. Tax farms are cited by Ottoman historians as a main cause of the eventual future paralysis and decay of centralized power, partly by creating a new regional, elite class that gained power. In my opinion, the Ottomans did not have many alternative ways to raise capital in the seventeenth century if they wanted to survive this crisis.
- 25.
Dankoff, Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman, 32.
- 26.
Peirce, Imperial Harem, 146.
- 27.
Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 72. Singer argues that the waqf foundations were rooted in Muslim, Byzantine, and Turco-Mongol traditions.
- 28.
Kösem’s name boldly marks the entrance. On the entrance is also an inscription by the poet Himmet: “Her exalted Majesty the valide sultan always performed glorious act of charity out of the sincere love of God. She built this congregational mosque and had its many estates endowed to support it. Divine guidance assisted her in her acts of charity…” Howard Crane, trans., Garden of the Mosques: Hafiz Hüseyin Al-Ayvansarayȋ’s Guide to the Muslim Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 491; Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 89.
- 29.
Thys-Şenocak, Ottoman Women Builders, 187. This act of patronage also helped to silence the religious fanatics, because it Islamicized a Jewish neighborhood.
- 30.
Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence, 142.
- 31.
Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi, 1. Kitap: Istanbul (Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 1996).
- 32.
Naima was writing about the factionalism that led to Kösem’s death. See Lewis V. Thomas, A Study of Naima (New York: New York University Press, 1972), 101.
- 33.
Peirce, Imperial Harem, 218.
- 34.
Parker asserts (Global Crisis, 186) that “[t]he sultan’s mother was the most powerful woman—and often the most powerful person—in the empire.”
- 35.
To help seize her role as validé sultan, Turhan allied herself with the chief black eunuch of the Imperial Harem at the time, Süleyman Agha. During her early years in office she allied herself with leading men in all areas of the state, including Koca Kasım Ağa, Turhan’s trusted steward in architecture, who was also involved in politics and was an important player in the promotion of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha. Peirce, Imperial Harem, 144, 254.
- 36.
Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 61. Topkapi Palace Museum Archive, Arzlar (Writs) E., 7002/I through E, 7002/86.
- 37.
For an explanation of the Grand Vizier position and how it was used to help balance weak sultans, see: Parker, Global Crisis, 201.
- 38.
Naima, Tarih-i Naima, 6:213–14. According to Naima, the meeting between validé sultan Turhan and Köprülü was formal in nature. The new Grand Vizier Köprülü, before he agreed to take office, required the following: that the sultan would fulfill all of the vizier’s requests; that the vizier would have control over all state and military appointments and any dismissals; and that no slander would be expressed about his person. This reveals that the new vizier wanted and needed Turhan’s support and protection to be able to restore order without worrying that he would be removed from office in the process, since she potentially would have had the power and connections to do so. The political dynasty of the Köprülü grand viziers, which he founded, would continue until the beginning of the eighteenth century.
- 39.
Turhan’s only issue was Mehmed IV, and she was the only validé sultan during this period who did not have any daughters, something which could have increased the difficulty of finding a strong and trustworthy figure to fill the position of grand vizier. Peirce, Imperial Harem, 257.
- 40.
According to Naima, after a renewed Sufi–Kadizadeli conflict, Mehmed Köprülü exiled three of the main ulema (religious elite), including Ustuvani, Turk Ahmed, and Divane Mustafa. Thomas, Study of Naima, 108–10.
- 41.
See further Peirce, Imperial Harem, 256–7.
- 42.
Turhan not only built grand mosque complexes but her first commission was two fortresses, the Seddülbahir and Kumkale, positioned on both sides of the Dardanelles for protection from Venetian forces. Thys-Şenocak argues (Ottoman Women Builders, 5) that by building defensive structures, something no other queen mother had done, Turhan was illustrating that she was a strong and powerful defender of the Ottoman Empire.
- 43.
Parker, Global Crisis, 209–10, 587–90.
- 44.
White asserts (Climate of Rebellion, 12) that arid or semi-arid regions usually experience a longer recovery period than other climactic zones. See also Parker, Global Crisis, 210.
- 45.
White, Climate of Rebellion, 298.
- 46.
Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History, 139.
- 47.
Barkey, Empire of Difference, 9–15.
- 48.
Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder Empires, 296–7.
- 49.
Maria Pendani, “Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy,” Turcica 32 (2000): 28.
Bibliography
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Barkey, Karen. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
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Dankoff, Robert. The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman, Melek Ahmed Pasha, (1588–1662: As Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels). Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
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———. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Pendani, Maria. “Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy.” Turcica 32 (2000): 9–32.
Singer, Amy. Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Streusand, Douglas. Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010.
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Thys-Şenocak, Lucienne. Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
Topkapi Palace Museum Archive, Arzlar (Writs) E. 7002/I through E. 7002/86.
White, Sam. The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
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Langlois, R. (2018). Dynastic Loyalty and Allegiances: Ottoman Resilience During the Seventeenth Century Crisis. In: Dunn, C., Carney, E. (eds) Royal Women and Dynastic Loyalty. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75877-0_11
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