For more than 600 years, the Ottoman Empire, once founded by Osman I Gazi, kept all of Europe and Asia at bay. Initially a small state on the territory of Asia Minor, in the next six centuries, it extended its influence to an impressive part of the Mediterranean basin. In the 16th century, the Ottomans owned lands in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and the Caucasus, North and East Africa.

However, any empire will sooner or later be destroyed.

Reasons for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire

Of course, the empire does not collapse overnight. The reasons for the decline accumulated and accumulated over several centuries.

Some historians tend to consider the reign of Sultan Ahmet I as a turning point, after which the throne began to be inherited by seniority, and not by the merits of the heirs. The weak character and commitment to the human weaknesses of subsequent rulers caused an unprecedented flourishing of corruption in the state.

Bribery and the sale of preferences led to an increase in discontent, including among the Janissaries, on whom the Sultanate has always relied. In May 1622, during the uprising of the Janissaries, Osman II, who was ruling at that time, was killed. He became the first sultan to be killed by his subjects.

The backwardness of the economy became the cornerstone in the collapse of the empire. Accustomed to living off the conquest and plunder of its neighbors, the Sublime Porte missed a key moment in changing the economic paradigm. Europe made a qualitative leap in the development of industry, introducing new technologies, and Porta still remained a medieval feudal state

The opening of new sea trade routes reduced the influence of the Ottoman Empire on trade between West and East. The empire supplied only raw materials, while importing almost all manufactured goods.

Unlike the European states, which put various technological innovations into service with their armies, the Ottomans preferred to fight the old fashioned way. In addition, the Janissaries, on whom the state relied during the war, were a poorly controlled mass. The constant riots of the discontented Janissaries kept in fear every new sultan ascending the throne.

Countless wars depleted the state budget, the deficit of which by the end of the 17th century approached 200 million akçe. This situation was the cause of several major defeats of the once invincible empire.

Military defeats

At the end of the 17th century, Turkey began to gradually narrow its borders. Under the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, she lost a significant part of the land, after which she actually stopped trying to move west.

The second half of the 18th century was marked by new territorial losses. These processes continued at the beginning of the 19th century, and in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78, the Port suffered a complete defeat, as a result of which several new states appeared on the map of Europe, breaking away from its territory and declaring independence.

The final significant blow to the Ottoman Empire was the defeat in the First Balkan War of 1912-13, which resulted in the loss of almost all territories on the Balkan Peninsula.

Feeling its weakening, the Ottoman Empire begins to look for allies and tries to rely on the help of Germany. However, instead, he is drawn into the First World War, as a result of which he loses an even more significant part of his possessions. The glorious Porte had to endure a humiliating fall: the Armistice of Mudros, signed in October 1918, represented an almost unconditional surrender.

The last point in the collapse of the Great Ottoman Empire was put by the Sevres Peace Treaty of 1920, which was never ratified by the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

Creation of the Republic of Turkey

The attempts of the Entente countries to forcibly enforce the terms of the Treaty of Sevres, which actually dismembered Turkey, forced the progressive part of Turkish society, led by Mustafa Kemal, to enter into a decisive struggle against the invaders.

In April 1920, a new parliament was formed, declaring itself the only legitimate authority in the country - the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Under the leadership of Kemal, who later received the nickname Ataturk (father of the people), the sultanate was abolished and a republic was subsequently proclaimed.

After the offensive of the Greek army was stopped in 1921, the Turkish troops launched a counteroffensive and liberated the whole of Anatolia. The Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923, although it contained some concessions to the Entente countries, nevertheless marked the recognition of Turkey's independence in the international arena.

The six-hundred-year-old Ottoman Empire fell and the Turkish Republic was born on its ruins, which was ahead of many years of reforms in all spheres of life.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to be considered the "sick man" of Europe, but they fought with it, and Constantinople was then a noticeable impressive military force, and its diplomats were famous for their unusual skill, the ability to solve the most incredible political and other tasks. But few people imagined that the prophecy described in a small book under the intriguing title "A curious prediction about the fall of the Turkish kingdom of the Arabian Star-Book Musta Eddin. Printed in the printing house of S. Selivanovskiy. St. Petersburg, 1828" will come true. It is curious that this book was published quite often - in 1789, 1828 (twice this year, in both capitals), 1854 ... The dates of these publications paradoxically coincide with the dates of the Russian-Turkish wars. The fall of the Ottoman Empire was predicted in the 16th century , when it was a powerful power, possessing the absolute weapon of that time - the strongest army and navy. Only Spain and Portugal could compete with it. And, unlike most of these publications, genuine historical figures act in it - Sultan Suleiman Kanuni, Selim II and Murad III, the vizier Mehmet Pasha Sokollu.So the authenticity of the historical background is beyond doubt.Russia in those days posed almost no danger to the Ottoman Empire.The only serious opponent of the Ottoman Empire was Persia, and even that was constantly tormented by internal conflicts. And here the unknown astrologer Musta Eddin says to Murad III: the days of the empire are numbered. It was more like a dream. However, this the promise was fulfilled. In the middle of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was at the zenith of its power, but by the end of the 19th century it had actually collapsed, and the First World War consolidated its collapse. Therefore, the publication

November 1, 1922 ended the existence of the Ottoman Empire, founded in 1299, when it gained sovereignty during the reign of the dynasty of Osman I, who was its founder. His family and descendants ruled the empire from 1299 continuously throughout the history of the empire. The Sultan was the sole and absolute regent, head of state and head of government of the empire. In addition, the Ottoman Dynasty was the embodiment of the Ottoman Caliphate, starting from the fourteenth century, from the reign of Murad I. The representative of the Ottoman dynasty held the title of Caliph and power over all Muslims at the time of Mehmed's cousin Abdülmecid II coming to power. The Ottoman Dynasty positioned itself as the political and religious successor of Muhammad and the leader of the entire Muslim community without borders in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. The title of the Ottoman Caliphate was challenged as early as 1916 by the leader of the Arab Revolt, King Hussein Ben Ali of Hejaz, who condemned Mehmet V, but his kingdom was liquidated and annexed by Ibn Saud only in 1925.

On November 11, 1922, at a conference in Lausanne, the sovereignty of the Turkish Grand National Assembly with the government in Ankara over the territory of Turkey was recognized. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, left the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, on November 17, 1922. Legal positions were consolidated after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923. An allied invitation to a conference in Lausanne was transmitted both to the government in Constantinople and in Ankara. Mustafa Kemal, who then headed the national liberation movement in Turkey, was convinced that only the government from Ankara should take part in the conference. On November 1, 1922, the Grand National Assembly declared the government of the Sultanate in Constantinople illegal. The Grand National Assembly also decided that Constantinople ceased to be the nation's capital from the moment it was occupied by the Allies. In addition, they declared that the Sultanate had been abolished. After reading the resolution, Mehmed VI sought refuge aboard the British warship Malaya on 17 November. After Mehmed VI fled, the rest of his government's ministers accepted the new political reality. But no official document was found that announced the surrender of the Ottoman state or the Sultan. The Lausanne Conference, November 11, 1922, recognized the sovereignty of the Turkish Grand National Assembly as a replacement for the Ottoman Empire.

Our note: Official census data from the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey indicate that between 1920 and 1927 there was a sharp drop in the non-Muslim population in the main cities. Most striking are the statistics on the state of affairs in Erzurum, which at one time was the home of many Armenians. There, the proportion of non-Muslims dropped from 32 percent of the city's total population to 0.1 percent. In Sivas, this figure fell from 33 percent to 5 percent. In Trabzon, which has always had a large Greek population, the number of non-Muslims has dropped from 43 percent to 1 percent. From 1900 to 1927, the non-Muslim population of Izmir fell from 62 percent to 14 percent. There was no such drastic drop in Istanbul: the proportion of the non-Muslim population, which in 1900 was 56 percent, had dropped to 35 percent by 1927.” Mustafa recorded only Kurds as Turks. But they had no desire to be them. As a result As a result, the Turkish army has been fighting Kurdish rebels with varying degrees of success ever since.

1. The decline of the Turkish military-feudal state

By the middle of the XVII century. the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which began already in the previous century, was clearly indicated. Turkey still owned vast territories in Asia, Europe and Africa, had important trade routes and strategic positions, had many peoples and tribes in its subordination. The Turkish sultan - the Great Senior, or the Great Turk, as he was called in European documents - was still considered one of the most powerful sovereigns. The military power of the Turks also seemed formidable. But in reality, the roots of the former power of the Sultan's empire were already undermined.

The Ottoman Empire did not have internal unity. Its individual parts differed sharply from each other in ethnic composition, language and religion of the population, in terms of social, economic and cultural development, in terms of the degree of dependence on the central government. The Turks themselves were a minority in the empire. Only in Asia Minor and in the part of Rumelia (European Turkey) adjacent to Istanbul did they live in large compact masses. In the rest of the provinces, they were scattered among the indigenous population, which they never managed to assimilate.

Turkish domination over the oppressed peoples of the empire was thus based almost exclusively on military violence alone. Domination of this kind could last for a more or less long period only if there were sufficient funds to carry out this violence. Meanwhile, the military power of the Ottoman Empire was steadily declining. The military system of land ownership, inherited by the Ottomans from the Seljuks and at one time one of the most important reasons for the success of Turkish weapons, has lost its former significance. Formally, legally, it continued to exist. But its actual content has changed so much that from a factor in the strengthening and enrichment of the Turkish feudal lords of the class, it has become a source of its ever-increasing weakness.

Decomposition of the military fief system of land tenure

The military-feudal nature of the Ottoman Empire determined its entire domestic and foreign policy. Prominent Turkish politician and writer of the 17th century. Kochibey Gemyurdzhinsky noted in his "risal" (tract) that the Ottoman state "was obtained with a saber and can only be supported with a saber." For several centuries, the receipt of military booty, slaves and tribute from the conquered lands was the main means of enriching the Turkish feudal lords, and direct military violence against the conquered peoples and the Turkish working masses was the main function of state power. Therefore, since the emergence of the Ottoman state, the Turkish ruling class directed all its energy and attention to the creation and maintenance of a combat-ready army. The decisive role in this regard was played by the military-feudal system of land tenure, which provided for the formation and supply of the feudal army by the military fiefs themselves - sipahs, who for this received large and small estates (zeamets and timars) from the state land fund on conditional ownership rights with the right to collect a certain part rent-tax in their favor. Although this system did not extend to all the territories captured by the Turks, its significance was decisive for the Turkish military-feudal state as a whole.

At first, the military system acted clearly. It directly followed from the interest of the Turkish feudal lords in an active policy of conquest and, in turn, stimulated this interest. Numerous military captives - loans (owners of zeamets) and timariots (owners of timars) - were not only military, but also the main political force of the Ottoman Empire, they constituted, in the words of a Turkish source, "a real army for faith and the state." The military system freed the state budget from the main part of the cost of maintaining the army and ensured the rapid mobilization of the feudal army. The Turkish infantry - Janissaries, as well as some other corps of government troops were on a monetary salary, but the military land tenure system indirectly influenced them, opening up a tempting prospect for commanders and even ordinary soldiers to receive military fiefs and thereby become sipahs.

At first, the military system did not have a detrimental effect on the peasant economy. Of course, peasant raya ( Raya (raaya, reaya) - the common name of the taxable population in the Ottoman Empire, "subjects"; later (not earlier than the end of the 18th century) only non-Muslims were called raya.), deprived of any political rights, was in feudal dependence on the sipah and was subjected to feudal exploitation. But this exploitation at first had a predominantly fiscal and more or less patriarchal character. As long as the sipahi was enriched mainly by war booty, he considered land ownership not as the main, but as an auxiliary source of income. He was usually limited to the collection of rent-tax and the role of political overlord and did not interfere in the economic activities of the peasants, who used their land plots on the basis of hereditary holdings. With natural forms of economy, such a system provided the peasants with the opportunity for a tolerable existence.

However, in its original form, the military system did not operate in Turkey for long. The internal contradictions inherent in it began to appear soon after the first great Turkish conquests. Born in war and for war, this system required the continuous or almost continuous waging of aggressive wars, which served as the main source of enrichment for the ruling class. But this source was not inexhaustible. The Turkish conquests were accompanied by enormous destruction, and the material values ​​extracted from the conquered countries were quickly and unproductively squandered. On the other hand, the conquests, by expanding feudal landownership and creating for the feudal lords a certain guarantee of the unhindered exploitation of the estates they received, raised the importance of landed property in their eyes, increased its attractive force.

The greed of the feudal lords for money increased with the development of commodity-money relations in the country and especially external trade relations, which made it possible to satisfy the ever-growing demand of the Turkish nobility for luxury goods.

All this caused the Turkish feudal lords to desire to increase the size of the estates and the income received from them. At the end of the XVI century. the ban on the concentration of several fiefs in one hand, established by previous laws, ceased to be observed. In the 17th century, especially from its second half, the process of concentration of landed property intensified. Vast estates began to be created, the owners of which sharply increased feudal duties, introduced arbitrary requisitions, and in some cases, although still rare at that time, created a master's plow in their own estates, the so-called chiftliks ( Chiftlik (from the Turkish "chift" - a pair, meaning a pair of oxen, with the help of which a land plot is cultivated) in the period under review - a private feudal estate formed on state land. The Chiftlik system became most widespread later, at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, when the landowners - chiftlikchi began to seize peasant lands en masse; in Serbia, where this process took place in especially violent forms, it received the Slavicized name of reverence.).

The very mode of production did not change because of this, but the attitude of the feudal lord to the peasants, to land ownership, and to his duties to the state did change. The old exploiter - the sipahis, who had war in the foreground and who was most interested in military booty, was replaced by a new, much more money-hungry feudal landowner, whose main goal was to maximize income from the exploitation of peasant labor. New landowners, unlike the old ones, were actually, and sometimes formally, exempted from military obligations to the state. Thus, at the expense of the state-feudal land fund, large-scale private-feudal property grew. The sultans also contributed to this, distributing vast estates to dignitaries, pashas of the provinces, court favorites in unconditional possession. The former war captives sometimes also managed to turn into landlords of a new type, but most often the timariots and loans went bankrupt, and their lands passed to new feudal owners. Directly or indirectly attached to landed property and usurious capital. But, while contributing to the disintegration of the military system, he did not create a new, more progressive mode of production. As K. Marx noted, “with Asian forms, usury can exist for a very long time, without causing anything other than economic decline and political corruption”; "... it is conservative and only brings the existing mode of production to a more miserable state" ( K. Marx, Capital, vol. III, pp. 611, 623.).

The disintegration and then the crisis of the military-feudal system of land tenure led to the crisis of the Turkish military-feudal state as a whole. It was not a crisis of the mode of production. Turkish feudalism was then still far from the stage at which the capitalist structure arises, entering into a struggle with the old forms of production and the old political superstructure. The elements of capitalist relations that were observed in the period under review in the economy of cities, especially in Istanbul and in general in the European provinces of the empire - the emergence of certain manufactories, the partial use of hired labor in state enterprises, etc. - were very weak and fragile. In agriculture, even the faintest sprouts of new forms of production were absent. The disintegration of the Turkish military-feudal system resulted not so much from changes in the mode of production, but from those contradictions that were rooted in it and developed without going beyond the framework of feudal relations. But thanks to this process, there were significant changes in the agrarian system of Turkey and shifts within the class of feudal lords. Ultimately, it was the disintegration of the military-fief system that caused the decline of Turkish military power, which, due to the specifically military nature of the Ottoman state, was of decisive importance for its entire further development.

Decreased military power of the Turks. The defeat at Vienna and its consequences

By the middle of the XVII century. the crisis of the military fief system of land tenure has gone far. Its consequences were manifested both in the strengthening of feudal oppression (as evidenced by numerous cases of peasant uprisings, as well as the mass exodus of peasants to cities and even outside the empire), and in reducing the size of the Sipahian army (under Suleiman the Magnificent, it numbered 200 thousand people, and to the end of the 17th century - only 20 thousand), and in the decomposition of both this army and the Janissaries, and in the further collapse of the government apparatus, and in the growth of financial difficulties.

Some Turkish statesmen tried to delay this process. The most prominent among them were the great viziers from the Köprülü family, who carried out in the second half of the 17th century. a number of measures aimed at streamlining administration, strengthening discipline in the state apparatus and the army, and regulating the tax system. However, all these measures led to only partial and short-term improvements.

Turkey also weakened relatively - in comparison with its main military opponents, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. In most of these countries, although feudalism still dominated in them, new productive forces gradually grew, and a capitalist system developed. In Turkey, there were no prerequisites for this. Already after the great geographical discoveries, when the process of primitive accumulation took place in the advanced European countries, Turkey found itself aloof from the economic development of Europe. Further, nations and nation-states were formed in Europe, either single-national or multinational, but in this case also headed by some strong developing nation. Meanwhile, the Turks not only could not rally all the peoples of the Ottoman Empire into a single "Ottoman" nation, but they themselves were increasingly lagging behind in socio-economic, and therefore, in national development, from many peoples subject to them, especially the Balkans.

Unfavorable for Turkey in the middle of the XVII century. the international situation in Europe. The Peace of Westphalia raised the importance of France and reduced her interest in getting help from the Turkish sultan against the Habsburgs. In its anti-Habsburg policy, France began to orient itself more towards Poland, as well as towards the smaller German states. On the other hand, after the Thirty Years' War, which undermined the position of the emperor in Germany, the Habsburgs concentrated all their efforts on the fight against the Turks, trying to take away Eastern Hungary from them. Finally, an important shift in the balance of power in Eastern Europe came as a result of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia. Turkish aggression has now met with much more powerful resistance in the Ukraine. The Polish-Turkish contradictions also deepened.

The military weakening of Turkey and its growing lag behind the European states soon affected the course of hostilities in Europe. In 1664, a large Turkish army suffered a heavy defeat at St. Gotthard (Western Hungary) from the Austrians and Hungarians, who this time were joined by a detachment of the French. True, this defeat has not yet stopped the Turkish aggression. In the early 70s, the troops of the Turkish sultan and his vassal, the Crimean Khan, invaded Poland and Ukraine several times, reaching the Dnieper itself, and in 1683 Turkey, taking advantage of the struggle of part of the Hungarian feudal lords led by Emerik Tekeli against the Habsburgs, undertook a new attempt to defeat Austria. However, it was this attempt that led to the disaster near Vienna.

At first, the campaign developed successfully for the Turks. A huge, more than a hundred thousandth army led by the great vizier Kara Mustafa defeated the Austrians in Hungary, then invaded Austria and on July 14, 1683 approached Vienna. The siege of the Austrian capital lasted two months. The position of the Austrians was very difficult. Emperor Leopold, his court and ministers fled from Vienna. Behind them, the rich and the nobles began to flee, until the Turks closed the siege ring. Remained to defend the capital mainly artisans, students and peasants who came from the suburbs burned by the Turks. The troops of the garrison totaled only 10 thousand people and had an insignificant amount of guns and ammunition. The defenders of the city were weakening every day, and famine soon began. Turkish artillery destroyed a significant part of the fortifications.

The turning point came on the night of September 12, 1683, when the Polish king Jan Sobieski approached Vienna with a small (25 thousand people), but fresh and well-armed army, consisting of Poles and Ukrainian Cossacks. Near Vienna, Saxon detachments also joined Jan Sobieski.

The next morning there was a battle that ended in the complete defeat of the Turks. Turkish troops left on the battlefield 20 thousand dead, all artillery and convoy. Surviving Turkish units retreated to Buda and Pest, losing another 10 thousand people while crossing the Danube. Pursuing the Turks, Jan Sobieski inflicted a new defeat on them, after which Kara Mustafa Pasha fled to Belgrade, where he was killed by order of the Sultan.

The defeat of the Turkish armed forces under the walls of Vienna was the inevitable result of the decline of the Turkish military-feudal state long before that. Regarding this event, K. Marx wrote: “... There is absolutely no reason to believe that the decline of Turkey began from the moment when Sobieski provided assistance to the Austrian capital. Hammer's studies (Austrian historian of Turkey. - Ed. irrefutably prove that the organization of the Turkish Empire was then in a state of decay, and that already some time before that the era of Ottoman power and greatness was quickly coming to an end "( K. Marx, The reorganization of the British military department. - Austrian requirements. - The economic situation in England. - Saint-Arno, K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch, vol. 10. ed. 2, p. 262.).

The defeat at Vienna put an end to the Turkish advance into Europe. From that time on, the Ottoman Empire began to gradually lose, one after another, the territories it had previously conquered.

In 1684, to fight Turkey, the "Holy League" was formed, consisting of Austria, Poland, Venice, and from 1686, Russia. The military actions of Poland were unsuccessful, but the Austrian troops in 1687-1688. occupied Eastern Hungary, Slavonia, Banat, captured Belgrade and began to move deep into Serbia. The actions of the Serbian volunteer troops that opposed the Turks, as well as the uprising of the Bulgarians that broke out in 1688 in Chiprovtse, created a serious threat to Turkish communications. A number of defeats were inflicted on the Turks by Venice, which captured Morea and Athens.

In the difficult international situation of the 90s of the 17th century, when the Austrian forces were diverted by the war with France (the war of the League of Augsburg), the hostilities of the "Holy League" against the Turks took on a protracted character. Nevertheless, Turkey continued to fail. An important role in the military events of this period was played by the Azov campaigns of Peter I in 1695-1696, which facilitated the task of the Austrian command in the Balkans. In 1697, the Austrians utterly defeated a large Turkish army near the city of Zenta (Senta) on the Tisza and invaded Bosnia.

Great assistance to Turkey was provided by English and Dutch diplomacy, through whose mediation in October 1698 peace negotiations were opened in Karlovitsy (in Srem). The international situation generally favored Turkey: Austria entered into separate negotiations with it in order to secure its interests and evade support for Russian demands regarding Azov and Kerch; Poland and Venice were also ready to come to terms with the Turks at the expense of Russia; the intermediary powers (England and Holland) spoke openly against Russia and generally helped the Turks more than the allies. However, the internal weakening of Turkey went so far that the Sultan was ready to end the war at any cost. Therefore, the results of the Karlowitz Congress turned out to be very unfavorable for Turkey.

In January 1699, treaties were signed between Turkey and each of the allies separately. Austria received Eastern Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia and almost all of Slavonia; only Banat (province of Temeswar) with fortresses returned to the Sultan. The peace treaty with Poland deprived the Sultan of the last remaining part of the Right-Bank Ukraine and Podolia with the Kamenets fortress. Venice, the Turks ceded part of Dalmatia and Morea. Russia, abandoned by its allies, was forced to sign with the Turks in Karlovitsy not a peace treaty, but only a truce for a period of two years, leaving Azov in its hands. Subsequently, in 1700, in the development of the terms of this truce in Istanbul, a Russian-Turkish peace treaty was concluded, which secured Azov with the surrounding lands for Russia and canceled the payment by Russia of the annual "dacha" to the Crimean Khan.

Rebellion of Patron-Khalil

At the beginning of the XVIII century. Turkey had some military successes: the encirclement of the army of Peter I on the Prut in 1711, which resulted in the temporary loss of Azov by Russia; the capture of the Seas and a number of the Aegean islands from the Venetians in the war of 1715-1718. etc. But these successes, explained by market changes in the international situation and the fierce struggle between the European powers (the Northern War, the War of the Spanish Succession), were transient.

War of 1716-1718 with Austria brought Turkey new territorial losses in the Balkans, fixed in the Pozharevatsky (Passarovitsky) treaty. A few years later, under a 1724 treaty with Russia, Turkey was forced to renounce its claims to the Caspian regions of Iran and Transcaucasia. In the late 1920s, a powerful popular movement arose in Iran against the Turkish (and Afghan) conquerors. In 1730, Nadir Khan took away a number of provinces and cities from the Turks. In this regard, the Iranian-Turkish war began, but even before its official announcement, failures in Iran served as an impetus for a major uprising that broke out in the fall of 1730 in Istanbul. The root causes of this uprising were connected not so much with the foreign as with the domestic policy of the Turkish government. Despite the fact that the Janissaries actively participated in the uprising, artisans, small traders, and the urban poor were its main driving force.

Istanbul already then was a huge, multilingual and multi-tribal city. Its population probably exceeded 600 thousand people. In the first third of the XVIII century. it still increased significantly due to the massive influx of peasants. This was partly due to what was then happening in Istanbul, in the Balkan cities, as well as in the main centers of Levantine trade (Thessaloniki, Izmir, Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria) by the well-known growth of handicrafts and the emergence of manufactory production. Turkish sources of this period contain information about the creation of paper, cloth and some other manufactories in Istanbul; attempts were made to build a faience manufactory at the Sultan's palace; old enterprises expanded and new ones appeared to serve the army and navy.

The development of production was one-sided. The domestic market was extremely narrow; production served mainly foreign trade and the needs of the feudal lords, the state and the army. Nevertheless, the small-scale urban industry of Istanbul had an attractive force for the new working population, especially since the capital's artisans enjoyed many privileges and tax benefits. However, the vast majority of the peasants who fled to Istanbul from their villages did not find permanent work here and joined the ranks of day laborers and homeless beggars. The government, taking advantage of the influx of newcomers, began to increase taxes and introduce new duties on handicrafts. Food prices have risen so much that the authorities, fearing unrest, were even forced several times to distribute free bread in mosques. The intensified activity of usurious capital, which more and more subordinated handicraft and small-scale production to its control, resounded heavily on the working masses of the capital.

Early 18th century was marked by widespread European fashion in Turkey, especially in the capital. The Sultan and the nobles competed in inventing amusements, arranging festivities and feasts, building palaces and parks. In the vicinity of Istanbul, on the banks of a small river, known to Europeans as the “Sweet Waters of Europe”, the luxurious Sultan's Saadabad Palace and about 200 kiosks (“kiosks”, small palaces) of the court nobility were built. Turkish nobles were especially sophisticated in breeding tulips, decorating their gardens and parks with them. The passion for tulips manifested itself both in architecture and in painting. A special "style of tulips" arose. This time entered the Turkish history under the name of the “period of tulips” (“lale devri”).

The luxurious life of the feudal nobility contrasted sharply with the growing poverty of the masses, increasing their discontent. The government did not take this into account. Sultan Ahmed III (1703-1730), a selfish and insignificant man, cared only about money and pleasures. The actual ruler of the state was the great vizier Ibrahim Pasha Nevsehirli, who bore the title of damada (sultan's son-in-law). He was a great statesman. Having taken the post of Grand Vizier in 1718, after signing an unfavorable treaty with Austria, he took a number of steps to improve the internal and international position of the empire. However, Damad Ibrahim Pasha replenished the state treasury by cruelly increasing the tax burden. He encouraged the predation and wastefulness of the nobility, and he himself was alien to corruption.

Tensions in the Turkish capital culminated in the summer and autumn of 1730, when the Janissaries were aggravated by the apparent inability of the government to defend the Turkish conquests in Iran. At the beginning of August 1730, the sultan and the grand vizier set out at the head of the army from the capital, allegedly on a campaign against the Iranians, but, having crossed to the Asian coast of the Bosphorus, they did not move further and started secret negotiations with Iranian representatives. Upon learning of this, the Janissaries of the capital called on the population of Istanbul to revolt.

The uprising began on September 28, 1730. Among its leaders were Janissaries, artisans, and representatives of the Muslim clergy. The most prominent role was played by a native of the lower classes, a former small merchant, later a sailor and janissary Patrona-Khalil, an Albanian by origin, who gained great popularity among the masses with his courage and disinterestedness. The events of 1730 were therefore included in the historical literature under the name of "the uprisings of Patron-Khalil."

Already on the first day, the rebels defeated the palaces and keshki of the court nobility and demanded that the Sultan issue them a grand vizier and four more senior dignitaries. Hoping to save his throne and life, Ahmed III ordered to kill Ibrahim Pasha and hand over his corpse. Nevertheless, the next day, Ahmed III, at the request of the rebels, had to abdicate in favor of his nephew Mahmud.

For about two months, power in the capital was actually in the hands of the rebels. Sultan Mahmud I (1730-1754) initially showed full agreement with Patron-Khalil. The Sultan ordered the destruction of the Saadabad Palace, abolished a number of taxes imposed under his predecessor, and, at the direction of Patron-Khalil, made some changes in the government and administration. Patrona-Khalil did not take a government post. He did not take advantage of his position to enrich himself. He even came to Divan meetings in an old shabby dress.

However, neither Patron-Khalil nor his associates had a positive program. Having dealt with the nobles hated by the people, they essentially did not know what to do next. Meanwhile, the Sultan and his entourage drew up a secret plan for the reprisal against the leaders of the uprising. On November 25, 1730, Patrona-Khalil and his closest assistants were invited to the Sultan's palace, allegedly for negotiations, and were treacherously killed.

The Sultan's government returned entirely to the old methods of government. This caused in March 1731 a new uprising. It was less powerful than the previous one, and in it the popular masses played a smaller role. The government suppressed it relatively quickly, but the unrest continued until the end of April. Only after numerous executions, arrests and expulsion from the capital of several thousand Janissaries did the government take control of the situation.

Strengthening the influence of Western powers on Turkey. Rise of the Eastern Question

The Turkish ruling class still saw its salvation in wars. The main military opponents of Turkey at that time were Austria, Venice and Russia. In the 17th and early 18th centuries the most acute were the Austro-Turkish contradictions, later - Russian-Turkish. Russian-Turkish antagonism deepened as Russia advanced to the Black Sea coast, and also as a result of the growth of national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples of the Ottoman Empire, who saw the Russian people as their ally.

The Turkish ruling circles took a particularly hostile position towards Russia, which they considered the main culprit of the unrest of the Balkan Christians and, in general, almost all the difficulties of the Sublime Porte ( Brilliant, or High Port Sultan government.). Therefore, the contradictions between Russia and Turkey in the second half of the XVIII century. increasingly led to armed conflicts. All this was used by France and England, which at that time increased their influence on the Sultan's government. Of all the European powers, they had the most serious trading interests in Turkey, the French owned rich trading posts in the ports of the Levant. On the embankments of Beirut or Izmir, French was more often heard than Turkish. By the end of the XVIII century. France's trade turnover with the Ottoman Empire reached 50-70 million livres per year, which exceeded the turnover of all other European powers combined. The British also had significant economic positions in Turkey, especially on the Turkish coast of the Persian Gulf. The British trading post in Basra, associated with the East India Company, became a monopolist in buying up raw materials.

During this period, France and England, engaged in colonial wars in America and India, did not yet set themselves the immediate task of capturing the territories of the Ottoman Empire. They preferred to temporarily support the weak power of the Turkish sultan, which was most advantageous for them in terms of their commercial expansion. No other power and no other government that would have replaced Turkish domination would have created such wide opportunities for unhindered trade for foreign merchants, would not have placed them in such favorable conditions in comparison with their own subjects. Hence the openly hostile attitude of France and England towards the liberation movements of the oppressed peoples of the Ottoman Empire; this largely explained their opposition to the advance of Russia to the shores of the Black Sea and the Balkans.

France and England alternately, and in other cases jointly, encouraged the Turkish government to act against Russia, although each new Russian-Turkish war invariably brought Turkey new defeats and new territorial losses. The Western powers were far from providing any effective assistance to Turkey. They even capitalized on Turkey's defeats in the wars with Russia by forcing the Turkish government to grant them new trade benefits.

During the Russian-Turkish war of 1735-1739, which arose largely due to the intrigues of French diplomacy, the Turkish army suffered a severe defeat near Stavucani. Despite this, after the conclusion of a separate peace with Turkey by Austria, Russia, under the Belgrade Peace Treaty of 1739, was forced to be satisfied with the annexation of Zaporozhye and Azov. France, for the diplomatic services rendered to Turkey, received in 1740 a new surrender, which confirmed and expanded the privileges of French subjects in Turkey: low customs duties, exemption from taxes and fees, lack of jurisdiction over the Turkish court, etc. At the same time, unlike previous capitulation letters the capitulation of 1740 was issued by the sultan not only in his own name, but also as an obligation for all his future successors. Thus, capitulation privileges (which soon extended to subjects of other European powers) were fixed for a long time as Turkey's international obligation.

The Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774, which was prompted by the question of replacing the Polish throne, was also largely due to the harassment of French diplomacy. This war, which was marked by the brilliant victories of the Russian troops under the command of P. A. Rumyantsev and A. V. Suvorov and the defeat of the Turkish fleet in the Battle of Chesme, had especially difficult consequences for Turkey.

A striking example of the selfish use of Turkey by the European powers was the policy of Austria at that time. She in every possible way incited the Turks to continue the unsuccessfully proceeding war for them and undertook to provide them with economic and military assistance. For this, the Turks, when signing an agreement with Austria in 1771, paid the Austrians 3 million piastres in advance. However, Austria did not fulfill its obligations, evading even the diplomatic support of Turkey. Nevertheless, she not only kept the money received from Turkey, but also took Bukovina from her in 1775 under the guise of a “remainder” of compensation.

The Kyuchuk-Kaynarji peace treaty of 1774, which ended the Russian-Turkish war, marked a new stage in the development of relations between the Ottoman Empire and the European powers.

Crimea was declared independent from Turkey (in 1783 it was annexed to Russia); the Russian border advanced from the Dnieper to the Bug; The Black Sea and the straits were open to Russian merchant shipping; Russia acquired the right to patronize the Moldavian and Wallachian rulers, as well as the Orthodox Church in Turkey; capitulation privileges were extended to Russian subjects in Turkey; Turkey had to pay Russia a large indemnity. But the significance of the Kyuchuk-Kainarji peace was not only that the Turks suffered territorial losses. This was not new for them, and the losses were not so great, since Catherine II, in connection with the partition of Poland, and especially in connection with the Pugachev uprising, was in a hurry to end the Turkish war. Much more important for Turkey was the fact that after the Kyuchuk-Kaynardzhi peace, the balance of power in the Black Sea basin changed radically: the sharp strengthening of Russia and the equally sharp weakening of the Ottoman Empire put on the order of the day the problem of Russia's access to the Mediterranean Sea and the complete elimination of Turkish domination in Europe . The solution to this problem, since Turkey's foreign policy was increasingly losing its independence, acquired an international character. Russia, in its further advance to the Black Sea, the Balkans, Istanbul and the straits, now faced not so much with Turkey itself, but with the main European powers, who also put forward their claims to the "Ottoman heritage" and openly interfered both in Russian-Turkish relations and in the relationship between the Sultan and his Christian subjects.

Since that time, the so-called Eastern Question has been in existence, although the term itself began to be used somewhat later. The constituent parts of the Eastern Question were, on the one hand, the internal collapse of the Ottoman Empire, associated with the liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples, and on the other hand, the struggle between the great European powers for the division of the territories falling away from Turkey, primarily European.

In 1787 a new Russo-Turkish war began. Russia openly prepared for it, putting forward a plan for the complete expulsion of the Turks from Europe. But the initiative to break this time also belonged to Turkey, which acted under the influence of British diplomacy, which was fussing about creating a Turkish-Swedish-Prussian coalition against Russia.

The alliance with Sweden and Prussia was of little use to the Turks. Russian troops under the command of Suvorov defeated the Turks at Focsani, Rymnik and Izmail. Austria took the side of Russia. Only due to the fact that the attention of Austria, and then Russia, was diverted by events in Europe, in connection with the formation of a counter-revolutionary coalition against France, Turkey was able to end the war with relatively few losses. The Treaty of Sistovo in 1791 with Austria was concluded on the basis of the status quo (the situation that existed before the war), and according to the Treaty of Jassy with Russia in 1792 (according to the old style of 1791), Turkey recognized the new Russian border along the Dniester, with the inclusion of Crimea and Kuban to Russia, renounced claims to Georgia, confirmed the Russian protectorate over Moldavia and Wallachia and other conditions of the Kyuchuk-Kainarji treaty.

The French Revolution, having caused international complications in Europe, created a favorable situation for Turkey, which contributed to the postponement of the elimination of Turkish domination in the Balkans. But the process of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire continued. The Eastern question became even more aggravated due to the growth of the national self-consciousness of the Balkan peoples. The contradictions between the European powers also deepened, putting forward new claims to the “Ottoman inheritance”: some of these powers acted openly, others under the guise of “protecting” the Ottoman Empire from the encroachment of their rivals, but in all cases this policy led to a further weakening of Turkey and the transformation her into a country dependent on the European powers.

Economic and political crisis of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 18th century.

By the end of the XVIII century. The Ottoman Empire entered a period of acute crisis that engulfed all sectors of its economy, the armed forces, and the state apparatus. The peasants languished under the yoke of feudal exploitation. According to rough estimates, in the Ottoman Empire at that time there were about a hundred different taxes, dues and duties. The severity of the tax burden was exacerbated by the taxation system. At government auctions, the highest dignitaries spoke, with whom no one dared to compete. Therefore, they received a ransom for a low fee. Sometimes the ransom was granted for life use. The original farmer usually sold the ransom at a large premium to the usurer, who resold it again until the right to farm out fell into the hands of the direct tax collector, who reimbursed and covered his costs by shamelessly robbing the peasants.

The tithe was taken in kind from all kinds of grains, horticultural crops, from the catch of fish, etc. In fact, it reached a third and even half of the harvest. The best quality products were taken from the peasant, leaving him the worst. The feudal lords, moreover, demanded that the peasants perform various duties: for the construction of roads, the supply of firewood, food, and sometimes corvée work. Complaining was useless, since the wali (governors general) and other high officials were themselves the largest landowners. If complaints sometimes reached the capital and an official was sent from there to investigate, then the pashas and beys got off with a bribe, and the peasants bore additional burdens for feeding and maintaining the auditor.

Christian peasants were subjected to double oppression. The personal tax on non-Muslims - jizya, now also called kharaj, increased dramatically in size and was levied without exception from everyone, even from babies. To this was added religious oppression. Any Janissary could commit violence against a non-Muslim with impunity. Non-Muslims were not allowed to have weapons, wear the same clothes and shoes as Muslims; the Muslim court did not recognize the testimony of "infidels"; even in official documents, contemptuous and abusive nicknames were used in relation to non-Muslims.

Turkish agriculture was destroyed every year. In many areas, entire villages were left without inhabitants. The Sultan's decree in 1781 explicitly recognized that "poor subjects are fleeing, which is one of the reasons for the devastation of my highest empire." The French writer Volney, who made a trip to the Ottoman Empire in 1783-1785, noted in his book that the degradation of agriculture, which had intensified about 40 years earlier, led to the desolation of entire villages. The farmer has no incentive to expand production: "he sows just enough to live on," this author reported.

Peasant unrest arose spontaneously not only in non-Turkish regions, where the anti-feudal movement was combined with the liberation movement, but also in Turkey proper. Crowds of destitute, homeless peasants roamed Anatolia and Rumelia. Sometimes they formed armed detachments and attacked the estates of feudal lords. There were also riots in the cities. In 1767 the Pasha of Kars was killed. Troops were sent from Van to pacify the population. Then there was an uprising in Aydin, where the inhabitants killed the tax farmer. In 1782, the Russian ambassador reported to St. Petersburg that "confusion in various Anatolian regions day by day more and more leads the clergy and the ministry into care and despondency."

Attempts by individual peasants - both non-Muslims and Muslims - to quit farming were suppressed by legislative and administrative measures. A special tax was introduced for the abandonment of agriculture, which increased the attachment of peasants to the land. In addition, the feudal lord and the usurer kept the peasants in debt. The feudal lord had the right to forcibly return the departed peasant and force him to pay taxes for the entire time of absence.

The situation in the cities was still somewhat better than in the countryside. In the interests of their own security, the city authorities, and in the capital the government itself, tried to provide the townspeople with food. They took grain from the peasants at a fixed price, introduced grain monopolies, and forbade the export of grain from the cities.

Turkish handicraft in this period was not yet suppressed by the competition of European industry. Still famous at home and abroad were satin and velvet Beams, Ankara shawls, Izmir long-wool fabrics, Edirne soap and rose oil, Anatolian carpets, and especially the works of Istanbul artisans: dyed and embroidered fabrics, mother-of-pearl inlays, silver and ivory products , carved weapons, etc.

But the Turkish city's economy also showed signs of decline. Unsuccessful wars, the territorial losses of the empire reduced the already limited demand for Turkish handicrafts and manufactories. Medieval workshops (esnafs) hindered the development of commodity production. The corrupting influence of commercial and usurious capital also affected the position of the craft. In the 20s of the XVIII century. the government introduced a system of gediks (patents) for artisans and merchants. Without a gedik, it was impossible to even engage in the profession of a boatman, a peddler, a street singer. By lending money to the artisans to buy gediks, the usurers made the guilds dependent on themselves.

The development of crafts and trade was also hindered by internal customs, the presence of different measures of length and weight in each province, the arbitrariness of the authorities and local feudal lords, robbery on trade routes. The insecurity of property killed artisans and merchants any desire to expand their activities.

The defacement of the coin by the government had catastrophic consequences. The Hungarian baron de Tott, who was in the service of the Turks as a military expert, wrote in his memoirs: “The coin is damaged to such an extent that counterfeiters are now working in Turkey for the benefit of the population: whatever the alloy they use, the coin minted by the Grand Seigneur is still lower in value."

Fires, epidemics of plague and other contagious diseases raged in the cities. Frequent natural disasters like earthquakes and floods completed the ruin of the people. The government restored mosques, palaces, Janissary barracks, but did not provide assistance to the population. Many moved to the position of domestic slaves or joined the ranks of the lumpenproletariat along with the peasants who had fled from the countryside.

Against the gloomy background of the people's ruin and poverty, the squandering of the upper classes stood out even brighter. Enormous sums were spent on the maintenance of the Sultan's court. Titled persons, wives and concubines of the Sultan, servants, pashas, ​​eunuchs, guards, there were a total of more than 12 thousand people. The palace, especially its female half (harem), was the focus of intrigue and secret conspiracies. Court favorites, sultanas, and among them the most influential - the sultana-mother (valid-sultan) received bribes from dignitaries who sought a lucrative position, from provincial pashas who sought to conceal the taxes received, from foreign ambassadors. One of the highest places in the palace hierarchy was occupied by the head of the black eunuchs - kyzlar-agasy (literally - the head of the girls). He had in his charge not only the harem, but also the personal treasury of the Sultan, the waqfs of Mecca and Medina and a number of other sources of income and enjoyed great actual power. Kyzlar-Agasy Beshir for 30 years, until the middle of the 18th century, had a decisive influence on state affairs. In the past, a slave bought in Abyssinia for 30 piastres, he left behind 29 million piastres in money, 160 luxurious armor and 800 watches adorned with precious stones. His successor, also named Beshir, enjoyed the same power, but did not get along with the higher clergy, was removed and then strangled. After that, the chiefs of the black eunuchs became more cautious and tried not to interfere openly in government affairs. Nevertheless, they retained their secret influence.

Corruption in the ruling circles of Turkey was caused, in addition to the deep causes of the social order, also by the obvious degeneration that befell the Osman dynasty. Sultans have long ceased to be commanders. They also had no experience of public administration, since before ascending the throne they lived for many years in strict isolation in the inner chambers of the palace. By the time of accession (which could happen very slowly, since succession to the throne in Turkey did not go in a straight line, but according to seniority in the dynasty), the crown prince was for the most part a morally and physically degenerated person. Such was, for example, Sultan Abdul-Hamid I (1774-1789), who spent 38 years imprisoned in the palace before taking the throne. The great viziers (sadrazams), as a rule, were also insignificant and ignorant people who received appointments through bribery and bribes. In the past, this position was often filled by capable statesmen. Such were, for example, in the XVI century. the famous Mehmed Sokollu, in the 17th century. - the Köprülü family, at the beginning of the 18th century. - Damad Ibrahim Pasha. Even in the middle of the XVIII century. the post of sadrazam was occupied by a prominent statesman Raghib Pasha. But after the death of Ragib Pasha in 1763, the feudal clique no longer allowed any strong and independent personality to power. In rare cases, Grand Viziers remained in office for two or three years; for the most part they were replaced several times a year. Almost always, the resignation was immediately followed by execution. Therefore, the great viziers hurried to use a few days of their lives and their power to plunder as much as possible and just as quickly squander the loot.

Many positions in the empire were officially sold. For the position of ruler of Moldavia or Wallachia, it was necessary to pay 5-6 million piastres, not counting offerings to the Sultan and bribes. The bribe became so firmly established in the habits of the Turkish administration that in the 17th century. the Ministry of Finance even had a special “accounting for bribes”, which had as its function the accounting of bribes received by officials, with the deduction of a certain share to the treasury. The positions of qadis (judges) were also sold. In compensation for the money paid, the qadis enjoyed the right to charge a certain percentage (up to 10%) from the amount of the claim, and this amount was paid not by the loser, but by the winner of the lawsuit, which encouraged the presentation of deliberately unfair claims. In criminal cases, bribery of judges was practiced openly.

The peasantry suffered especially from the judges. Contemporaries noted that "the first concern of the villagers is to hide the fact of the crime from the knowledge of the judges, whose presence is more dangerous than the presence of thieves."

The decomposition of the army, especially the Janissary corps, reached great depths. The Janissaries became the main stronghold of the reaction. They resisted any kind of reform. Janissary revolts became commonplace, and since the Sultan had no other military support besides the Janissaries, he tried his best to appease them. Upon accession to the throne, the sultan paid them the traditional reward - "julus bakhshishi" ("ascension gift"). The amount of remuneration increased in the event of the participation of the Janissaries in the coup, which led to the change of the Sultan. Entertainment and theatrical performances were organized for the Janissaries. The delay in the issuance of salaries to the Janissaries could cost the life of the minister. Once on the day of bayram (Muslim holiday), the master of ceremonies of the court mistakenly allowed the chiefs of artillery and cavalry corps to kiss the sultan's mantle earlier than the Janissary agha; the sultan immediately ordered the execution of the master of ceremonies.

In the provinces, the Janissaries often subjugated the pashas, ​​held all the administration in their hands, arbitrarily levied taxes and various fees from artisans and merchants. The Janissaries themselves were often engaged in trade, taking advantage of the fact that they did not pay any taxes and were subject only to their superiors. The lists of the Janissaries included many people who were not engaged in military affairs. Since the salaries of the Janissaries were issued upon presentation of special tickets (esame), these tickets became the subject of purchase and sale; a large number of them were in the hands of usurers and court favorites.

Discipline in other military units also dropped sharply. The number of Sipahian cavalry for 100 years, from the end of the 17th to the end of the 18th century, decreased by 10 times: for the war with Russia in 1787, it was possible with difficulty to gather 2 thousand horsemen. The feudal sipahis were always the first to flee from the battlefield.

Embezzlement reigned among the military command. The money destined for the army or for the fortress garrisons was plundered by half in the capital, and the lion's share of the rest was appropriated by the local commanders.

Military equipment froze in the form in which it existed in the 16th century. Still used, as in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, marble cores. The casting of cannons, the manufacture of guns and swords - all the production of military equipment by the end of the 18th century. lagged behind Europe by at least a century and a half. The soldiers wore heavy and uncomfortable clothes, used weapons of various sizes. The European armies were trained in the art of maneuvering, and the Turkish army was operating on the battlefield in a continuous and disorderly mass. The Turkish fleet, which once dominated the entire Mediterranean basin, lost its former importance after the Chesme defeat in 1770.

The weakening of the central government, the collapse of the government apparatus and the army contributed to the growth of centrifugal tendencies in the Ottoman Empire. The struggle against Turkish domination was incessantly waged in the Balkans, in the Arab countries, in the Caucasus and in other lands of the empire. By the end of the XVIII century. the separatist movements of the Turkish feudal lords themselves also acquired enormous proportions. Sometimes they were well-born feudal lords from ancient families of military feudal lords, sometimes representatives of the new feudal nobility, sometimes just lucky adventurers who managed to gain wealth and recruit their own mercenary army. They came out of submission to the Sultan and actually turned into independent kings. The Sultan's government was powerless to fight them and considered itself satisfied when it sought to receive at least a part of the taxes and maintain the semblance of Sultan's sovereignty.

In Epirus and in southern Albania, Ali Pasha of Tepelena rose to prominence, later gaining great fame under the name of Ali Pasha of Janinsky. On the Danube, in Vidin, the Bosnian feudal lord Omer Pazvand-oglu recruited an entire army and became the de facto owner of the Vidin district. The government succeeded in capturing him and executing him, but soon his son Osman Pazvand-oglu came out even more strongly against the central government. Even in Anatolia, where the feudal lords had not yet openly rebelled against the sultan, real feudal principalities developed: the feudal family of Karaosman-oglu owned lands in the southwest and west, between the Great Menderes and the Sea of ​​Marmara; clan Chapan-oglu - in the center, in the region of Ankara and Yozgad; the clan of Battala Pasha is in the northeast, in the region of Samsun and Trabzon (Trapezunt). These feudal lords had their own troops, distributed land grants, and levied taxes. Sultan's officials did not dare to interfere in their actions.

Separatist tendencies were also shown by pashas appointed by the Sultan himself. The government tried to fight the pashas' separatism by moving them frequently, two or three times a year, from one province to another. But if the order was carried out, then the result was only a sharp increase in extortions from the population, since the pasha sought to reimburse his expenses for the purchase of a position, for bribes and for moving in a shorter period of time. However, over time, this method also ceased to produce results, since the pashas began to start their own mercenary armies.

Decline of culture

Turkish culture, which reached its peak in the XV-XVI centuries, already from the end of the XVI century. gradually declining. The pursuit of poets for excessive sophistication and pretentiousness of form leads to the impoverishment of the content of works. The technique of versification, the play on words, begin to be valued higher than the thought and feeling expressed in the verse. One of the last representatives of the degenerate palace poetry was Ahmed Nedim (1681-1730), a talented and brilliant spokesman for the “epoch of tulips”. Nedim's work was limited to a narrow circle of palace themes - the chanting of the Sultan, court feasts, pleasure walks, "conversations over halva" in the Saadabad Palace and kyoshkas of aristocrats, but his works were distinguished by great expressiveness, immediacy, and comparative simplicity of language. In addition to the sofa (a collection of poems), Nedim left behind a translation into Turkish of the collection “Pages of News” (“Sahaif-ul-Akhbar”), better known as “The History of the Chief Astrologer” (“Munejim-bashi tarihi”).

The didactic literature of Turkey of this period is represented primarily by the work of Yusuf Nabi (d. 1712), the author of the moralistic poem "Khairie", which in some of its parts contained a sharp criticism of modern morals. A prominent place in Turkish literature was also occupied by the symbolic poem of Sheikh Talib (1757-1798) "Beauty and Love" ("Hyusn-yu Ashk").

Turkish historiography continued to develop in the form of court historical chronicles. Naima, Mehmed Reshid, Chelebi-zade Asim, Ahmed Resmi and other court historiographers, following a long tradition, described in an apologetic spirit the life and work of the sultans, military campaigns, etc. Information about foreign countries was contained in reports on Turkish embassies sent for border (sefaret-name). Along with some true observations, they contained a lot of naive and simply invented things.

In 1727, the first printing house in Turkey was opened in Istanbul. Its founder was Ibrahim-aga Muteferrika (1674-1744), a native of a poor Hungarian family, who was captured by the Turks as a boy, then converted to Islam and remained in Turkey. Among the first books printed in the printing house were the Vankuli Arabic-Turkish Dictionary, the historical works of Kyatib Chelebi (Haji Khalife), Omer Effendi. After the death of Ibrahim-aga, the printing house was inactive for almost 40 years. In 1784 she resumed her work, but even then she published a very limited number of books. The printing of the Koran was forbidden. Secular works were also mostly copied by hand.

The development of science, literature and art in Turkey was especially hindered by the dominance of Muslim scholasticism. The higher clergy did not allow secular education. Mullahs and numerous dervish orders entangled the people in a thick web of superstitions and prejudices. Signs of stagnation were found in all areas of Turkish culture. Attempts to revive the old cultural traditions were doomed to failure, the development of new ones coming from the West was reduced to blind borrowing. This was the case, for example, with architecture, which followed the path of imitation of Europe. French decorators introduced a distorted baroque into Istanbul, while Turkish builders mixed all styles and built ugly buildings. Nothing remarkable was created in painting either, where the strict proportions of the geometric ornament were violated, now replaced, under the influence of European fashion, by floral ornament with a predominance of the image of tulips.

But if the culture of the ruling class experienced a period of decline and stagnation, then folk art continued to develop steadily. Folk poets and singers enjoyed great love among the masses, reflecting freedom-loving folk dreams and aspirations, hatred of oppressors in their songs and poems. Folk storytellers (hikyaedzhiler or meddakhi), as well as the folk shadow theater "karagez", whose performances were distinguished by acute topicality, are gaining wide popularity. and covered the events taking place in the country from the point of view of the common people, according to their understanding and interests.

2. Balkan peoples under Turkish rule

The position of the Balkan peoples in the second half of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire, the decomposition of the military fief system, the weakening of the power of the Sultan's government - all this was heavily reflected in the lives of the South Slavic peoples, Greeks, Albanians, Moldavians and Wallachians who were under Turkish rule. The formation of ciftliks, the desire of the Turkish feudal lords to increase the profitability of their lands worsened the position of the peasantry more and more. The distribution in the mountainous and forest regions of the Balkans to private ownership of lands that previously belonged to the state led to the enslavement of the communal peasantry. The power of the landowners over the peasants expanded, and more severe forms of feudal dependence were established than before. Starting their own economy and not content with in-kind and monetary requisitions, spahii (sipahi) forced the peasants to perform corvée. The transfer of spahiluks (Turkish - sipahilik, possession of sipahi) at the mercy of usurers, who mercilessly robbed the peasants, became widespread. Arbitrariness, bribery and arbitrariness of local authorities, Qadi judges, and tax collectors grew as the central government weakened. The Janissary troops became one of the main sources of revolts and turmoil in the European possessions of Turkey. The robbery by the Turkish army and especially by the Janissaries of the civilian population turned into a system.

In the Danubian principalities in the XVII century. the process of consolidation of the boyar farms and the seizure of peasant lands continued, accompanied by an increase in the feudal dependence of the bulk of the peasantry; only a few wealthy peasants had the opportunity to obtain personal freedom for a large ransom.

The growing hatred of Turkish domination on the part of the Balkan peoples and the desire of the Turkish government to squeeze out more taxes prompted the latter to be carried out in the 17th century. a policy of complete subjugation to the Turkish authorities and feudal lords of a number of mountainous regions and outlying regions of the empire, previously controlled by local Christian authorities. In particular, the rights of rural and urban communities in Greece and Serbia, which enjoyed considerable independence, were steadily curtailed. The pressure of the Turkish authorities on the Montenegrin tribes intensified in order to force them to complete obedience and to regular payment of haracha (kharaj). The Porta sought to turn the Danubian principalities into ordinary pashaliks ruled by Turkish officials. The resistance of the strong Moldavian and Wallachian boyars did not allow this measure to be carried out, however, interference in the internal affairs of Moldavia and Wallachia and the fiscal exploitation of the principalities intensified significantly. Using the constant struggle of boyar groups in the principalities, the Porte appointed its henchmen as Moldavian and Wallachian rulers, removing them every two or three years. At the beginning of the 18th century, fearing the rapprochement of the Danubian principalities with Russia, the Turkish government began to appoint Phanariot Greeks from Istanbul as rulers ( Phanar - a quarter in Istanbul, where the Greek patriarch had his seat; Phanariots - rich and noble Greeks, from whose midst came the highest representatives of the church hierarchy and officials of the Turkish administration; Phanariots were also engaged in large trade and usury operations.), closely associated with the Turkish feudal class and ruling circles.

The aggravation of contradictions within the empire and the growth of social struggle in it led to the growth of religious antagonism between Muslims and Christians. The manifestations of Muslim religious fanaticism and the discriminatory policy of the Porte in relation to Christian subjects intensified, attempts to forcibly convert Bulgarian villages, entire Montenegrin and Albanian tribes to Islam became more frequent.

The Orthodox clergy of the Serbs, Montenegrins and Bulgarians, who enjoyed great political influence among their peoples, often actively participated in anti-Turkish movements. Therefore, the Porte was extremely distrustful of the South Slavic clergy, sought to belittle its political role, to prevent its ties with Russia and other Christian states. But the Phanariot clergy enjoyed the support of the Turks. Porta condoned the Hellenization of the South Slavic peoples, Moldavians and Vlachs, which the Greek hierarchy and the Phanariots who stood behind it tried to carry out. The Patriarchate of Constantinople appointed only Greeks to the highest church positions, who burned Church Slavonic books, did not allow church services in a language other than Greek, etc. Hellenization was especially active in Bulgaria and the Danubian principalities, but it met with strong resistance from the masses .

Serbia in the 18th century the highest church positions were also seized by the Greeks, which led to the rapid breakdown of the entire church organization, which previously played a large role in maintaining national identity and folk traditions. In 1766, the Patriarchate of Constantinople obtained from the Porte the issuance of firmans (sultan's decrees), which brought the autocephalous Patriarchate of Pec and the Archbishopric of Ohrid under the authority of the Greek Patriarch.

The medieval backwardness of the Ottoman Empire, the economic disunity of the regions, and cruel national and political oppression hampered the economic progress of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula enslaved by Turkey. But, despite the unfavorable conditions, in a number of regions of the European part of Turkey in the XVII-XVIII centuries. significant shifts were observed in the economy. The development of productive forces and commodity-money relations, however, proceeded unevenly: first of all, it was found in some coastal areas, in areas located along the course of large rivers and on international trade routes. So, in the coastal parts of Greece and on the islands, the shipbuilding industry grew. In Bulgaria, textile crafts developed significantly, serving the needs of the Turkish army and the urban population. In the Danubian principalities, enterprises for the processing of agricultural raw materials, textile, paper and glass manufactories, based on serf labor, arose.

A characteristic phenomenon of this period was the growth of new cities in some areas of European Turkey. So, for example, in the foothills of the Balkans, in Bulgaria, in areas remote from Turkish centers, a number of commercial and handicraft Bulgarian settlements arose, serving the local market (Kotel, Sliven, Gabrovo, etc.).

The internal market in the Balkan possessions of Turkey was poorly developed. The economy of areas remote from large urban centers and trade routes was still mostly natural in nature, but the growth of trade gradually destroyed their isolation. Foreign and transit trade, which was in the hands of foreign merchants, has long been of paramount importance in the economy of the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. However, in the XVII century. in connection with the decline of Dubrovnik and Italian cities, local merchants begin to take a stronger position in trade. The Greek commercial and usurious bourgeoisie acquired especially great economic strength in Turkey, subordinating the weaker South Slavic merchant class to its influence.

The development of trade and commercial and usurious capital, despite the general backwardness of social relations among the Balkan peoples, did not yet create the conditions for the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. But the further, the more obvious it became that the economy of the Balkan peoples, who were under the yoke of Turkey, was developing in an independent way; that they, living in the most unfavorable conditions, nevertheless overtake in their social development the nationality that dominates the state. All this made the struggle of the Balkan peoples for their national-political liberation inevitable.

The liberation struggle of the Balkan peoples against the Turkish yoke

During the XVII-XVIII centuries. in various parts of the Balkan Peninsula, uprisings broke out more than once against Turkish domination. These movements were usually local in nature, did not arise simultaneously, and were not sufficiently prepared. They were mercilessly suppressed by Turkish troops. But time passed, failures were forgotten, hopes for liberation revived with renewed vigor, and with them new uprisings arose.

The main driving force in the uprisings was the peasantry. Often, the urban population, the clergy, even the Christian feudal lords who survived in some areas, and in Serbia and Montenegro, the local Christian authorities (knezes, governors and tribal leaders) often took part in them. In the Danubian principalities, the struggle against Turkey was usually led by the boyars, who hoped to free themselves from Turkish dependence with the help of neighboring states.

The liberation movement of the Balkan peoples took on particularly broad dimensions during the war of the Holy League with Turkey. The successes of the Venetian and Austrian troops, joining the anti-Turkish coalition of Russia, with which the Balkan peoples were connected by the unity of religion - all this inspired the enslaved Balkan peoples to fight for their liberation. In the first years of the war, an uprising against the Turks began to be prepared in Wallachia. Gospodar Shcherban Kantakuzino conducted secret negotiations for an alliance with Austria. He even recruited an army hidden in the forests and mountains of Wallachia to move it at the first signal of the Holy League. Cantacuzino intended to unite and lead the uprisings of other peoples of the Balkan Peninsula. But these plans were not destined to come true. The desire of the Habsburgs and the Polish king Jan Sobieski to seize the Danube principalities into their own hands forced the Wallachian ruler to abandon the idea of ​​\u200b\u200buprising.

When in 1688 the Austrian troops approached the Danube, and then took Belgrade and began to move south, in Serbia, Western Bulgaria, Macedonia, a strong anti-Turkish movement began. The local population joined the advancing Austrian troops, volunteer couples (partisan detachments) began to spontaneously form, which successfully conducted independent military operations.

At the end of 1688, an uprising against the Turks arose in the center of ore development in the northwestern part of Bulgaria - the city of Chiprovtse. Its participants were the craft and trade population of the city, as well as residents of the surrounding villages. The leaders of the movement hoped that the Austrians approaching Bulgaria would help them drive out the Turks. But the Austrian army did not arrive in time to help the rebels. Chiprovets were defeated, and the city of Chiprovets was swept off the face of the earth.

The policy of the Habsburgs at that time had as its main goal the possession of lands in the Danube basin, as well as the Adriatic coast. Not having sufficient military forces to carry out such broad plans, the emperor hoped to wage war with Turkey with the forces of local rebels. The Austrian emissaries called on the Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins to revolt, tried to win over the local Christian authorities (knezes and governor), tribal leaders, baked patriarch Arseniy Chernoyevich.

The Habsburgs tried to make George Brankovich, a Serbian feudal lord living in Transylvania, an instrument of this policy. Brankovich pretended to be a descendant of the Serbian sovereigns and cherished a plan for the revival of an independent state, including all the South Slavic lands. The project of creating such a state, under the Austrian protectorate, Brankovich presented to the emperor. This project did not correspond to the interests of the Habsburgs, and it was not real. Nevertheless, the Austrian court brought Brankovich closer to itself, granting him the title of count as a descendant of the Serbian despots. In 1688 Georgy Brankovich was sent to the Austrian command to prepare the action of the population of Serbia against the Turks. However, Brankovich left the Austrians and tried to independently organize an uprising of the Serbs. Then the Austrians arrested him and kept him in prison until his death.

Hopes for liberation with the help of the Habsburgs ended in severe disappointment for the southern Slavs. After a successful raid into the depths of Serbia and Macedonia, carried out mainly by the forces of the Serbian volunteer army with the assistance of the local population and haiduks, the Austrians at the end of 1689 began to suffer defeat from the Turkish troops. Fleeing from the revenge of the Turks, who destroyed everything in their path, the local population left after the retreating Austrian troops. This "great migration" took on a mass character. From Serbia at that time, mainly from its southern and southwestern regions, about 60-70 thousand people fled to the Austrian possessions. In the following years of the war, Serbian volunteer detachments, under the command of their commander, fought against the Turks as part of the Austrian troops.

During the war of the Venetians against the Turks in the mid-80s and early 90s of the XVII century. a strong anti-Turkish movement arose among the Montenegrin and Albanian tribes. This movement was strongly encouraged by Venice, which concentrated all its military forces in the Sea, and in Dalmatia and Montenegro expected to wage war with the help of the local population. The Pasha of Shkodra Suleiman Bushatly repeatedly undertook punitive expeditions against the Montenegrin tribes. In 1685 and 1692 Turkish troops twice captured the residence of the Montenegrin metropolitans of Cetinje. But the Turks were never able to hold their ground in this small mountainous region, which fought hard for complete independence from the Porte.

The specific conditions in which Montenegro found itself after the Turkish conquest, the dominance of backward social relations and patriarchal remnants in it contributed to the growth of the political influence of local metropolitans, who led the struggle for national-political liberation and the unification of the Montenegrin tribes. Of great importance was the reign of the talented statesman Metropolitan Danila Petrovich Negosh (1697-1735). Danila Petrovich stubbornly fought for the complete liberation of Montenegro from the power of the Port, which did not leave attempts to restore its positions in this strategically important area. In order to undermine the influence of the Turks, he exterminated or expelled from the country all the Montenegrins who converted to Islam (Turchenians). Danila also carried out some reforms that contributed to the centralization of government and the weakening of tribal hostility.

From the end of the 17th century the political and cultural ties of the southern Slavs, Greeks, Moldavians and Vlachs with Russia are expanding and strengthening. The tsarist government sought to expand its political influence among the peoples subject to Turkey, which in the future could become an important factor in deciding the fate of Turkish possessions in Europe. From the end of the 17th century the Balkan peoples began to attract more and more attention of Russian diplomacy. The oppressed peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, for their part, have long seen their common faith in Russia as their patroness and hoped that the victories of the Russian arms would bring them liberation from the Turkish yoke. Russia's entry into the Holy League prompted representatives of the Balkan peoples to establish direct contact with the Russians. In 1688, the Wallachian ruler Shcherban Kantakuzino, the former Patriarch of Constantinople Dionysius and the Serbian patriarch Arseniy Chernoevich sent letters to the Russian tsars Ivan and Peter, in which they described the suffering of the Orthodox peoples in Turkey and asked Russia to send its troops to the Balkans to liberate the Christian peoples. Although the operations of the Russian troops in the war of 1686-1699. developed far from the Balkans, which did not allow the Russians to establish direct contacts with the Balkan peoples, the tsarist government already at that time began to put forward as the reason for the war with Turkey its desire to liberate the Balkan peoples from its yoke and acts in the international arena as a defender of the interests of all Orthodox Christians in general subjects of the Porte. The Russian autocracy adhered to this position during the entire further struggle with Turkey in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Setting as his goal to achieve Russia's access to the Black Sea, Peter I counted on help from the Balkan peoples. In 1709, he entered into a secret alliance with the Wallachian ruler Konstantin Brankovan, who promised, in case of war, to go over to the side of Russia, put up a detachment of 30 thousand people, and also supply Russian troops with food. The Moldavian ruler Dimitri Cantemir also undertook to provide military assistance to Peter and concluded an agreement with him on the transfer of Moldovans to Russian citizenship, subject to the provision of full internal independence to Moldova. In addition, the Austrian Serbs promised their assistance, a large detachment of which was supposed to join the Russian troops. Starting the Prut campaign in 1711, the Russian government issued a charter calling all the peoples enslaved by Turkey to arms. But the failure of the Prut campaign stopped the anti-Turkish movement of the Balkan peoples at the very beginning. Only Montenegrins and Herzego-Vintians, having received a letter from Peter I, began to undertake military sabotage against the Turks. This circumstance was the beginning of the establishment of close ties between Russia and Montenegro. Metropolitan Danila visited Russia in 1715, after which Peter I established periodic cash benefits for Montenegrins.

As a result of a new war between Turkey and Austria in 1716-1718, in which the population of Serbia also fought on the side of the Austrians, Banat, the northern part of Serbia and Lesser Wallachia fell under the rule of the Habsburgs. However, the population of these lands, freed from the power of the Turks, fell into no less heavy dependence on the Austrians. Taxes have been raised. The Austrians forced their new subjects to accept Catholicism or Uniatism, and the Orthodox population suffered severe religious oppression. All this caused great discontent and the flight of many Serbs and Wallachians to Russia or even to Turkish possessions. At the same time, the Austrian occupation of northern Serbia contributed to some development of commodity-money relations in this area, which later led to the formation of a layer of the rural bourgeoisie.

The next war between Turkey and Austria, which the latter waged in alliance with Russia, ended with the loss of Lesser Wallachia and Northern Serbia by the Habsburgs in the Peace of Belgrade in 1739, however, Serbian lands remained in the Austrian monarchy - Banat, Bačka, Baranya, Srem. During this war, an uprising against the Turks broke out again in Southwestern Serbia, which, however, did not take on a wide character and was quickly suppressed. This unsuccessful war halted Austrian expansion in the Balkans and led to a further decline in the political influence of the Habsburgs among the Balkan peoples.

From the middle of the XVIII century. the leading role in the fight against Turkey passes to Russia. In 1768, Catherine II entered the war with Turkey and, following Peter's policy, appealed to the Balkan peoples to rise up against Turkish domination. The successful military actions of Russia stirred up the Balkan peoples. The appearance of the Russian fleet off the coast of Greece caused in 1770 an uprising in Morea and on the islands of the Aegean Sea. At the expense of Greek merchants, a fleet was created, which, under the leadership of Lambros Katzonis, at one time waged a successful war with the Turks at sea.

A Croatian warrior on the Austro-Turkish border ("border"). Drawing of the middle of the XVIII century.

The entry of Russian troops into Moldavia and Wallachia was enthusiastically received by the population. From Bucharest and Iasi, delegations of boyars and clergy went to St. Petersburg, asking to accept the principalities under Russian protection.

The Kyuchuk-Kainarji peace of 1774 was of great importance for the Balkan peoples. A number of articles of this treaty were devoted to the Christian peoples subject to Turkey and gave Russia the right to protect their interests. The return of the Danubian principalities to Turkey was subject to a number of conditions aimed at improving the situation of their population. Objectively, these articles of the treaty made it easier for the Balkan peoples to fight for their liberation. The further policy of Catherine II in the Eastern Question, regardless of the aggressive goals of tsarism, also contributed to the revival of the national liberation movement of the Balkan peoples and the further expansion of their political and cultural ties with Russia.

The beginning of the national revival of the Balkan peoples

Several centuries of Turkish domination did not lead to the denationalization of the Balkan peoples. Southern Slavs, Greeks, Albanians, Moldavians and Vlachs retained their national languages, culture, folk traditions; under the conditions of a foreign yoke, although slowly, but steadily, elements of an economic community developed.

The first signs of the national revival of the Balkan peoples appeared in the 18th century. They were expressed in the cultural and educational movement, in the revival of interest in their historical past, in the intensified desire to raise public education, improve the system of education in schools, and introduce elements of secular education. The cultural and educational movement began first among the Greeks, the most socio-economically developed people, and then among the Serbs and Bulgarians, Moldavians and Vlachs.

The enlightenment movement had its own characteristics for each Balkan people and did not develop simultaneously. But its social base in all cases was the national trade and craft class.

The difficult conditions for the formation of the national bourgeoisie among the Balkan peoples determined the complexity and inconsistency of the content of national movements. In Greece, for example, where commercial and usurious capital was most powerful and closely connected with the entire Turkish regime and with the activities of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the beginning of the national movement was accompanied by the emergence of great-power ideas, plans for the revival of the great Greek Empire on the ruins of Turkey and the subjugation of the rest of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula to the Greeks. These ideas found practical expression in the Hellenizing efforts of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Phanariots. At the same time, the ideology of the Greek enlighteners, the development of public education and schooling by the Greeks had a positive impact on other Balkan peoples and accelerated the emergence of similar movements among the Serbs and Bulgarians.

At the head of the enlightenment movement of the Greeks in the XVIII century. scientists, writers and teachers Evgennos Voulgaris (died in 1806) and Nikiforos Theotokis (died in 1800), and later an outstanding public figure, scientist and publicist Adamantios Korais (1748-1833) stood. His works, imbued with love of freedom and patriotism, instilled in his compatriots a love for the motherland, freedom, for the Greek language, in which Korais saw the first and most important instrument of national revival.

Among the southern Slavs, the national enlightenment movement first of all began in the Serbian lands subject to the Habsburgs. With the active support of the Serbian trade and craft class, which had become stronger here, in the second quarter of the 18th century. in Banat, Bačka, Baranya, Srem, schooling, Serbian writing, secular literature, and book printing begin to develop.

The development of enlightenment among the Austrian Serbs at that time took place under strong Russian influence. At the request of the Serbian Metropolitan, in 1726, the Russian teacher Maxim Suvorov arrived in Karlovitsy to organize the school business. Emanuil Kozachinsky, a native of Kyiv, headed the “Latin School” founded in Karlovichi in 1733. Many Russians and Ukrainians taught in other Serbian schools. Serbs also received books and textbooks from Russia. The consequence of the Russian cultural influence on the Austrian Serbs was the transition from the Serbian Church Slavonic language used earlier in writing to the Russian Church Slavonic language.

The main representative of this trend was the outstanding Serbian writer and historian Jovan Rajic (1726 - 1801). Under strong Russian influence, the activities of another well-known Serbian writer Zakhary Orfelin (1726 - 1785), who wrote the major work "The Life and Glorious Deeds of Emperor Peter the Great", also developed. The cultural and educational movement among the Austrian Serbs received a new impetus in the second half of the 18th century, when the outstanding writer, scientist and philosopher Dosifey Obradovic (1742-1811) began his work. Obradovic was a supporter of enlightened absolutism. His ideology was formed to a certain extent under the influence of the philosophy of the European enlighteners. At the same time, it had a purely national basis. Obradovic's views subsequently received wide recognition among the trade and craft class and the emerging bourgeois intelligentsia, not only among the Serbs, but also among the Bulgarians.

In 1762, the monk Paisiy Hilendarsky (1722-1798) completed Slavonic-Bulgarian History, a journalistic treatise based on historical data, directed primarily against Greek dominance and the impending denationalization of the Bulgarians. Paisius called for the revival of the Bulgarian language and social thought. Bishop Sofroniy (Stoyko Vladislavov) (1739-1814) was a talented follower of the ideas of Paisius of Hilendarsky.

The outstanding Moldavian educator Dimitri Cantemir (1673 - 1723) wrote a satirical novel "Hieroglyphic History", a philosophical and didactic poem "The dispute of the sage with the sky or the litigation of the soul with the body" and a number of historical works. The development of the culture of the Moldavian people was also greatly influenced by the prominent historian and linguist Enakits Vekerescu (c. 1740 - c. 1800).

The national revival of the Balkan peoples took on a wider scope at the beginning of the next century.

3. Arab countries under Turkish rule

The decline of the Ottoman Empire was reflected in the position of the Arab countries that were part of it. During the period under review, the power of the Turkish Sultan in North Africa, including Egypt, was largely nominal. In Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, it was sharply weakened by popular uprisings and rebellions of local feudal lords. In Arabia, a broad religious and political movement arose - Wahhabism, which set as its goal the complete expulsion of the Turks from the Arabian Peninsula.

Egypt

In the XVII-XVIII centuries. some new phenomena are observed in the economic development of Egypt. Peasant farming is increasingly being drawn into market ties. In a number of areas, especially in the Nile Delta, the rent-tax takes the form of money. Foreign travelers of the late 18th century. describe a lively trade in the urban markets of Egypt, where the peasants delivered grain, vegetables, livestock, wool, cheese, butter, homemade yarn and bought fabrics, clothes, utensils, and metal products in return. Trade was also carried out directly in the village markets. Significant development was achieved by trade relations between different regions of the country. According to contemporaries, in the middle of the XVIII century. from the southern regions of Egypt, down the Nile, to Cairo and into the delta region, there were ships with grain, sugar, beans, linen fabrics and linseed oil; in the opposite direction were goods of cloth, soap, rice, iron, copper, lead, salt.

Foreign trade relations have also grown significantly. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. Egypt exported cotton and linen fabrics, leather, sugar, ammonia, as well as rice and wheat to European countries. Lively trade was conducted with neighboring countries - Syria, Arabia, Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), Sudan, Darfur. A significant part of the transit trade with India passed through Egypt. At the end of the XVIII century. in Cairo alone, 5,000 merchants were engaged in foreign trade.

In the XVIII century. in a number of industries, especially in industries working for export, the transition to manufacture began. Manufactories were founded in Cairo, Mahalla Kubra, Rosetta, Kus, Kina and other cities, producing silk, cotton and linen fabrics. Each of these manufactories employed hundreds of wage laborers; on the largest of them - in Mahalla-Kubra, from 800 to 1000 people were constantly employed. Wage labor was used in oil mills, sugar and other factories. Sometimes feudal lords, in company with sugar refiners, founded enterprises on their estates. Often the owners of manufactories, large craft workshops and shops were representatives of the higher clergy, the rulers of vaqfs.

The technique of production was still primitive, but the division of labor within manufactories contributed to an increase in its productivity and a significant increase in output.

By the end of the XVIII century. in Cairo, there were 15 thousand hired workers and 25 thousand artisans. Wage labor also began to be used in agriculture: thousands of peasants were hired for field work in neighboring large estates.

However, under the conditions then existing in Egypt, the germs of capitalist relations could not develop significantly. As in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, the property of merchants, owners of manufactories and workshops was not protected from the encroachments of pashas and beys. Excessive taxes, requisitions, indemnities, extortion ruined merchants and artisans. The regime of capitulations ousted local merchants from the more profitable branches of trade, ensuring the monopoly of European merchants and their agents. In addition, as a result of the systematic robbery of the peasantry, the domestic market was extremely unstable and narrow.

Along with the development of trade, the feudal exploitation of the peasantry grew steadily. New ones were constantly added to the old taxes. The multazims (landlords) levied taxes on the fellahs (peasants) to pay tribute to the Porte, taxes on the maintenance of the army, provincial authorities, village administration and religious institutions, fees for their own needs, as well as many other fees, sometimes levied without any reason. List of taxes collected from the peasants of one of the Egyptian villages, published by the French explorer of the XVIII century. Estev, contained over 70 titles. In addition to taxes established by law, all sorts of additional fees based on custom were widely used. “It is enough that the amount is collected 2-3 years in a row,” Estev wrote, “so that it is then demanded on the basis of customary law.”

Feudal oppression increasingly provoked uprisings against Mamluk domination. In the middle of the XVIII century. the Mamluk feudal lords were expelled from Upper Egypt by the Bedouins, whose uprising was suppressed only by 1769. Soon a large uprising of the fellahs broke out in the Tanta district (1778), also suppressed by the Mamluks.

The Mamluks still firmly held power in their hands. Although formally they were vassals of the Porte, the power of the Turkish pashas sent from Istanbul was illusory. In 1769, during the Russian-Turkish war, the Mamluk ruler Ali Bey proclaimed the independence of Egypt. Having received some support from the commander of the Russian fleet in the Aegean Sea, A. Orlov, he initially successfully resisted the Turkish troops, but then the uprising was crushed, and he himself was killed. Nevertheless, the power of the Mamluk feudal lords did not weaken; the place of the deceased Ali Bey was taken by the leaders of another Mamluk group hostile to him. Only at the beginning of the XIX century. Mamluk power was overthrown.

Syria and Lebanon

Sources of the XVII-XVIII centuries. contain scant information about the economic development of Syria and Lebanon. There are no data on internal trade, on manufactories, on the use of hired labor. More or less accurate information is available about the growth in the period under review of foreign trade, the emergence of new trade and craft centers, and the strengthening of the specialization of regions. There is also no doubt that in Syria and Lebanon, as in Egypt, the scale of feudal exploitation increased, the struggle within the feudal class intensified, and the liberation struggle of the masses against foreign oppression grew.

In the second half of the 17th and early 18th centuries of great importance was the struggle between the two groups of Arab feudal lords - the Kaisites (or "Reds", as they called themselves) and the Yemenites (or "Whites"). The first of these groups, led by emirs from the Maan clan, opposed Turkish domination and therefore enjoyed the support of the Lebanese peasants; this was her strength. The second group, headed by emirs from the Alam-ad-din clan, served the Turkish authorities and, with their help, fought against their rivals.

After the suppression of the uprising of Fakhr-ad-Din II and his execution (1635), the Port handed over the Sultan's firman to rule Lebanon to the leader of the Yemenites, Emir Alam-ad-Din, but soon the Turkish protege was overthrown by a new popular uprising. The rebels elected the nephew of Fakhr-ad-din II, Emir Mel-hem Maan, as the ruler of Lebanon, and Porta was forced to approve this choice. However, she did not give up trying to remove the Qaysites from power and put her supporters at the head of the Lebanese principality.

In 1660, the troops of Damascus Pasha Ahmed Koprulu (son of the Grand Vizier) invaded Lebanon. According to the Arabic chronicle, the pretext for this military expedition was the fact that the vassals and allies of the Maans - the emirs of Shihaba "incited the Damascus against the pasha." Acting together with the Yemenite militias, Turkish troops occupied and burned a number of mountainous villages in Lebanon, including the capital of the Maans - Dayr al-Qamar and the residences of the Shihabs - Rashaya (Rashaya) and Hasbeya (Hasbaya). The Kaysite emirs were forced to retreat with their squads to the mountains. But popular support eventually ensured their victory over the Turks and Yemenites. In 1667, the Kaisit group returned to power.

In 1671, a new clash between the Kaisites and the troops of the Damascus Pasha led to the occupation and sack of Rashaya by the Turks. But in the end, the victory again remained with the Lebanese. Other attempts by the Turkish authorities to put at the head of Lebanon emirs from the Alam-ad-din clan, undertaken in the last quarter of the 17th century, were also unsuccessful.

In 1710, the Turks, together with the Yemenites, again attacked Lebanon. Having overthrown the Kaysite emir Haidar from the Shihab clan (the emir throne passed to this clan in 1697, after the death of the last emir from the Maan clan), they turned Lebanon into an ordinary Turkish pashalik. However, already in the next 1711, in the battle of Ain Dar, the troops of the Turks and Yemenites were defeated by the Qaysits. Most of the Yemenites, including the entire family of Alam-ad-din emirs, died in this battle. The victory of the Kaysites was so impressive that the Turkish authorities had to abandon the organization of the Lebanese pashalik; for a long time they refrained from interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon.

The victory at Ain Dar was won by the Lebanese peasants, but this did not lead to an improvement in their situation. Emir Haidar limited himself to taking away the destinies (mukataa) from the Yemenite feudal lords and distributing them among his supporters.

From the middle of the XVIII century. The feudal principality of Safad in northern Palestine became the center of the struggle against Turkish rule. Its ruler, the son of one of the Kaysites, Sheikh Dagir, gradually rounding off the possessions received by his father from the Lebanese emir, extended his power to the whole of Northern Palestine and a number of regions of Lebanon. Around 1750, he acquired a small seaside village - Akku. According to the testimony of the Russian officer Pleshcheev, who visited Akka in 1772, by that time it had become a major center of maritime trade and handicraft production. Many merchants and artisans from Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus and other parts of the Ottoman Empire settled in Akka. Although Dagir levied significant taxes on them and applied the system of monopolies and farming, common in the Ottoman Empire, the conditions for the development of trade and crafts were apparently somewhat better here than in other cities: feudal taxes were strictly fixed, and the life and property of the merchant and artisan were protected from arbitrariness. In Akka were the ruins of a fortress built by the crusaders. Dagir restored this fortress, created his own army and navy.

The actual independence and growing wealth of the new Arab principality aroused the discontent and greed of the neighboring Turkish authorities. Since 1765, Dagir had to defend himself against three Turkish pashas - Damascus, Tripoli and Said. At first, the struggle was reduced to episodic clashes, but in 1769, after the start of the Russian-Turkish war, Dagir led an Arab popular uprising against Turkish oppression. He entered into an alliance with the Mamluk ruler of Egypt, Ali Bey. The allies took Damascus, Beirut, Said (Sidon), laid siege to Jaffa. Russia provided significant assistance to the rebellious Arabs. Russian warships cruised along the Lebanese coast, bombarded Beirut during the assault on its fortress by the Arabs, and delivered guns, shells and other weapons to the Arab rebels.

In 1775, a year after the end of the Russian-Turkish war, Dagir was besieged in Akka and soon killed, and his principality fell apart. Akka became the residence of the Turkish pasha Ahmed, nicknamed Jazzar ("The Butcher"). But the struggle of the popular masses of Syria and Lebanon against Turkish oppression continued.

During the last quarter of the XVIII century. Jazzar continuously increased tribute from the Arab regions subject to him. So, the tribute levied from Lebanon increased from 150 thousand piastres in 1776 to 600 thousand piastres in 1790. To pay it, a number of new fees, previously unknown to Lebanon, were introduced - a poll tax, taxes on sericulture, on mills etc. The Turkish authorities again began to openly interfere in the internal affairs of Lebanon, their troops, sent to collect tribute, plundered and burned the villages, exterminated the inhabitants. All this caused continuous uprisings, weakening the power of Turkey over the Arab lands.

Iraq

In terms of economic development, Iraq lagged behind Egypt and Syria. Of the formerly numerous cities in Iraq, only Baghdad and Basra retained to a certain extent the importance of large handicraft centers; woolen fabrics, carpets, leather products were made here. But through the country there was transit trade between Europe and Asia, which brought significant income, and this circumstance, as well as the struggle for the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf located in Iraq, made Iraq the object of a sharp Turkish-Iranian struggle. Transit trade attracted English merchants to the country, who in the 17th century. founded the trading post of the East India Company in Basra, and in the XVIII century. - in Baghdad.

The Turkish conquerors divided Iraq into two pashaliks (eyalets): Mosul and Baghdad. In the Mosul pashalik, populated mainly by Kurds, there was a military system. The Kurds - both nomads and settled farmers - still retained the features of tribal life, the division into ashirets (clans). But their communal lands and most of the livestock have long been the property of the leaders, and the leaders themselves - khans, beks and sheikhs - turned into feudal lords who enslaved their fellow tribesmen.

However, the power of the Porte over the Kurdish feudal lords was very fragile, which was explained by the crisis of the military system that was observed in the XVII-XVIII centuries. throughout the Ottoman Empire. Using the Turkish-Iranian rivalry, the Kurdish feudal lords often shied away from their military duties, and sometimes openly sided with the Iranian Shah against the Turkish Sultan or maneuvered between the Sultan and the Shah in order to achieve greater independence. In turn, the Turkish pashas, ​​seeking to strengthen their power, kindled enmity between the Kurds and their Arab neighbors and Christian minorities and encouraged strife among the Kurdish feudal lords.

In the Baghdad pashalik, inhabited by Arabs, in 1651 a tribal uprising broke out, led by the feudal family of Siyab. It led to the expulsion of the Turks from the district of Basra. Only in 1669, after repeated military expeditions, did the Turks manage to re-install their pasha in Basra. But already in 1690, the Arab tribes settled in the Euphrates valley, united in the Muntafik union, rebelled. The rebels occupied Basra and for a number of years waged a successful war against the Turks.

Appointed at the beginning of the XVIII century. As the ruler of Baghdad, Hasan Pasha fought for 20 years against the Arab agricultural and Bedouin tribes of southern Iraq. He concentrated in his hands power over all of Iraq, including Kurdistan, and secured it to his "dynasty": throughout the 18th century. the country was ruled by pashas from among his descendants or his külemens ( Külemen - a white slave (usually of Caucasian origin), a soldier in a mercenary army made up of slaves, the same as the Mamluk in Egypt.). Hassan Pasha created a government and a court in Baghdad according to the Istanbul model, acquired his own army, formed from Janissaries and Kulemens. He was related to the Arab sheikhs, gave them ranks and gifts, took away lands from some tribes and endowed them with others, kindled enmity and civil strife. But even with these maneuvers, he failed to make his power stable: it was weakened by the almost continuous uprisings of the Arab tribes, especially the muntafiks, who most vigorously defended their freedom.

A new big wave of popular uprisings broke out in southern Iraq at the end of the 18th century. in connection with the intensification of feudal exploitation and a sharp increase in the amount of tribute. The uprisings were crushed by Suleiman Pasha of Baghdad, but they dealt a serious blow to Turkish dominance in Iraq.

Arabia. Rise of Wahhabism

On the Arabian Peninsula, the power of the Turkish conquerors was never strong. In 1633, as a result of popular uprisings, the Turks were forced to leave Yemen, which became an independent feudal state. But they stubbornly held out in the Hijaz: the Turkish sultans attached exceptional importance to their nominal dominance over the holy cities of Islam - Mecca and Medina, which served as the basis for their claims to spiritual power over all "orthodox" Muslims. In addition, during the Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage) season, these cities turned into grandiose fairs, centers of lively trade, which brought significant income to the Sultan's treasury. Therefore, the Porte not only did not impose tribute on the Hijaz, but, on the contrary, obliged the pashas of the neighboring Arab countries - Egypt and Syria - to annually send gifts to Mecca for the local spiritual nobility and give generous subsidies to the leaders of the Hijaz tribes, through whose territory the caravans of pilgrims passed. For the same reason, the real power within the Hijaz was left to the Meccan spiritual feudal lords - sheriffs, who had long enjoyed influence over the townspeople and nomadic tribes. The Turkish pasha of Hijaz was not in fact the ruler of the country, but the representative of the Sultan to the sheriff.

In Eastern Arabia in the 17th century, after the expulsion of the Portuguese from there, an independent state arose in Oman. Arab merchants of Oman possessed a significant fleet and, like European merchants, were engaged in piracy along with trade. At the end of the XVII century. they took the island of Zanzibar and the African coast adjacent to it from the Portuguese, and at the beginning of the 18th century. expelled the Iranians from the Bahrain Islands (later, in 1753, the Iranians regained Bahrain). In 1737, under Nadir Shah, the Iranians tried to seize Oman, but a popular uprising that broke out in 1741 ended in their expulsion. The leader of the uprising, the Muscat merchant Ahmed ibn Said, was proclaimed the hereditary imam of Oman. Its capitals were Rastak - a fortress in the inner mountainous part of the country, and Muscat - a trading center on the sea coast. During this period, Oman pursued an independent policy, successfully resisting the penetration of European merchants - the British and French, who tried in vain to obtain permission to set up their trading posts in Muscat.

The coast of the Persian Gulf to the northwest of Oman was inhabited by independent Arab tribes - Javas, Atban, etc., who were engaged in sea crafts, mainly pearl fishing, as well as trade and piracy. In the XVIII century. Atbans built the fortress of Kuwait, which became a significant trading center and the capital of the principality of the same name. In 1783, one of the divisions of this tribe occupied the Bahrain Islands, which after that also became an independent Arab principality. Small principalities were also founded on the Qatar peninsula and at various points on the so-called Pirate Coast (present-day Trucial Oman).

The inner part of the Arabian Peninsula - Nejd - was in the XVII-XVIII centuries. almost completely isolated from the outside world. Even the Arab chronicles of that time, compiled in neighboring countries, remain silent about the events that took place in Nejd and, apparently, remained unknown to their authors. Meanwhile, it was in Nejd that arose in the middle of the 18th century. movement, which subsequently played a major role in the history of the entire Arab East.

The real political goal of this movement was to unite the disparate small feudal principalities and independent tribes of Arabia into a single state. Constant strife between tribes over pastures, nomadic raids on the settled population of oases and on merchant caravans, feudal strife was accompanied by the destruction of irrigation facilities, the destruction of gardens and groves, theft of herds, the ruin of peasants, merchants and a significant part of the Bedouins. Only the unification of Arabia could stop these endless wars and ensure the rise of agriculture and trade.

The call for the unity of Arabia was clothed in the form of a religious doctrine, which received the name of Wahhabism after its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. This teaching, preserving the entire dogma of Islam, emphasized the principle of monotheism, severely condemned local and tribal cults of saints, remnants of fetishism, corruption of morals, and demanded the return of Islam to its "original purity." To a large extent, it was directed against the "apostates from Islam" - the Turkish conquerors who captured the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries.

Similar religious teachings arose among Muslims before. In Najd itself, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab had predecessors. However, his activities went far beyond religious preaching. From the middle of the XVIII century. Wahhabism was recognized as the official religion of the principality of Dareya, whose emirs Muhammad ibn Saud (1747-1765) and his son Abd al-Aziz (1765-1803), relying on the union of Wahhabi tribes, demanded from other tribes and principalities of Najd under the threat of a "holy war and the death of accepting the Wahhabi creed and joining the Saudi state.

For 40 years, there were continuous wars in the country. Principalities and tribes, forcibly annexed by the Wahhabis, more than once raised uprisings and renounced the new faith, but these uprisings were severely suppressed.

The struggle for the unification of Arabia stemmed not only from the objective needs of economic development. The accession of new territories increased the income and power of the Saudi dynasty, and military booty enriched the "fighters for a just cause", and the share of the emir accounted for one fifth of it.

By the end of the 80s of the XVIII century. all of Najd was united under the rule of the Wahhabi feudal nobility, headed by the emir Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud. However, government in this state was not centralized. Power over individual tribes remained in the hands of the former feudal leaders, provided that they recognized themselves as vassals of the emir and received Wahhabi preachers.

Subsequently, the Wahhabis went beyond the borders of Inner Arabia to spread their power and faith in other Arab countries. At the very end of the XVIII century. they launched the first raids on the Hijaz and Iraq, which opened the way for the further rise of the Wahhabi state.

Arab culture in the XVII-XVIII centuries.

The Turkish conquest led to the decline of Arab culture, which continued during the 17th-18th centuries. Science during this period developed very poorly. Philosophers, historians, geographers, and jurists mostly expounded and rewrote the works of medieval authors. At the level of the Middle Ages, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics froze. Experimental methods for studying nature were not known. Religious motifs predominated in poetry. Mystical dervish literature was widely distributed.

In Western bourgeois historiography, the decline of Arab culture is usually attributed to the dominance of Islam. In fact, the main reason for the decline was the extremely slow pace of socio-economic development and Turkish oppression. As for Islamic dogma, which undoubtedly played a negative role, the Christian dogmas professed in a number of Arab countries had no less reactionary influence. The religious disunity of the Arabs, divided into a number of religious groups - especially in Syria and Lebanon, led to cultural disunity. Every cultural movement has inevitably taken on a religious imprint. In the 17th century a college for Lebanese Arabs was founded in Rome, but it was entirely in the hands of the Maronite clergy (Maronites are Christian Arabs who recognize the spiritual authority of the pope) and its influence was limited to a narrow circle of the Maronite intelligentsia. The same religious character, limited by the framework of Maronite propaganda, was carried out by the educational activity of the Maronite Bishop Herman Farhat, who founded in the early 18th century. the library in Aleppo (Haleb); the Maronite school, founded in the 18th century, was distinguished by the same features. at the monastery of Ain Barka (Lebanon), and an Arabic printing house founded at this monastery. Theology was the main subject of study at the school; The printing house printed only religious books.

In the 17th century Patriarch Macarius of Antioch and his son Paul of Aleppo made a trip to Russia and Georgia. The descriptions of this journey, compiled by Paul of Aleppo, can be compared in terms of the brightness of observations and the artistry of style with the best monuments of classical Arabic geographical literature. But these works were known only in a narrow circle of Orthodox Arabs, mainly among the clergy.

At the beginning of the XVIII century. The first printing house was founded in Istanbul. In Arabic, she printed only Muslim religious books - the Koran, hadiths, commentaries, etc. The cultural center of Muslim Arabs was still the al-Azhar Theological University in Cairo.

However, even during this period, historical and geographical works appeared containing original material. In the 17th century the historian al-Makkari created an interesting work on the history of Andalusia; the Damascus judge Ibn Khallikan compiled an extensive collection of biographies; in the 18th century the chronicle of the Shihabs was written - the most important source on the history of Lebanon during this period. Other chronicles were created on the history of the Arab countries in the 17th-18th centuries, as well as descriptions of travels to Mecca, Istanbul and other places.

The centuries-old art of Arab folk craftsmen continued to manifest itself in remarkable architectural monuments and in handicrafts. This is evidenced by the Azma Palace in Damascus, built in the 18th century, the remarkable architectural ensembles of the Moroccan capital Meknes, erected at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, many monuments in Cairo, Tunisia, Tlemcen, Aleppo and other Arab cultural centers.

The Ottoman Empire arose in 1299 in the northwest of Asia Minor and lasted 624 years, having managed to conquer many peoples and become one of the greatest powers in the history of mankind.

From the spot to the quarry

The position of the Turks at the end of the 13th century looked unpromising, if only because of the presence of Byzantium and Persia in the neighborhood. Plus the sultans of Konya (the capital of Lycaonia - regions in Asia Minor), depending on which, albeit formally, the Turks were.

However, all this did not prevent Osman (1288-1326) from expanding and strengthening his young state. By the way, by the name of their first sultan, the Turks began to be called the Ottomans.
Osman was actively engaged in the development of internal culture and carefully treated someone else's. Therefore, many Greek cities located in Asia Minor preferred to voluntarily recognize his supremacy. Thus, they "killed two birds with one stone": they both received protection and preserved their traditions.
Osman's son Orkhan I (1326-1359) brilliantly continued his father's work. Declaring that he was going to unite all the faithful under his rule, the Sultan set off to conquer not the countries of the East, which would be logical, but the western lands. And Byzantium was the first to stand in his way.

By this time, the empire was in decline, which the Turkish Sultan took advantage of. Like a cold-blooded butcher, he "chopped off" area after area from the Byzantine "body". Soon the entire northwestern part of Asia Minor came under the rule of the Turks. They also established themselves on the European coast of the Aegean and Marmara Seas, as well as the Dardanelles. And the territory of Byzantium was reduced to Constantinople and its environs.
Subsequent sultans continued the expansion of Eastern Europe, where they successfully fought against Serbia and Macedonia. And Bayazet (1389-1402) was "marked" by the defeat of the Christian army, which King Sigismund of Hungary led on a crusade against the Turks.

From defeat to triumph

Under the same Bayazet, one of the most severe defeats of the Ottoman army happened. The Sultan personally opposed Timur's army and in the Battle of Ankara (1402) he was defeated, and he himself was taken prisoner, where he died.
The heirs by hook or by crook tried to ascend the throne. The state was on the verge of collapse due to internal unrest. Only under Murad II (1421-1451) did the situation stabilize, and the Turks were able to regain control of the lost Greek cities and conquer part of Albania. The Sultan dreamed of finally cracking down on Byzantium, but did not have time. His son, Mehmed II (1451-1481), was destined to become the killer of the Orthodox empire.

On May 29, 1453, the hour of X came for Byzantium. The Turks besieged Constantinople for two months. Such a short time was enough to break the inhabitants of the city. Instead of everyone taking up arms, the townspeople simply prayed to God for help, not leaving churches for days. The last emperor, Constantine Palaiologos, asked for help from the Pope, but he demanded in return the unification of churches. Konstantin refused.

Perhaps the city would have held out even if not for the betrayal. One of the officials agreed to the bribe and opened the gate. He did not take into account one important fact - the Turkish Sultan, in addition to the female harem, also had a male one. That's where the comely son of a traitor got.
The city fell. The civilized world has stopped. Now all the states of both Europe and Asia have realized that the time has come for a new superpower - the Ottoman Empire.

European campaigns and confrontations with Russia

The Turks did not think to stop there. After the death of Byzantium, no one blocked their way to rich and unfaithful Europe, even conditionally.
Soon, Serbia was annexed to the empire (except for Belgrade, but the Turks would capture it in the 16th century), the Duchy of Athens (and, accordingly, most of all of Greece), the island of Lesbos, Wallachia, and Bosnia.

In Eastern Europe, the territorial appetites of the Turks intersected with those of Venice. The ruler of the latter quickly enlisted the support of Naples, the Pope and Karaman (Khanate in Asia Minor). The confrontation lasted 16 years and ended with the complete victory of the Ottomans. After that, no one prevented them from "getting" the remaining Greek cities and islands, as well as annexing Albania and Herzegovina. The Turks were so carried away by the expansion of their borders that they successfully attacked even the Crimean Khanate.
Panic broke out in Europe. Pope Sixtus IV began to make plans for the evacuation of Rome, and at the same time hastened to announce a Crusade against the Ottoman Empire. Only Hungary responded to the call. In 1481, Mehmed II died, and the era of great conquests ended temporarily.
In the 16th century, when internal unrest in the empire subsided, the Turks again directed their weapons at their neighbors. First there was a war with Persia. Although the Turks won it, the territorial acquisitions were insignificant.
After success in North African Tripoli and Algiers, Sultan Suleiman invaded Austria and Hungary in 1527 and laid siege to Vienna two years later. It was not possible to take it - bad weather and mass diseases prevented it.
As for relations with Russia, for the first time the interests of states clashed in Crimea.

The first war took place in 1568 and ended in 1570 with the victory of Russia. Empires fought each other for 350 years (1568 - 1918) - one war fell on average for a quarter of a century.
During this time, there were 12 wars (including the Azov, Prut campaign, Crimean and Caucasian fronts during the First World War). And in most cases, the victory remained with Russia.

Dawn and sunset of the Janissaries

Talking about the Ottoman Empire, one cannot fail to mention its regular troops - the Janissaries.
In 1365, on the personal order of Sultan Murad I, the Janissary infantry was formed. It was completed by Christians (Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, and so on) at the age of eight to sixteen years. Thus, devshirme worked - a blood tax - which was imposed on the unbelieving peoples of the empire. It is interesting that at first the life of the Janissaries was quite difficult. They lived in monasteries-barracks, they were forbidden to start a family and any household.
But gradually the Janissaries from the elite branch of the military began to turn into a highly paid burden for the state. In addition, these troops were less and less likely to take part in hostilities.

The beginning of decomposition was laid in 1683, when, along with Christian children, Muslims began to be taken as Janissaries. Wealthy Turks sent their children there, thereby solving the issue of their successful future - they could make a good career. It was the Muslim Janissaries who began to start families and engage in crafts, as well as trade. Gradually, they turned into a greedy, impudent political force that interfered in state affairs and participated in the overthrow of objectionable sultans.
The agony continued until 1826, when Sultan Mahmud II abolished the Janissaries.

The death of the Ottoman Empire

Frequent troubles, inflated ambitions, cruelty and constant participation in any wars could not but affect the fate of the Ottoman Empire. The 20th century turned out to be especially critical, in which Turkey was increasingly torn apart by internal contradictions and the separatist mood of the population. Because of this, the country fell behind the West in technical terms, so it began to lose the once conquered territories.

The fateful decision for the empire was its participation in the First World War. The allies defeated the Turkish troops and staged a division of its territory. On October 29, 1923, a new state appeared - the Republic of Turkey. Mustafa Kemal became its first president (later, he changed his surname to Atatürk - "father of the Turks"). Thus ended the history of the once great Ottoman Empire.

The relentless anger of Muslim Arabs against the Christian West was aroused in response to the war on terror unleashed by Bush Jr., but this anger has deep roots. The policies of the Western powers are refreshing in the memory of the First World War of 1914-1918, when some Arab leaders believed the promises of Christians from the British Empire. British politicians and military leaders promised the Arabs who were oppressed by the Turks that they would gain independence from outside domination in exchange for the support of British troops in the fight against Germany and its ally, the Ottoman Empire of Sultan Mehmed V.

The Turkish Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful and successful in the world for over six hundred years. She held power over people belonging to various cultural, ethnic and religious groups, as she allowed the peoples in the conquered territories to maintain their religion, language and customs. Such a policy was carried out through the careful formation of ruling elites from various religious minorities represented in the empire, and control over the clergy.

However, in the last decades before the First World War, the Ottoman government ran into debt, and European states, led by Britain and France, used this position to subjugate the Great Ottoman State and dispose of the vast wealth of the empire. The Sultan and his entourage began to insist more and more insistently on the Turkish language and culture among their subjects, which greatly outraged the Arabs. In the weakened Ottoman Empire, in an atmosphere of growing dissatisfaction with the Istanbul Sultanate, Britain pursued its insidious unscrupulous policy, tearing it away from the dying empire through deceit and betrayal and appropriating more and more new territories.

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, during the Berlin Congress of 1878, promised to support the Ottoman state in its territorial claims in the Balkan Peninsula. In exchange, England gained control of the strategically important Cyprus. However, British politicians did not keep their promise.

In 1882, the British informed the Ottoman government that they were sending troops to Egypt to put down a mutiny raised by military officers led by Orabi Pasha and "restore order and subjection to Constantinople (Istanbul)". Ahmed Orabi led the performance of the Cairo garrison, which led to the resignation of the Khedive government and the creation of a national government, ready to fight the dominance of Europeans in their own country. The revolutionary government, controlled by the army, began to nationalize the property of large owners, primarily European ones. By bringing in their troops and defeating the forces of the revolutionaries, the British occupied Egypt and gained control of the strategically important Suez Canal, as a result of which these territories actually passed from the jurisdiction of the duped Ottoman sultan to the British Empire. The perfidious English were not too constrained by moral principles and freely used any cunning and deceit to win their wars of conquest, spreading the influence of the British Empire in all parts of the world. They justified this by the fact that they were the strongest empire in the world and the greatest world "benefactor".

In the words of the British poet and imperialist Rudyard Kipling, which he used in the poem of the same name in 1899, it was the colonial "burden of the white man." Justifying the bloody dominance of Britain in different corners of the earth, Kipling spoke of the "burden" that was for the British moral "duty to carry civilization" to ignorant peoples. Initially, the poem "The White Man's Burden" was written by Kipling for the anniversary of the British Queen Victoria, but then he decided to dedicate it to the elite of the United States, which successfully completed its first imperialist war for the redistribution of colonial possessions. As a result of that Spanish-American War in 1898, a weakened Spain ceded the Philippines to the Americans. In his revised poem, Kipling pleaded with Americans not to give up and take on the burden of the "white burden" of educating barbarians in underdeveloped countries. He describes the natives as "rebellious, sullen, half-devils, half-children."

This attitude was characteristic of the representatives of the ruling class in the British Empire and even more so of their American counterparts. The religious superiority of European Christian culture over the culture of the subject peoples of the underdeveloped southern colonies was implied, it was a kind of assertion of one's own initial "innocence". The British imperialists, however, were pragmatists, using any ploy to profit from new imperial conquests. So, in the First World War, the most important victory for Britain was the acquisition of the “crown jewels” of the Ottoman Empire as trophies, in particular the oil-rich lands of Mesopotamia (the territory of present-day Iraq) and strategically important Palestine.

Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, the spiritual and political leader of the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, under the influence of English and French financial institutions and governments, agreed in 1881 to transfer control of the national debt into the hands of foreign creditors, as a result of which a commission was formed called the "Board of Directors Ottoman public debt. The headquarters of the created organization was located in Istanbul, and the council itself, which gained control over the state revenues of the Ottoman Empire, consisted of representatives of British, Dutch, German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian and other holders of Turkish bonds. The Council had the authority, without the consent of the Ottoman government, to direct tax revenues to pay the public debt of the Ottoman Empire to foreign creditor banks.

Debt dependence on Europe led to the depletion of Turkish income, which went mainly to the banks of France and the City of London, which weakened the financial capabilities of Istanbul, which was no longer able to control such a vast empire. It was this weakening that was the real goal of the British, who sought to plunder the untold riches of the Ottoman state.

In 1899, Great Britain took advantage of the growing financial difficulties of the Sultan and signed a secret 99-year treaty with the Sheikh of Kuwait, according to which control over the foreign policy and security of Kuwait passed to the British Empire. In 1901, British warships were stationed off the coast of Kuwait, and it was announced to the Turkish government that from that moment on, the port in the Persian Gulf south of the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab River, controlled by the Bedouin tribe of Anaza, led by Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah, is today Kuwait - is under the "protectorate of Britain". The Turks by that time were too weakened economically and militarily, so they did not dare to do anything.