Rivals, Threats, and Traders with Europe

• A. New Muslim empires ruled by Turkic peoples develop in 1500s-1700s 
  • 1. Large, wealthy empires established by Central Asian Turkic speakers
    • a. Ottoman Empire - Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East
    • b. Safavids - Persia/Iran
    • c. Mughals - Northern India and surrounding areas
  • 2. Known as "Gunpowder Empires" for their use of new technologies
  • 3. Controlled important trade routes, making them quite wealthy
  • 4. Weakened by long-term war
  • 5. Population tended to expand more slowly than in other regions
• B. Central importance of Islam to Muslim empires
  • 1. Ottomans early in their history emphasized the importance of the ghazi - the warrior for faith
  • 2. Safavids Promoted Shiism, which brought them in conflict with the Sunni Ottomans
  • 3. Mughals, ruling in mainly Hindu India, went from indifference, to tolerance, to fanaticism, which weakened the empire
• C. Willingness to accept other faiths within Muslim Empires
  • 1. other faiths had their own leaders
  • 2. those leaders often had to collect taxes for the Muslim lords
  • 3. those leaders also had to be responsible for the actions of their adherents under their laws
  • 4. Differed from Christian empires, which tended to seek to convert all their subjects
  • 5. Mughals shift to fanaticism weakened their empire
• D. Administration and systems of government
  • 1. created strong support systems in the empires under exceptional rulers at the top
  • 2. created elite from non-Muslim populations--fostering support
    • a. i.e.. the Janissary Corps in the Ottoman Empire
      • i. Christian boys taken at an early age from parents
      • ii. converted to Islam, trained for military and government
      • iii. only loyalty was to the Sultan and themselves
    • b. also done in India
  • 3. administration largely based on skill and intelligence, not rank or birth
  • 4. schools and training established for skilled underlings to become administrators
  • 5. created patriotic, smart, and knowledgeable administers from across multi-ethnic empires
  • 6. However, Central Asian tradition of family management of empires created succession conflicts
• E. Created highly efficient military
  • 1. commander in chief was also the emperor
  • 2. strength in numbers--huge number of men under arms
  • 3. technologically behind the West, but willing to learn
  • 4. "Gunpowder Empires"- new Muslim empires that gained power around the 1400s and 1500s in part by using the Western technology of guns and cannon
    • a. increasing reliance on guns in military
    • b. excellent training for infantry
  • 5. provided means for expansion and maintenance of huge empires
    
• D. Success based on leadership
  • 1. since military and administration focused on one man--the emperor
  • 2. great emperors would make great empires, and vice versa
  • 3. similar to the fate of absolutism in Europe
  • 4. Weakened as economies and government declined
    • a. less expansion as empires matured made it harder to reward followers
    • b. steady loss of trade routed to Europeans
    • c. religious decline and decline of dynastic families weakened empires as well

• A. One of  the most impressive empire of the last 500 years
• B. Incredibly large, rich, and diverse
• C. After slowly taking over the old Byzantine lands, takes  Constantinople in 1453
  • 1. Eastern Orthodox Christian Empire--sat between Europe and Asia
  • 2. last vestiges of the Roman Empire as it had been split in 300
  • 3. Constantinople had been great for almost 1000 years 
  • 4. had been weakened by the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1250
  • 5. its fall symbolic of the loss of the middle east to Turks, their incursion into Europe
• D. By 1453, however, Turks had moved well into Europe
  • 1. sat at the edge of the Habsburg empire, the Holy Roman Empire
  • 2. continually attacked the Catholic HR Emperor, making it difficult to put down Protestantism!
  • 3. when they took Hungarian territory, they attracted the Bogomils 
    • a. who had fought Orthodox and Catholics alike
    • b. began the Bosnian/Serbian/Hungarian Muslim connection that exists today
      
• E. Apex of Ottoman Empire--Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566)
  • 1. responsible for restarting the pressure of the empire on Europe
  • 2. invaded Hungary, took it
  • 3. made it all the way to Vienna by 1526, where they were finally stopped
  • 4. took control of Eastern Mediterranean as well
  • 5. would hold most of Hungary until 1699 when they lost it to the Austrian Empire
  • 6. would hold much of northern Greece too until late 1500s
    

III. Safavid Empire in Persia (Iran)

• A. Difference between this and Turkish Empire
  • 1. Persian language (Farsi) vs. Turkik languages
  • 2. religious differences
  • 3. ethnic differences of leaders
• B. Importance of Islam even stronger here
  • 1. Sunnis vs. Shi'ias--quick explanation
  • 2. importance of Shiite leader being related to Mohammed
  • 3. Safavid rulers in Persia were Shiite
  • 4. differentiated themselves from the rest of the middle east--not Arabs in that sense
• C. Extraordinary advances in arts and literature of Persia under these shahs, i.e.. Abbas I (ruled 1587-1629)
• D. Quick (so to speak) rise and fall of Safavid empire, compared to Turks
  • 1. 1501-1723, so only about 200 years
  • 2. similar in administration and makeup of inhabitants as Ottoman
  • Empire--many kinds of subjects
  • 3. later emperors did not have the same abilities, slowly lost territory to Afghan rebels (!) and Turks 

IV. Mughal Empire in India

• A. Importance of Islam v. Hinduism
  • 1. Islam was a religion of conquest
  • 2. Turks won India from a huge Indian army through the use of muskets in 1524
  • 3. Turks, under Babur, began a new age of Muslim rule in India
  • 4. Even to this day there is discrimination between Muslim and Hindu
  • 5. Therefore Islam was less successful here, where there was already a strong central religion
  • 6. Early beginnings of Muslim/Christian/Hindu conflicts world wide could be seen here
    
• B. Importance of Trade for India
  • 1. tremendous goods for trade
  • 2. Portuguese originally had nothing to trade in return!
  • 3. India, however, would become most interesting to the English merchant marine
  • 4. English East India Company would infiltrate India slowly but surely until takeover in 1858
• C. Apex of empire--Emperor Akbar (ruled 1556-1605)
  • 1. a sort of renaissance man
    • a. military leader
    • b. musician
    • c. polo player
    • d. metal worker
    • e. even gun designer!
  • 2. tried to create a syncretic religion
  • 3. tried to get rid of old practices
    • a. ended poll tax on hindus
    • b. ended discrimination against hindus
    • c. even took a Hindu consort, much to the rage of devout Muslims
  • D. Slide downwards
    • 1. Aurangzeb got rid of ancient practices
      • a. wives burning themselves on husbands' funeral pyres
      • b. castration
      • c. yet was also militantly Muslim
      • d. made Hindi population dislike him 
    • 2. "heavy hand" plus Safavid conquest helped to bring down the empire

IV. Reasons for loss of power for Muslim empires

• A. Empires were based on land routes, not sea travel
• B. Europeans, especially Portuguese, could trade by sea with India and the far East
• C. No seafaring tradition meant that the Muslim empires could not keep up
• D. In India, especially, leadership weakened after Akbar
• E. 17th-19th centuries would see the great leap forward for European science and technology
  • 1. would lead to ever more efficient ways of killing people by Europeans
  • 2. would force Muslims to trade even if they didn't want to
  • 3. would force the empires to accept European presence in their cities
  • a. cities would become Europeanized somewhat
  • b. cities, then surrounding area would finally be taken by Europeans for their own
  • 4. Muslim science and technology, very strong in the 8th-15th C., would wane compared to Europe
• F. Don't take this too seriously, though--Ottoman Empire lasted until 1917!