Armed Forces of The Ottoman Empire 1683-1

6/25/2020 Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire, 1683–1918 - Military History - Oxford Bibliographies
Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire, 1683–

1918
Virginia H. Aksan, Veysel Şimşek
LAST REVIEWED: 28 APRIL 2017

LAST MODIFIED: 24 JUNE 2020
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199791279-0106
Introduction
The Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1918) ruled over most of the territories of what is now known as the Middle East. The Ottomans were a
Muslim dynasty (the house of Osman) that governed multireligious and multiethnic populations from the steppes of Russia to the
Balkans and the Arabian Peninsula as well as North Africa, the Levant, and Turkey from the 1300s to 1918. The Ottoman difference
lies in its creation of a ruling class of any and all that joined the sultan’s household, in some cases without even converting to Islam
(such as troops that were provided by Ottomans’ vassals in the 14th century through the 16th century). The military power of the
dynasty was based initially on the assignment of military fiefs (timars) to a warrior class known as sipahis, and the creation of a unique
slave military infantry known as the Janissaries (new troops) and elite formations of household cavalrymen (kapıkulu süvarileri), who
have been recognized as the first disciplined standing army of Europe. This combined cavalry and infantry power rapidly conquered
Anatolia and the Balkans and absorbed and assimilated existing Byzantine and Islamic institutions. It twice fought its way to the gates
of Vienna, the second time in 1683 when a coalition of European monarchs turned the tide in favor of Christendom. The date 1683 has
ever since served as one of the great turning points of civilization in having come to represent the moment when “the Turk” was
definitively turned back from the gates of Europe. The defeat led to a century of crisis and introspection on the part of the Ottomans,
further disastrous defeats, and the gradual realization that the power of the once formidable Janissaries and fief-holding cavalrymen
had weakened. Over the next century and a half, the entire premise of Ottoman rule, structured on patrimonial rule and sultanic
largesse, would be altered in the struggle for survival. The results of that struggle included the decentralization of state revenues, the
building of local paramilitary armies, and the blurring of the traditional categories of bureaucrat-warrior service class (askeri) and tax-
paying class (reaya). In addition, the period saw the creation of wealthy state officials and local power holders who engineered (or
resisted), largely from the 1790s to the 1830s, the destruction of the traditional armed forces and the creation of a new European-style
disciplined, regimental force based on conscription of the Muslim population. The political contract that emerged in the era known as
the Tanzimat period (1839–1876) constituted an Ottoman-style constitutional monarchy pledging equality of citizenship and taxation
before the law even to non-Muslims, who had previously been tolerated as zimmi (people of the book) and largely excluded from
military service and high-level administration. Despite such achievements, economic mismanagement, Christian and Muslim
sectarianism, and continuous military pressure from Russia, coupled with empire-wide nationalist movements, led to further crushing
defeats and the rise of a militarized and racialized Turkish nationalism in the Young Turks movement. More specifically, the Committee
of Union and Progress, which relied on German financing and know-how to reorganize and arm the military at the turn of the 19th
century, entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers in 1914, and collapsed into ashes along with the monarchies of Russia
and Austria-Hungary at the end of that war in 1918.
General Overviews to 1683
Ottoman historians, in works such as Finkel 1988, Murphey 1999, Ostapchuk 2001, and Ágoston 2005, along with colleagues Géza
Dávid and Pál Fodor (see under Dávid and Fodor 2007), constructed much early work on Ottoman warfare, and the authors of these
works are responsible for setting the standard. One of the better explanations for the military failure at Vienna is found in Stoye 2006.
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Gradeva 2001 offers a glimpse of what the Habsburg-Ottoman border towns may have looked like. The collections in Tallett and Trim
2010 and Dávid and Fodor 2007 include a number of articles on the nature of war and society on the frontiers where the empires of the
Ottomans, Habsburgs, and Romanovs met. Emecen 2010 is a useful collection of articles that explores Ottoman campaigns, pivotal
battles, and management of warfare between the 15th and 17th centuries. Imber 2009 (second edition, first published in 2002) has a
number of chapters on the Ottoman military and provides detailed and insightful information to the general reader. By contrast, the
essays in Davies 2012 offer an in-depth look at the Ottomans and their borderland rivals.
Ágoston, Gabor. Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
An archival examination of Ottoman gunpowder manufacture, Ágoston’s work demonstrates Ottoman self-sufficiency in the production
of gunpowder well into the 17th century, although not necessarily mastery of the evolving technology involving its manufacture.
Dávid, Géza, and Pál Fodor, eds. Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders: Early Fifteenth–Early Eighteenth Centuries.
Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
Of particular interest in this volume are the articles by Géza Palffy, “Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman-Hungarian Frontier in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (pp. 35–82), which discusses the extent of the enterprise in military labor, and Klára Hegyi,
“Freed Slaves as Soldiers in the Ottoman Fortresses in Hungary” (pp. 85–91), which offers examples of the options facing Christian
prisoners of war. Available as an e-book. See also Pál Fodor and Géza Dávid, Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central
Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Conquest (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000).
Davies, Brian L. Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500–1800. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012.
Eleven essays by distinguished scholars on the military systems of the Ottomans and their Eurasian rivals—the Habsburgs, Poles, and
the Russians.
Emecen, Feridun. Osmanlı Klasik Çağında Savaş. Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2010.
English translation: Warfare in the Ottoman classical age. Utilizing a large array of Middle Eastern primary sources, Emecen
investigates Ottoman military policies, decisive battles, and conduct of warfare as the empire bid for supremacy in the Middle East and
the Balkans.
Finkel, Caroline. The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606. Vienna: Verlag des
Verbandes der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1988.
An in-depth account of the provisioning capabilities of the Ottoman army in the long war that ended with the Treaty of Zsitvatorok.
Gradeva, Rossitsa. “War and Peace along the Danube: Vidin at the End of the Seventeenth Century.” Oriente Moderno 20.1
(2001): 149–175.
One of a very few articles that examines the impact of warfare on the borders of the empire.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Imber is an expert on Ottoman legal history and this book is a general survey for the empire from its emergence to its zenith.
Nevertheless, the chapters that deal with the Ottoman army, navy, and military recruitment (especially for the collection and training of
Janissary recruits) are invaluable for the average reader.
Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700. London: University College London Press, 1999.
A truly microcosmic look at the workings of the pre-reform Ottoman military, Murphey’s intimate knowledge of the Ottoman archives is
on display in discussing topics such as camel loads, provisioning, distances the army had to march, and practices on the march and in
camp.
Ostapchuk, Victor. “The Human Landscape of the Ottoman Black Sea in the Face of the Cossack Naval Raids.” Oriente
Moderno 20.1 (2001): 23–95.
Ostapchuk’s knowledge of northern Black Sea Tatar and Cossack culture of the 17th century is without parallel.
Stoye, John. The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial between Cross and Crescent. New York: Pegasus Books, 2006.
This work is a reprint of the 1964 edition published in Edinburgh by Birlinn Press. Stoye’s evocation of the period is without equal in
English. His knowledge of the terrain and of international relations surrounding the Ottomans prior to the 18th century is unparalleled.
Tallett, Frank, and David J. B. Trim, eds. European Warfare, 1350–1750. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
This exceptional collection includes two articles on the Ottomans: Gábor Ágoston, “Empires and Warfare in East-Central Europe,
1550–1770: The Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry and Military Transformation” (pp. 110–134), which privileges the Habsburgs; and Rhoads
Murphey, “Ottoman Military Organisation in South-Eastern Europe, c. 1428–1720” (pp. 135–158), which argues for the ability of the
Ottomans to sustain successful siege warfare into the later 17th century.
General Overviews from 1683 to 1918
Military history post-1683 has largely been written from the point of view of a presumed Ottoman makeover of its society through the
lens of secularization and Westernization, which privileges the borrowing of Western military technology and the development of
constitutionalism over an indigenous understanding of warfare and its impact on the imperial project. Shaw 1971 on Selim III was the
single work in English on the military transformation per se for almost two decades. Aksan 2007, Fahmy 1997, Hartmann 2016,
Heinzelmann 2004, Moreau 2007, Yeşil 2016, Yıldız 2009, and Yıldız 2013 are volumes on the politics of military transformation that
took place from 1683 to the 1900s. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky 2002, a translated work, is one of the very few contemporary campaign
histories available to English speakers. Hickok 1997 points to Bosnia’s unique military status in the Ottoman arsenal. Frary and
Kozelsky 2014 revisits the Eastern Question and carries its relevance to World War I and post-1918. The Crimean War period and the
end of empire, especially World War I, are better represented because of the interest of European historians in these conflicts, but even
among Ottomanists, the end of empire has generated much work in the early 21st century. The return of attention to the topic of
Comparative Empires and Warfare in its global guise has awakened interest in the structure, expression, and evolution of Ottoman
military power in general.
Aksan, Virginia H. Ottoman Wars, 1700–1870: An Empire Besieged. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2007.
Part of a series edited for Longman by Hamish Scott, Modern Wars in Perspective, this work provides a synthesis of, and considerable
details on, the armies and related military and diplomatic institutions of the later Ottomans as well as setting out an agenda for much-
needed further research.
Fahmy, Khaled. All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
Fahmy’s book constitutes a close study of the military reforms of Muhammad Ali, utilizing Egypt’s archives in the work, especially the
correspondence between Muhammad Ali and his son, Ibrahim, the conqueror of Syria in 1831.
Frary, Lucien J., and Mara Kozelsky, eds. Russian-Ottoman Borderlands: The Eastern Question Reconsidered. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2014.
This is a remarkable collection of twelve essays on the continued significance of Eastern Question politics in light of the bicentennial of
1815 and the centennial of World War I. It includes a thorough review of the literature and offers new views in highly interesting ways
with a broad geographic scope.
Hartmann, Elke. Die Reichweite des Staates: Wehrpflicht und moderne Staatlichkeit im Osmanischen Reich 1869–1910.
Paderborn, Germany: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016.
English translation: The reach of the state: Obligatory military service and modern state formation in the Ottoman Empire, 1869–1910.
Hartmann provides a political and social history of conscription in the late Ottoman Empire, especially focusing on the long reign of
Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909).
Heinzelmann, Tobias. Heiliger Kampf oder Landesverteidigung? Die Diskussion um die Einführung der allgemeinen
Militärpflicht im Osmanischen Reich 1826–1856. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004.
Heinzelmann has produced a comprehensive look at the military reforms and discussions on the early Tanzimat era (c. 1840s),
especially compulsory service.
Hickok, Michael Robert. Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997.
A study of the province of Bosnia and its administrators. Bosnia accepted Ottoman rule under the condition of maintaining a separate
military tradition. In the 18th century in particular, the Bosnian militia aided the Ottoman central military considerably. During the reforms
of the 1820s, the Bosnians revolted against the attempts to impose the new regimen on their traditional forces.
Klein, Janet. The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2011.
A first study in English of the Hamidiye paramilitary troops organized by Sultan Abdülhamid II. Klein has produced a work that
addresses state and tribal relations in an emerging nationalist environment.
Martykánová, Darina. Reconstructing Ottoman Engineers: Archaeology of a Profession (1789–1914). Pisa, Italy: Pisa
An interesting and much-needed study on the Ottoman engineers who were integral to the unprecedented military reforms and the
political-social transformation of the late Ottoman Empire.
Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Alexander. Russo-Turkish War of 1806–1812. 2 vols. West Chester, OH: Nafziger Collection, 2002.
During this campaign, the Russian army trapped the Ottoman army on the left bank of the Danube at Ruse and acquired the new
territory of Bessarabia. This translation is one of the very few pre–World War I campaign histories in English.
Moreau, Odile. L’Empire ottoman à l’âge des réformes: Les hommes et les idées du “Nouvel Ordre” militaire, 1826–1914.
Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2007.
This work explores the difficulties concerning manpower and conscription as expressed by the reforming bureaucrats of the age.
Shaw, Stanford. Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Shaw’s work envisioned a sultan and his kitchen cabinet working hard to recover the finances and military institutions of the traditional
Ottoman system while experimenting with new ideas modeled on the Russian reforms of Peter the Great. It suffers from a considerable
opacity of evidence and a top-down view.
Yeşil, Fatih. İhtilâller Çağında Osmanlı Ordusu: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Sosyoekonomik ve Sosyopolitik Değişim Üzerine
bir Inceleme (1789–1826). Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayinlari, 2016.
English translation: Ottoman army in the Age of Revolutions, 1789–1826. Yeşil’s work is a detailed reappraisal of the military reforms of
Selim III (r. 1789–1807) and a comprehensive research on the transformation of the Ottoman army from the late 18th century and early
19th century. It incorporates essential as well as interesting themes, such as financing the expanding Ottoman military machinery,
details about the organization and reorganization of the regular and irregular formations, and how politics of the court and local
notables affected the military reform.
Yıldız, Gültekin. “Neferin Adı Yok” Zorunlu Askerliğe Geçiş Sürecinde Osmanlı Develeti’nde Siyaset, Ordu ve Toplum, 1826–
1839. Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2009.
A meticulous study of the military reforms of Mahmud II, especially on the politics of conscription and the Mahmudian regime’s impact
on the larger society as well as the Ottoman armed forces.
Yıldız, Gültekin, ed. Osmanlı Askerî Tarihi 1792–1918: Kara, Deniz ve Hava Kuvvetleri. Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2013.
A comprehensive collection of articles on various aspects of the Ottoman military institutions, reforms, armament industries, and
imports as well as the wars they fought.
Yorulmaz, Naci. Arming the Sultan: German Arms Trade and Personal Diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire before World War I.
London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014.
A detailed research on the Ottoman arms imports, especially focusing on the politics and diplomacy during the reign of Abdülhamid II
(r. 1876–1909).
General Narratives for Wider Audiences
Well-known Eastern Question surveys barely include any reference to the Ottoman point of view. The historiography has developed
significantly, but oriental tales continue to substitute for serious accounts of the empire. Wheatcroft 2009 and Goodwin 1994 attempt a
more balanced picture. Other works, such as the surveys Lewis 2001 and Berkes 1998, evince more interest in the political and social
transformation of the same period and, hence, the authors have muted the technical aspects of the military change underway. Nicolle
2010 offers a new view of the rise of the Ottoman dynasty. Aksan 2011 redresses the assumptions that all military reform came from
the West. Cole 2007 offers a revisionist look at Napoleon’s invasion of Alexandria and Cairo.
Aksan, Virginia. “Islam-Christian Transfers of Military Technology, 1730–1918.” In European History Online. Edited by Peter H.
Wilson and Helmuth Trischler. Mainz, Germany: Institute of European History, 2011.
This online article addresses the question of the influence (or not) of the military missions to the Ottomans in the late empire.
Berkes, Niyazi. The Development of Secularism in Turkey. New York: Routledge, 1998.
This influential, intellectual study on the transformation of Ottoman society treats the military necessities that drove the reforms
cursorily and neglects what has been described as the alternative Muslim modernity model. Originally published in 1964.
Cole, Juan. Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Cole tells the story of the Napoleonic episode quite deliberately from the point of view of Cairo and Istanbul, using contemporary Arab
and Turkish documents and chronicles.
Goodwin, Godfrey. The Janissaries. London: Saqi, 1994.

This volume consists of a series of vignettes culled from numerous observers of the Ottomans across the centuries. It is accessible, if
sensationalistic, but it was not intended to serve as a history of the imperial military system.
Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Lewis’s work, which is still widely available, was profoundly influenced by post–World War II theories of development as exemplified in
the Turkish republican model, anachronistically applied to the supposed Westernization of the Ottoman world in the reforms of Selim III
in the late 18th century.
Nicolle, David. Cross and Crescent in the Balkans: The Ottoman Conquest of South-Eastern Europe, 14th–15th Centuries.
Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Military, 2010.
This work by a prolific author of Middle Eastern military history sets the fall of Constantinople in the context of the proceeding 150 years
and the gradual rise of the Ottoman Turks.
Wheatcroft, Andrew. The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
A good narrative of the events surrounding the siege of Vienna in 1683. Wheatcroft’s expertise is the Habsburgs; the Ottoman side is
less well represented. The work could have used more maps and illustrations.
Reference Works and Textbooks
The Ottoman world has suffered from a lack of encyclopedias and textbooks in general, but the early 21st century has seen an
explosion of such materials as interest in the premodern Middle East has grown. Ágoston and Masters 2009 is an encyclopedia aimed
at upper-level high school and university students, while Fleet, et al. 2006–2012 is the usual pastiche of selected authors and lacks
depth on military questions. Hanioğlu 2010 and Zürcher 2004 are by authors who are old hands on the Young Turks and have been
included here as examples of the most detailed work on the period. Finkel 2006 is a big sweep work with extraordinary detail from the
Ottoman chronicles. The authors of Uyar and Erickson 2009 have teamed up to write this lean history of the military forces of the
empire and republic, while Mikaberidze 2011, an edited encyclopedia, opens up the entire military world of Muslim civilization in a depth
that has heretofore not been attempted. Peacock 2009 provides an extraordinary and diachronic look at the frontiers across the
Ottoman world. Howard 2017 is more of a cultural and intellectual history than a political one, but it is an interesting exploration of the
sacred origins of Ottoman sovereignty and power. Woodhead 2012, an encyclopedic volume, includes thirty outstanding essays by the
best in the field.
Ágoston, Gábor, and Bruce Masters. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
This is the first modern attempt at a general audience snapshot of the Ottomans by two experts in the field. As Ágoston is also a
military historian, many of the articles on the armed forces are written by him and are very informative.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923. New York: John Murray, 2006.
An encyclopedic narrative from an author who started as an Ottoman-Habsburg military historian, this book offers wonderful, episodic
glimpses, drawn from an array of contemporaries, into the workings of the Ottomans and their armed forces.
Fleet, Kate, Suraiya Faroqhi, and Reşat Kasaba, eds. The Cambridge History of Turkey. 4 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2006–2012.
As with all such collected works, these volumes were written and compiled for more than a decade, and they are eclectic, with little
actual military history represented. Nonetheless, they represent contemporary scholarship and are very informative about Ottoman
society and culture as well as modern Turkey. Also available at Cambridge Histories Online by subscription.
Hanioğlu, Şükrü. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Hanioğlu is the acknowledged expert on the origins of the Turkish nationalist intellectuals and the origins of the military revolt in the
officer class of Macedonia. This short textbook offers a unique perspective on late Ottoman society, and it carries through that expertise
to the 1908 coup d’état of the Committee of Union and Progress. However, it falls short of a comprehensive coverage of the final
collapse. Also available as an e-book.
Howard, Douglas A. A History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
As with Finkel 2006, Howard draws deeply and extensively on Ottoman cultural productions and performance, coupled with an intimate
sense of the imperial geography.
Mikaberidze, Alexander, ed. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA:
ABC-CLIO, 2011.
The intent here was to create an accessible military-political history of Muslim societies from the 7th century forward, from within their
regional contexts and with a deliberate effort to include regions, events, and key players often neglected in Western histories. Coverage
is remarkably comprehensive and free of the hyperventilating that characterizes much of modern work on Islam. The Ottoman armed
forces receive their due. Also available as an e-book.
Peacock, Andrew C. S., ed. The Frontiers of the Ottoman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
This collection of essays has an encyclopedic range on fortifications, administration, populations, and economies of Ottoman
borderlands. Notable articles include those by Victor Ostapchuk and Svitlana Bilyayeva, “The Ottoman Northern Black Sea Frontier at
Akkerman Fortress: The Present View from a Historical and Archaeological Project” (pp. 137–170), and Kahraman Şakul, “Ottoman
Attempts to Control the Adriatic Frontier in the Napoleonic Wars” (pp. 253–270).
Uyar, Mesut, and Edward J. Erickson. A Military History of the Ottomans from Osman to Atatürk. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger
Security International, 2009.
An informative survey of the entire span of the empire and republican armed forces. It is the only one of its kind in English, so it is a
welcome addition to the military literature. The Ottomans are credited with having built the bureaucracy to sustain the continuity into the
republic and the creation of a modern army, but the work ignores the Armenian genocide.
Woodhead, Christine, ed. The Ottoman World. Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2012.
Thirty focused essays, fifteen to twenty pages each, are written by the experts, making this a novel and exciting entrance into the study
of the Ottoman Empire.
Zürcher, Erik Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. 3d ed. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Zürcher is a celebrated scholar of late Ottoman Turkey, and, like Hanioğlu, he is well versed on the actors and events of the transition
from empire to republic.
Crimean War
The Crimean War, once relegated as an afterthought to Eastern Question surveys, has reemerged of late with new standing as the first
global war, and it has generated recent interest in historians of military medicine, indigenous troops, and transcultural networks of
military manpower and leadership. Davies 2016 explores the 1768–1774 Russo-Ottoman War, arguably the opening of the long contest
between the two empires that continued until the end of the 19th century. Goldfrank 1994 and Figes 2011 represent the short textbook
and longer reflective narratives, respectively, while Saab 1977, a study of the origins, is an old favorite that has not been superseded.
Clay 2000, a study of Ottoman indebtedness, should be paired with Badem 2010, the first to examine the war from the Ottoman side,
and Allen and Muratoff 2010, a well-known study. The collection of articles in Borejsza 2011 introduces a new generation of
international scholarship.
Allen, William E. D., and Paul Muratoff. The Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border,
1828–1921. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
A classic work of geographical and ethnographical precision that has yet to be superseded. Also on Cambridge Books Online.
Originally published in 1953.
Badem, Candan. The Ottoman Crimean War, 1853–1856. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
This is the first extensively researched study of the Crimean War from the Ottoman side. Badem’s work should serve as an eye-opener
for European military historians, giving a perspective that has long been missing on the global integration, indebtedness, and contested
views that characterized the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.
Borejsza, Jerzy W., ed. The Crimean War, 1853–1856: Colonial Skirmish or Rehearsal for World War? Empires, Nations, and
Individuals. Papers drawn from a conference held at Warsaw, Poland, in 2007. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 2011.
This collection of articles is from a conference held in Warsaw in 2007, and it includes a cross section of new work in Russian, German,
French, and English, the latter including a number of young Ottoman historians.
Clay, Christopher. Gold for the Sultan: Western Bankers and Ottoman Finance, 1856–1881: A Contribution to Ottoman and
International Financial History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.
Everything you need to know about the Ottoman Bank, established once the sultan found he could no longer finance his military
reforms. Run by foreigners, it was, as Feroz Ahmed once suggested, a forerunner of the International Monetary Fund. Though not an
easy read, it nonetheless complements the military histories as a further explanation for the difficulties faced by the Ottoman
government during the Crimean War and after.
Davies, Brian L. The Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774: Catherine II and the Ottoman Empire. London: Bloomsbury Academic,
2016.
Benefitting from Russian and Ottoman sources, Davies’s monograph scrutinizes the crucial war of 1768–1774 on the ground. The
controversial Küçük Kaynarca Treaty ending the war contributed to the escalating Danubian crises that led to both the Crimean War
and the 1877–1778 conflicts.
Figes, Orlando. The Crimean War: A History. New York: Henry Holt, 2011.
Prize-winning historian, though controversial, Figes exemplifies the new views on the significance of the Crimean War in global history,
taking the reader well beyond Florence Nightingale and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Goldfrank, David M. The Origins of the Crimean War. London: Longman, 1994.
This is now a Pearson education paperback on demand. Goldfrank gives a straightforward account of the international relations
imbroglio that led to the Crimean War. The book has the virtue of including the Ottomans to some extent and being quite accessible.
Saab, Ann Pottinger. The Origins of the Crimean Alliance. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977.
Saab focuses on the Byzantine politics of the period as well, but her work stands out for its very extensive use of diplomatic records
and her ability to recognize and actually give the Ottoman officials some agency.
World War I
The Ottomans and their successors, the Turkish nationalists of the Committee of Union and Progress, are increasingly well represented
in the literature on World War I. In addition to some reworking of the reasons for the Ottoman commitment to war found in Aksakal
2008, a number of works are available on actual campaigns, including Erickson 2001, Erickson 2003, and Erickson 2007. Hall 2000 is
a readable introduction to the Balkan Wars, increasingly seen as the beginning of the Great War. McMeekin 2010 is a new study of the
old question of Germany’s relationship with Turkey before and during World War I, while McMeekin 2015 takes a look at the post–
World War I reordering. Ulrichsen 2014 is a comprehensive look at World War I in the Middle East. Nezir-Akmese 2005 is one of a new
group of studies arguing for continuity from empire to republic, especially regarding the military bureaucracy and its positivist
approaches to reform, and Gingeras 2009 examines the special problems with irregulars during the war. Gingeras 2016 is another look
at World War II and its aftermath. Suny, et al. 2011 points to the problems concerning conscription and the Armenian question,
respectively. Zürcher 2016 demonstrates the maturation of the topic since that time. Beşikçi 2012 offers the first study in English on
Ottoman military manpower. Literatures in Turkish, German, and Russian are enormous, of course, as is the British obsession with the
Gallipoli campaign, a topic that dwarfs almost every other aspect of the Middle Eastern front in World War I. Uyar 2015 tells the
Ottoman story on the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landing.
Aksakal, Mustafa. The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War. Cambridge, UK:
A thorough examination at the documentary evidence in German, Ottoman, and British archives about the Ottoman drift into war with
Germany as helped along by Enver Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress triumvirate.
Beşikçi, Mehmet. The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance.
Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012.
The first full-length archival study of Ottoman mobilization, propaganda, family support, civilian organizations, and desertion.
Erickson, Edward J. Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
2001.
Military historians can learn a considerable amount about the culture and effectiveness (or not) of the late Ottoman army in this book,
which is largely about logistics and campaign effectiveness. Armenian historians have objected to the author’s silence on the genocide
question. Also available as an e-book.
Erickson, Edward J. Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
This work focuses on the disastrous campaigns of the Young Turks under Enver Pasha, making the argument that the best units were
destroyed in the confrontations with the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs, even as the Ottomans held on to Edirne, which remains part of
Turkey today. Also available as an e-book.
Erickson, Edward J. Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: A Comparative Study. London and New York: Routledge,
2007.
By focusing on Gallipoli, Iraq, and Palestine/Syria campaigns, Erickson provides a comparative and revisionist balance sheet regarding
the Ottoman military performance in the Great War.
Gingeras, Ryan. Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923. Oxford: Oxford
Gingeras studies the local violence between Greek and immigrant communities such as the Circassians on the Marmara and Aegean
coasts during and immediately following World War I. Greek occupation forces, Ottoman loyalists, Turkish nationalists, and local
Muslim and Christian residents resisted and suffered as the Ottoman Empire unraveled.
Gingeras, Ryan. Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922. Oxford: Oxford
This is a carefully documented look at late Ottoman implosion and violence that transformed the cultural and political geography of the
Middle East.
Hall, Richard C. The Balkan Wars 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War. London: Routledge, 2000.
This is a standard classroom text describing what are often called the first national wars with Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece against the
Turks, and then against one another.
McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.
A close study of the events that led up to Turkey’s alliance with Germany in 1914, which integrates military imperatives with
international politics around the question of Pan-Islamism.
McMeekin, Sean. The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923. New York:
Penguin Press, 2015.
A comprehensive political and military history on the Ottoman people’s long and continuous wars from the 1910s until 1922. McMeekin
uses Western-language primary and secondary sources (Russian, German, and French) extensively in his volume.
Nezir-Akmese, Handan. The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I. London: I. B. Tauris,
2005.
This work argues for the continuity of military power from the empire into the republic as the main reason for Atatürk’s success.
Özdemir, Hikmet. The Ottoman Army 1914–1918: Disease and the Death on the Battlefield. Translated by Şaban Kardaş. Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.
Using the British and Turkish military archives, Özdemir provides a survey on the impact of disease among the ranks of the Ottoman
army and its medical services.
Rogan, Eugene. The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Another valuable and highly readable account of the Ottoman World War I, especially detailed on the experiences of the Arab
provinces during the war.
Suny, Ronald Grigor, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark. A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End
of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
An authoritative collection of essays by historians of Russia, Armenia, and Turkey, including Göçek, who reviews the Turkish
historiography on the question, and Zürcher.
Ulrichsen, Kristian Coates. The First World War in the Middle East. London: Hurst, 2014.
This is a serious reworking of the standard World War I textbook as it gives due prominence to the significance of the Middle East front
to the Great War overall. Upward of 20 percent of the population was lost between 1912 and 1922.
Üngör, Uğur Umut. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–50. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.
A holistic approach to the Great War on the Ottoman eastern front, this work looks into the conflict and violence of the context of
Armenian genocide, the forced exodus of the Kurdish population, and the building of a Turco-centric nation-state.
Uyar, Mesut. The Ottoman Defence against the Anzac Landing 25 April 1915. Newport, Australia: Big Sky, 2015.
Uyar exhaustively utilizes Ottoman/Turkish sources to tell the non-Western side of the ANZAC landings story, which has often been
overlooked or misunderstood.
Zürcher, Erik J., ed. Jihad and Islam in World War I. Leiden, The Netherlands: Leiden University Press, 2016.
The volume has an informative collection of articles that shows how the Ottoman Empire war effort and declaration of Holy War were
interconnected with military mobilization, state propaganda, and domestic politics. Freely available online from the OAPEN Library.
Comparative Empires and Warfare
The Ottoman Empire has increasingly been drawn into the comparative military history of empires in the East and West. Cultural
comparisons are most fruitful in the discussion of frontiers and borderlands as well as the limits of premodern agrarian empires, and the
understanding of the impact of local culture on the organization and financing of military manpower in such contexts. Ágoston 2011 sets
out an agenda for further comparative research. Grant 2007 explores the Ottoman armament industry and Black 1999 was the first
work to bring together East and West in a comparative military volume. Kennedy and Khoury 2007 examines the British India and late
Ottoman worlds. While Perdue and Islamoğlu 2001 considers the possibilities of Qing/Ottoman comparisons, Lee 2011 examines
relations between empires and indigenous military labor, and Streusand 2011 addresses the common problems of three premodern
agrarian societies. Eurasia has been revived as a geopolitical expanse with common frontiers, mobile populations, and continuous
violence. Reynolds 2011 and Rieber 2014 represent the new approaches. Zürcher 2013 is an innovative set of essays on why men
choose to go to war.
Ágoston, Gábor. “Military Transformation in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, 1500–1800.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian
and Eurasian History 12.2 (2011): 281–319.
Examines grand strategies, expressions of power, and their limitations in the imperial rivalries.
Black, Jeremy, ed. War in the Early Modern World, 1450–1815. London: University College London Press, 1999.
Black’s was one of the first efforts to draw together the culture of war in major world civilizations, including the Ottomans, in a
comparative military context. The Ottoman contribution is by Virginia Aksan, “Ottoman War and Warfare 1453–1812” (pp. 147–176).
Also available as an e-book.
Grant, Jonathan A. Rulers, Guns and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
This is an international and episodic look at specific arms deals across the globe that includes the arms trading patterns of the late
Ottoman Empire. Grant published earlier articles on the Ottoman situation, specifically one titled “Rethinking the Ottoman ‘Decline’:
Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History 10 (1999): 179–201.
Kennedy, Dane, and Dina Rizk Khoury, eds. Special Issue: Comparing Empires. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa
and the Middle East 27.2 (2007).
This collection of essays stems from a conference on British India and the Ottomans. Especially noteworthy is C. A. Bayly’s
introductory article, “Distorted Development: The Ottoman Empire and British India, circa 1780–1916” (pp. 112–144).
Lee, Wayne E., ed. Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World.
New York: New York University Press, 2011.
A series of papers on trans-imperial military practices with indigenous peoples. It includes one by Virginia Aksan: “Ottoman
Ethnographies of Warfare 1500–1800” (pp. 141–167).
Perdue, Peter, and Huri Islamoğlu. “Introduction.” Journal of Early Modern History 5.4 (2001): 271–278.
An issue devoted to the Qing and Ottoman Empires. This unique collaboration lays out the possibilities for comparison across Asian
empires, and it includes a discussion of the mobilization of military power.
Reynolds, Michael. Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918. New York:
A groundbreaking study of the northern Caucasian frontier, contested by Russia and Turkey for more than 150 years.
Rieber, Alfred J. Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World
War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
A dense analysis of vast territories, aristocracies, elite versus peasant struggles, mobile populations, and the nature of the lands “in
between”—the frontier zones—where nationalism and violence became intrinsically linked.
Streusand, Douglas. Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011.
While designed as a textbook, this is an accessible, comparative imperial history of three Muslim agrarian civilizations that struggled
with nomadic warrior populations and evolving armies that required gunpowder technology and weaponry.
Vartov, Omer, and Eric D. Wietz. Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian and
Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.
In many ways, these twenty-six articles that cover roughly 1850–1950, can be read as case studies in tandem with Rieber 2014.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500–2000. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
The result of a three-year project of thirty to forty experts on empires and military history, it is remarkable at addressing the question of
why men fight. Freely available online from the OAPEN Library.
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6/25/2020 Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire, 1683–1918 - Military History - Oxford Bibliographies

Armed Forces of the Ottoman Empire, 1683–

LAST REVIEWED: 28 APRIL 2017

General Overviews to 1683

Janissary recruits) are invaluable for the average reader.

General Overviews from 1683 to 1918

General Narratives for Wider Audiences

Goodwin, Godfrey. The Janissaries. London: Saqi, 1994.

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