Part XXXIV: A New Osman (1488 - 1510)
The Ottoman Empire had been birthed from the chaos that had reigned over Anatolia after the collapse of the Sultanate of Rûm. The old balance of power between settled Greeks and settled Salchouqs[1] had been upset by the sudden introduction of thousands of Turkmen warriors straight from the steppe. This period had seen the center of power in Anatolia shift from the Salchouq cities of the east to the western frontier, where the decaying Byzantine Empire’s[2] Anatolian territories were overrun by the fierce men from the steppe. Dozens of small ghazi statelets had cropped up, all with the express intention of plundering the Byzantines--all in the name of God, of course. The Germiyanids and the Aydinids had been the early forerunners, but a combination of skill and luck[3] had catapulted Osman and his followers to emerge from this period as the chief hegemon of western Anatolia. The government system which Osman and Orhan had established--a mixture of Turkmen warriors and slave soldiers as the military arm and a Byzantine-derived tax system to finance the state and its expansion--had supported the rise of the Ottoman Empire to control vast swathes of Rumelia and Anatolia. However, the Empire’s defeat and following decline in the 1460s had led many to question whether this system needed to be changed.
The failure of Mehmed II to prevent defeat in the War of the First Holy League and the subsequent collapse of Ottoman control of Anatolia led directly to the sultan's fatal ‘accident’ in 1466. He was succeeded by his young son, Mustafa II, but true power lay in the hands of Mahmud Angelović Paşa, his regent and later grand vizier, as well the man who was commonly suspected to have played a part in Mehmed’s death.
The realm that Angelović Paşa presided over was vastly different from the one which Mehmed had inherited. The frontier provinces of Serbia, Albania, and much of mainland Greece had been lost to the Latins. The Danubian vassals had both broken free from the Sublime Porte and now paid homage to the Hungarians, meaning that recovering them would be nigh-on impossible. Anatolia, formerly the heartland of the Ottoman domain, had been almost completely overrun by the Karamanids, depriving the Sublime Porte of its formerly numerous Turkmen horsemen. He was also facing down a brewing economic crisis, as most of their tributaries were no longer paying their dues and much of their European tax-collecting infrastructure had been lost during the war. The regent/vizier found before him a difficult task, but he would rise to the occasion. Angelović aspired to reform the upper echelons of the Ottoman state into a vessel for his own personal control, and he would use every opportunity presented to him to do so.
Angelović Paşa’s first step was to reform the tax system. At the time, the Ottomans were dependent upon the iltizām tax system, under which tax contracts would be auctioned off to various independent contractors, who would then collect their assigned taxes as well as extorting a great deal more for their own gain. This kind of tax system had been common throughout history, but it was both dreadfully inefficient and utterly hated by just about everyone. As such, in 1469 the grand vizier declared an official end to the iltizām system, instead promulgating the kentrosadiq[4] system. Under the new system, taxes would be collected by civil servants in a strictly organized system of surveyed plots, tax exemptions and surcharges depending on which villayet they were operating in. Those caught skimming off profits would sold into slavery to work in the mines of the Balkan Mountains, for which ‘hellish’ is an understatement. This reform saw the amount of tax collected by the state increase slightly but the number of extorted peasants fall dramatically. This made both Angelović Paşa and the Ottomans at large much more popular amongst their sedentary subjects, and after this the number of tax revolts, which had been a recurring problem for the last few years, fall dramatically.
Next, he turned his attention to the court and the bureaucracy. The vast majority of the bureaucracy were supporters of the House of Osman, and thus could be used against him by Mustafa if the two had a falling out. He also wished to do away with his domestic rivals, chief among them Rûm Mehmed Paşa, the chief supply officer of the fleet. Paşa fabricated a mass conspiracy against Mustafa in 1471, listing dozens of civil servants and potential rivals in both the bureaucracy and the court, and was able to convince the sultan that all of these venerable figures were plotting to kill him. When the young sultan flew into a panic because of this, he quickly gave the Paşa permission to root out this and any other plot against him. Over the following weeks, more than three hundred people were strangled and hundreds of others sent into exile, effectively stripping the court of any potential rival, as well as any family member of a potential rival who may have been driven to oppose him due to the purge, as well as any relatives of those. He also revived the papiai, the secret police of the Kantakouzenoi, promising to give the sultan knowledge of anything that they uncovered. Instead, he used it to further cement his control over the Sublime Porte, having any potential enemies murdered before they could become a threat. He also overhauled the bureaucracy, turning it into a straight-out meritocracy with little opportunity for the traditional aristocracy (in this case, timariots and sipahis) to interject traditional candidates. He removed the requirement to be a Muslim from all but the highest level of power, and from 1486 on he encouraged the use of both Greek and Persian[5] as the languages of administration.
He also attempted to modify the army’s structure to both improve its fighting abilities and its loyalty to him. He allowed the existing officer corps to persist but altered its recruiting program, opening up opportunities for soldiers to rise through the ranks. This, along with the various other meritocratic programs enacted during Angelović Paşa’s tenure as regent/grand vizer, had the double effect of increasing the ability of those holding positions of power as well as allowing Angelović to get his claws into them early, singling out good prospects to improve his relations with and either warp them into devout loyalists or have them exiled to the Danubian frontier[6] and/or killed off. The recruitment of the army remained roughly the same, although the use of the devşirme[7] was dialed back and re-phrased as the ‘Potential Officer Recruitment Program’, or ‘Çalviafsarone’, a far more diplomatic term. Locals in the Asiatic provinces were allowed to form militias to defend from Karaman aggression, but their European counterparts were not allowed to do so for fear of siding with any potential invaders. This pool of recruits could be used to expedite the mustering of armies, which further helped Ottoman prospects. Finally, a range of forts were constructed across all of their frontiers, to cut down on losses to foreign raiders and slow any enemy invasion, be it from their co-religionists or the Latin knights from the west.
Angelović also pursued a fairly aggressive foreign policy, seeking to return his, I mean, his charge’s empire to its former heights. Most prominent amongst these efforts was Notaras’ War, which began after a botched attempt to seize formerly Genoese possessions in the Aegean. Following the victory of the Sublime Porte in this conflict, a number of islands in the aforementioned sea were annexed into the Ottoman realm, the islanders being given a number of privileges--most notably exemption from the jizya tax and the çalviafsaroni and permission to raise militias to defend against pirates--to keep them loyal and try to wean the subjects of other islanders away from their Italian overlords. As previously mentioned, Thessalia was reduced to a vassal, as were the Çandarids before they were fallen upon and driven east over the mountains to exile in Syria in the 1480s. He also campaigned heavily against the Albanians, who were divided between various warring clans and tribes. Before his death, the highlanders were driven out of much of the eastern country or reduced to subjects, with the independent Albanians being driven to the far western mountains, where they would be perpetually vulnerable and a workable buffer state with the Venetians. He also attempted to reduce the Trapezuntines to vassals and actually succeeded in doing so, but their tribute was limited to the annual payment of a single ducat to Constantinople. Nonetheless, he was able to use this as an opportunity to increase his and Mehmed III’s prestige, by forcing, the Trapezuntine embassy to persuade through the streets of the city to a booing crowd in a scene similar to a Roman triumph, pay homage to the sultan in person and kiss his feet[8], then place the single ducat on a pillow, which would then be given to the grand vizier, who would then hand it to the sultan.
Most notably, he also encouraged the advancement of Greeks, be they Orthodox or Muslim, through all ranks of society. The majority of territories controlled by the Sublime Porte after the disastrous 1460s were Greek-speaking, across mainland Greece, the islands, Thrake[9] and Anatolia. There were sizable Turkish (a mixture of Turkmen and Salchouqs) and Bulgarian populations, but these were both smaller. The Bulgarians in particular had next to no political power, as their nobility had been utterly slaughtered and their land parceled out between timariots. Angelović Paşa framed this to Mustafa and Mehmed as a way to shore up Ottoman rule, and while this was true it also helped him build up power for himself. However, as power is and was a zero-sum game, this made many of the Turkish nobility unhappy, a phenomenon which would rear its head some time later. In the short term, however, this program led to increased support for the Ottomans in its Greek provinces and an increased percentage of Greeks in the sultan’s bureaucracy and court. He also made constant efforts to improve relations between the Sublime Porte and the Orthodox church. The millet system, an idea which Mehmed had begun to develop but had been unable to institute before his untimely and completely accidental death, was instituted in 1472. The Ecumenical Patriarch was given control over all churches in the Ottoman Empire excepting a few Latin churches which were allowed to exist as bargaining chips for the Italians. In matters of personal and family law, the Orthodox were allowed to self-govern. Many of the monasteries maintained their old Byzantine tax exemptions, but many others had them revoked. He also encouraged the Ecumenical Patriarch to try and subvert the Pontic Patriarchy with the pretext of Trapezous’ vassaldom, but this ultimately went nowhere because of factional infighting and a general opposition amongst the churchmen to taking orders from the infidels. As a whole, however, this period saw the Ottomans and the Orthodox Church become further interwoven, the latter being given a number of incentives to remain loyal to the further. Among these steps was an outlawing of the enslavement of Greek Orthodox in 1480, although this had little impact due to the increasing number of slaves taken from Circassia and bought from the Barbaries.
In spite of these great reforms, Mahmud Angelović Paşa was a man just like any other. In 1490, the great statesman died at the ripe old age of seventy, after nearly a quarter of a century at the top. He left Mehmed III, merely eight years old, as sultant. To take his place as regent and vizier, he appointed one of his most promising apprentices, a Greek Muslim named Ebülhayr Paşa. Ebülhayr Paşa continued the policies of his master throughout the entirety of his tenure as grand vizier, leading campaigns against Albania and Epirus throughout the 1490s in the name of the sultan and continuing the advancement of Greeks in the government. The tensions which had begun to foment during the latter half of Angelović Paşa’s reign continued to simmer just beneath the surface, as the newly-advanced Greeks clashed with the traditional Turkish aristocracy. Ebülhayr Paşa was able to keep a lid on things by siccing the papiai on anyone who looked at him funny, up to and including his own nephew in 1503.
However, this would come back to bite him, as Mehmed began to view his own regent with increasing distrust and fear. After all, it was an open secret that Angelović Paşa had his father strangled for disappointing him at the Siege of Trapezous, and who could say that Ebülhayr Paşa wouldn’t do the same to him? As he grew older and the chances of producing a male heir became higher, the possibility that Ebülhayr Paşa would have him killed to extend his own reign became more and more prominent in his mind. However, he knew that nothing would get him bumped off more quickly than a botched coup, and so throughout the 1510s he plotted, quietly but purposefully. Ebülhayr Paşa had him under constant surveillance due to his paranoid nature, and he was able to meet with his loyalists only by going on long hunting trips to the wilds around Adrianople. He knew that the bureaucrats would be loyal to their master, and so they couldn’t be trusted. Neither could the Greeks, as they would be most likely to turn on him, as the historical record showed that Greeks weren’t exactly the most trustworthy people[10]. As such, he made contact with the traditional Turkish aristocracy. The two of them had a shared interest, after all; he wanted to regain the power that his grandfather would have had, and they wanted to recover their traditional rights and privileges. As he spent more time with his confederates, the sultan gradually became convinced that the only way to save the Ottoman Empire was to undo all of the reforms enacted by Angelović Paşa. The timarotes, hotbeds of Turkish settlement, were scattered across eastern and southern Anatolia, especially in territories recently recovered from the Karamans and in Bulgaria, whereas the Bulgarians had been broken nearly completely and were thus open for settlement.
Unfortunately for Mehmed, Ebülhayr Paşa’s paranoid regime meant that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stage a palace coup without being assassinated. However, the army was still mostly Turkish, so he had far better chances of unseating the grand vizier by force of arms. He couldn’t just march an army into the capital, though, as there would still be enough time for the vizier to have him bumped off. By 1508, he had concluded that the best way for him to reclaim his birthright would be to flee to the provinces and raise a revolt against the capital regime. As such, over the next two years, he convinced Ebülhayr Paşa to undertake a buildup along the Danubian border. A succession crisis was brewing in Hungary, and he framed this as an opportunity to recover the Danubian principalities. Instead, he was marshalling forces under generals loyal to him. Finally, on 12 February 1510, he and a few loyalists slipped out of the capital and rode north, braving the winter weather to reach the frontier. A week later, upon arriving in Tarnovo, he and his generals declared the government in Constantinople illegitimate. The Second Ottoman Civil War had begun….
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[1] Recall, these are the partially hellenified Turks who migrated into the region in the 11th century and partially adopted the customs of the region in which they had settled, while retaining their Islamic faith and many other Turkish cultural aspects.
[2] I’m using this term here for simplicity’s sake, as well as the term ‘Greek’. I’m sure some of my readers are REE-ing at me right now, but I’m doing this for greater accessibility.
[3] Most notable amongst these windfalls was becoming the leader of a Sufi sect and inheriting the remnants of Alexios Philanthropenos’ auxiliary corp after his imprisonment in the 1290s.
[4] This is notable as being one of the first times that the Ottomans would use Greek in an official promulgation and, furthermore, as the name of an institution.
[5] The Ottomans used Old Anatolian Turkish as one of their languages of governance, which derived upwards of 90% of its vocabulary and syntax from contemporary, i.e. Middle Persian.
[6] The Wallachians and Moldovans were fiercely opposed to the Ottomans as well as having a vested interest in being able to tax the greatly expanded Danube river trade to their greatest ability. As such, they made frequent raids against forts on the river bank, often massacring or enslaving any garrison members. The Wallachians in particular had preserved the practice of impalement, finding that Turkish punitive expeditions usually lost heart after having to push through a forest of their own dead along the river bank, which in some places was nearly a mile wide.
[7] This translates as either ‘blood tax’ or ‘child levy’, neither of which are exactly inviting names.
[8] Having to kiss the Pope was one of the Catholic doctrines which most infuriated the Orthodox, making it into several compilations of ‘The Errors of the Latins’. As such, being forced to do it to the Sultan, who wasn’t even a Christian, was extremely insulting to the Trapezuntines as well as the other Orthodox states who were forced to give submission in such a way.
[9] Thrake extended all the way up to the Balkan Mountains, encompassing the southern half of OTL Bulgaria. Before the 1800s, the region was a fair mixture of Bulgarians and Greeks, but the Greek War of Independence led many of the Thrakian Greeks to adopt Bulgarian customs or leave for greener pastures.
[10] ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’. The Turks at large had a very low opinion of the Greeks, viewing them as cowards who were unable to defend themselves from the ghazis or insolent for refusing to convert and frequently revolting.