The document discusses three major Muslim empires during the post-Mongol period: the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire of Iran, and the Mughal Empire of India. It describes the expansion, institutions, and eventual decline of the Ottoman Empire over centuries of rule. It then summarizes the rise of the Safavid dynasty in Iran and key aspects of Safavid society and religion. Finally, it outlines the establishment and growth of the Mughal Empire in India, including its political foundations, relations between Hindus and Muslims, and later challenges leading to decentralization.
The document discusses three major Muslim empires during the post-Mongol period: the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire of Iran, and the Mughal Empire of India. It describes the expansion, institutions, and eventual decline of the Ottoman Empire over centuries of rule. It then summarizes the rise of the Safavid dynasty in Iran and key aspects of Safavid society and religion. Finally, it outlines the establishment and growth of the Mughal Empire in India, including its political foundations, relations between Hindus and Muslims, and later challenges leading to decentralization.
The document discusses three major Muslim empires during the post-Mongol period: the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire of Iran, and the Mughal Empire of India. It describes the expansion, institutions, and eventual decline of the Ottoman Empire over centuries of rule. It then summarizes the rise of the Safavid dynasty in Iran and key aspects of Safavid society and religion. Finally, it outlines the establishment and growth of the Mughal Empire in India, including its political foundations, relations between Hindus and Muslims, and later challenges leading to decentralization.
Thesis: During this period, written studies of everyday life became even more important
The Ottoman Empire
● The most long lived of the post-Mongol Muslim empires, the Ottoman Empire grew from a tiny hub ● The Ottoman Empire survived for more than 5 centuries Expansion and Frontiers ● Ottoman armies originally focused on Christian enemies in Greece and the Balkans ● The Red Sea became the Ottomans southern frontier ● Sultans pressed to control the Mediterranean ● Initial fighting left Venice with reduced military power and they were subject to tribute payment ● Muslims in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean traded by way of Egypt and Syria ● Eastern luxury products still flowed to the Ottoman Central Institutions ● The ottoman army originally consisted of lightly armored mounted warriors skilled at shooting short bows ● Slave soldiery had a long history in Islamic lands ● When sultans attacked rival Muslim states in western Asia, they often counted on these troops ● The Ottoman Empire became cosmopolitan in nature ● By the beginning of the reign of Sultan Suleiman, the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful and best organized state in Europe and the Islamic World ● The balance of the Ottoman land forces brought successes to Ottoman arms in recurrent wars with the Safavids who were slower in firearms ● Under the land-grant system, resident cavalrymen administered most rural areas in Anatolia and the Balkans ● The sultan provided justice and the military protected the people Crisis of the Military State ● Cannon and lighter-weight firearms played and even-larger role on the battlefield ● Inflation caused by a flood of cheap silver affected many landholders ● The government levied emergency surtaxes to obtain enough funds to pay the Janissaries and bureaucrats ● Janissaries took advantage of their growing influence to gain relief from prohibitions on marrying and engaging in business Economic Change and Growing Weakness ● A different empire emerged from this period of crisis ● The devshirme had been discontinued and the Janissaries had taken advantage of their increased power and privileges ● Land grants in return for military service also disappeared ● Rural administration suffered from the transition to tax farms ● Rural disorder and decline in administrative control sometimes opened the way to new economic opportunities ● Izmir transformed itself between 1580 and 1650 from a small town into a major center ● Military power slowly ebbed ● The Ottoman Empire lacked bother the wealth and the inclination to match European economic advances ● A few astute Ottoman statesmen observed the growing diarray of the empire and advised the sultans to reestablish the land grant and devshirme systems ● In 1730 gala soirees gave way to a Janissary revolt The Safavid Empire ● The Safavid Empire of Iran resembles its longtime Ottoman foe in a lot of ways The Rise of the Safavids ● Timur had been a great conqueror but his children had smaller aspirations ● Most of the members of the Safiviya spoke Turkish Society and Religion ● Although Ismail’s reasons for compelling Iran’s conversion are unknown ● This divergence between two language areas had intensified after 1258 when the Mongols destroyed Baghdad ● Where cultural styles had radiated in all directions from Baghdad during the heyday of the Islamic caliphate, Iran separated an Arab zone from a Persian one ● The Turks generally preferred Persian as a vehicle for literacy ● Islam provided a tradition that crossed ethnic and linguistic borders ● Each Sufi brotherhood had distinctive rituals and concepts ● Shi’ism also affected the psychological life of the people ● Women seldom appeared in public ● The private side of a family life had few traces ● European travelers commented on the veiling of women outside the home ● Men monopolized public life ● Despite social similarities the overall flavors of Isfahan and Istanbul were not the same Economic Crisis and Political Collapse ● The silk fabrics of Northern Iran monopolized by the shahs provided the mainstay of the Safavid Empire’s foreign trade ● Iran’s manufacturing sector was neither larger nor notably productive ● The Christian converts to Islam who initially provided the manpower for the new corps came mostly from captives taken in raid on Georgia in the Caucasus ● In the late sixteenth century the inflation caused by cheap silver spread to Iran ● Despite Iran’s long coastline the Safavids never possessed a navy The Mughal Empire ● As a land of Hindus ruled by a Muslim minority the realm of Mughal sultans of India different substantially from the empires of the Ottomans and Safavids ● India lay far from the Islamic heartlands Political Foundations ● Babur defeated the last Muslim sultan of Delhi at the Battle of Panipat ● India proved to be the primary theatre of Mughal accomplishment ● Akbar granted land revenues called mansabs to military officers and government officials in return for their service ● Foreign trade boomed at the port of Surat in the northwest Hindus and Muslims ● India had not been dominated by a single ruler since the time of Harsha Vardhana ● Akbar married a Hindu princess ● Other rulers might have used sugh a marriage as a means of humiliating a subject group ● Akbar longed for an heir ● He made himself the center of the divine faith ● Akbar’s policy of toleration does not explain the pattern of conversion in Mughal India ● The emergence of Sikhism in the Punjab region of northwest India constituted another change in Indian religious life in the Mughal period Central Decay and Regional Challenges ● Mughal power did not long survive Aurangzeb’s death ● Some of the regional powers and smaller princely states flourished with the removal of the sultan’s heavy hand The Maritime Worlds of Islam ● New pressures faced by land powers were less important to seafaring countries intent on turning trade networks into empires ● Although European missionaries tried to extend Christianity into Asia and Africa, most Europeans did not treat converts as their people Muslims in Southeast Asia ● Although appeals to the Ottoman sultan for support against the Europeans ultimately proved futile, Islam strengthened resistance to Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch intruders ● Other local kingdoms looked on Islam as a force to counter Christianity Muslims in Coastal Africa ● Muslim rulers also governed the East African ports that the Portuguese began to visit in the fifteenth century ● Cooperation among the trading ports of Kilwa, etc, was hindered by the thick bush country that separated the cultivated tracts of coastal land ● Initially the Portuguese favored the port of Malindi ● In northwest Africa the seizure by Portugal and SPain of coastal strongholds in Morocco provoked a militant response European Powers in Southern Seas ● The Dutch played a major role in driving the Portuguese from their possessions in the East Indies ● Beyond the East Indies the Dutch utilized their discovery of a band of powerful eastward-blowing winds
Image and Map Work
● Map 19.1: This map shows Muslim empires spread out across Europe, Asia and the Middle east ● Aya Sofya Mosque in Istanbul: This was originally a byzantine cathedral and it was transformed into a mosque after 1453 ● Ottoman Glassmakers on Parade: Celebrations of the circumcisions of the sultan’s sons featured parades organized by craft guilds ● Iranian Waterpipe: Moistened tobacco was placed in a cup and was left to smolder. Like an old timey pipe ● Safavid Shah with Attendants and Musicians: This painting reflects western influences with the use of light and shadow ● Royal Square in Isfahan: There is a large bazaar as well as a large mosque here ● Istanbul Family on the Way to a Bath House: Public bath houses set different hours for women and men ● Elephants Breaking Bridge of Boats: This shows the ability of miniature painters ● Map 19.2: This shows where Europeans colonized across the Indian Ocean ● Portuguese Fort Guarding Musqat Harbor: These were some of the best harbors in southern Arabia
Dirk H.A. Kolff - Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy - The Ethnohistory of The Military Labour Market of Hindustan, 1450 1850 (1990, Cambridge University Press) PDF