Part 1: Of Bandits and Princes
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Part 1: Of Bandits and Princes
If history can, with much effort made by those who study it, be considered a series of smaller, usually predictable (and often romantic) narratives intertwined with one another - all protagonized by kingdoms and empires which formed, grew and fell apart, some suddenly and others in a matter of decades or even centuries - then the Ottoman Empire's condition by the end of the 18th century seemed to be nothing short of the final act of a long tragedy. For more than 200 years (from at least the 1400s until the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699), the empire led by Osman's descendants was a force whose military might was feared by all of Europe, and even after its expulsion from Hungary it was still to repel further Austrian attacks in the Balkans and even retake some lost territory. But years upon years of corruption, incompetent or outright insane sultans, and the failure to modernize its military and administrative apparatus all took their toll on the Sublime Porte, whose weaknesses were revealed in a most humiliating manner in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774. The loss of the Crimean Khanate in this conflict, and Constantinople's failure to recover it in a subsequent war that only led to the loss of even more land, made it clear to the empire's ruling class that something had to be done before it was too late.
Of course, implementing the necessary reforms turned out to be a challenge in of itself. The authority of Selim III, the sultan at that critical time, barely mattered beyond the suburbs of Constantinople, and it could be argued that he barely had control over what went on inside the walls of the Topkapi Palace. Rumelia, once a core territory of the empire, was awash with bandits thanks to the socioeconomic disruption caused by the last wars, making an already fragile treasury even weaker. The biggest issue to deal with, however, was the immense power held by the Janissaries, who had long since ceased to be an elite military force and were now nothing more than corrupt kingmakers, and the ayans, autonomous lords who took over local administrations and not only hoarded to themselves the taxes they were supposed to send to the central government, but set up dynasties. Two of the most extreme examples of this decentralization were Ali Pasha of Yanina and Osman Pazvantoglu of Vidin, whose power was so great they consorted with foreign ambassadors.
Part 1: Of Bandits and Princes
If history can, with much effort made by those who study it, be considered a series of smaller, usually predictable (and often romantic) narratives intertwined with one another - all protagonized by kingdoms and empires which formed, grew and fell apart, some suddenly and others in a matter of decades or even centuries - then the Ottoman Empire's condition by the end of the 18th century seemed to be nothing short of the final act of a long tragedy. For more than 200 years (from at least the 1400s until the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699), the empire led by Osman's descendants was a force whose military might was feared by all of Europe, and even after its expulsion from Hungary it was still to repel further Austrian attacks in the Balkans and even retake some lost territory. But years upon years of corruption, incompetent or outright insane sultans, and the failure to modernize its military and administrative apparatus all took their toll on the Sublime Porte, whose weaknesses were revealed in a most humiliating manner in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774. The loss of the Crimean Khanate in this conflict, and Constantinople's failure to recover it in a subsequent war that only led to the loss of even more land, made it clear to the empire's ruling class that something had to be done before it was too late.
Of course, implementing the necessary reforms turned out to be a challenge in of itself. The authority of Selim III, the sultan at that critical time, barely mattered beyond the suburbs of Constantinople, and it could be argued that he barely had control over what went on inside the walls of the Topkapi Palace. Rumelia, once a core territory of the empire, was awash with bandits thanks to the socioeconomic disruption caused by the last wars, making an already fragile treasury even weaker. The biggest issue to deal with, however, was the immense power held by the Janissaries, who had long since ceased to be an elite military force and were now nothing more than corrupt kingmakers, and the ayans, autonomous lords who took over local administrations and not only hoarded to themselves the taxes they were supposed to send to the central government, but set up dynasties. Two of the most extreme examples of this decentralization were Ali Pasha of Yanina and Osman Pazvantoglu of Vidin, whose power was so great they consorted with foreign ambassadors.
Ali Pasha and Osman Pazvantoglu, respectively.
One character whose biography provides a very revealing insight into Ottoman affairs during the 1790s is Kara Feyzi, a soldier turned bandit whose area of influence covered much of Thrace and the Balkan Mountains (1). Far from a mere criminal, he established an complex organization made up of Muslims and Christians alike, who had no qualms about stealing from their religious brethren. At the same time, however, said organization also served as an intermediary of sorts between the villages and towns in which they had a presence (and were almost always under the control of an ayan) and the Sublime Porte, a relationship that would, in other circumstances, have been nothing more than yet another example of the Ottoman authorities' tendency to coopt bandits whenever possible, both to preserve order and to redirect their destructive activities against foreign enemies. This wasn't the case with Kara Feyzi's network, which took advantage of the state's weakness to grow to an unprecedented size and plunder much of Rumelia as a result.
But at the same time the rise and growth of this shadowy empire was a sympton of the rot within the Ottoman government, its ultimate fate was an omen of the change that was to come. On June 28 1797, Kara Feyzi launched an attack against the retinue of a local notable named Osman Usta near the town of Çirmen, in Thrace. The undertaking was not only a failure, but decapitated the organization in a single stroke: the notorious bandit was slain along with more than thirty men, many of whom were some of his most trusted lieutenants (2). Subsequent reports showed that while banditry remained a persistent phenomenon in the Rumelian countryside (it always was, for the whole empire), it took on a less cohesive character for the next few years, providing the sultan and his allies with an invaluable window of time to reassert their authority.
A new order was rising.
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Notes:
(1) So I found out about this guy while reading a book called Economies of Violence, which describes him as a "warrior-entrepreneur". Here's a sci-hub link.
(2) Kara Feyzi survived IOTL, and his network continued to prosper into the early 1800s as the Porte realized it had no chance of destroying it for good. With him dead Selim III has one less thorn on his side, for the moment.
