Rhoads Murphey - Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700

Warfare and History

General Editor
Jeremy Black
Professor of History, University of Exeter

Published

European warfare, 16601815
Jeremy Black

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German armies: war and German politics, 16481806
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Ottoman warfare, 15001700
Rhoads Murphey

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Bruce Vandervort

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Rhoads Murphey, 1999

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

Published in the UK in 1999 by UCL Press

UCL Press Limited
Taylor & Francis Group
1 Gunpowder Square
London EC4A 3DE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.

The name of University College London (UCL) is a registered trade mark used by UCL Press with the consent of the owner.

ISBNs: 1-85728-388-0HB
1-85728-389-9PB

British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0-203-01597-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-17347-3 (Glassbook Format)

The period 1500 to 1700 forms a period of Ottoman dynastic history when the Ottomans gave particular emphasis to their frontiers with Europe. While other fronts were activated against Iran in 1514, Syria and Egypt in 1517, and into the lower Tigris-Euphrates in the decade following the Ottoman capture of Baghdad in 1535, from the fall of Buda in 1541 to the close of the seventeenth century the Ottomans were most consistently concerned with the defence (and, periodically, the extension) of their trans-Danubian possessions. This channelling of Ottoman effort was the product (and an Ottoman response to) contemporary political circumstances. While the rise of the Safavid dynasty in the East from 1502 posed a potential threat to the Ottomans, the unification of the crowns of Spain and Austria under Charles V from 1519 posed a present and real danger to Ottoman strategic interests. Despite the redivision of territories at the abdication of Charles in 1556 and the succession of his brother Ferdinand (the First) to his eastern possessions and of his son Philip (the Second) to his western and northern possessions, the Ottomans had by that time irreversibly committed themselves to anti-Habsburg alliances and strategic positions of their own that kept them at the centre of Middle European politics until the end of the seventeenth century. While it will not be possible, given the wide scope of our coverage of general military developments over a two-century period, to focus in detail on developments in any one of the lands that formed the post-1540 Ottoman empire, a natural bias towards events on the northwest frontier represents the actual pattern of Ottoman military involvements in the period. Of the three most active fronts the Caucasian, the Mesopotamian and the Hungarian it was the latter which persistently claimed the lions share of Ottoman resources and concentration of effort.

The sheer size of the post-1540 Ottoman empire necessitated such a balancing of interests and commitments. Resources and surpluses from one area were used by the Ottomans to good effect to subsidize and support military activity in another, and for most of the period the empires size was a source, not of increased vulnerability, but rather of strength. From the mid-sixteenth century the Austrian military border along the northwest frontier, forming a 370-mile arch extending from Kosice on the north and east to Senj in the south and west, was guarded by a string of more than 50 forts and fortresses. By 1600, with the addition of Kanice (Nagykanizsa) as the fourth province of Ottoman Hungary, the Ottomans were able to match the Austrians in number and kind, and the balance struck in the early years of the century was little changed until the 1660s. At the other extreme, although the Ottoman-Safavid frontier stretched over 600 miles from Batum on the Black Sea to Basra on the Shatt al-Arab, only a small proportion of the full extent was very heavily garrisoned or defended. Apart from confined periods of exceptional activity (as for example during the 1580s and again in the 1630s) the costs of maintaining the Ottomans presence in this sphere could be offset by relying mostly on local resources. In view of these realities, the weight of evidence which we will draw upon for our narrative comes from the mid-sixteenth century onwards and predominantly from the European sphere of operations. References to events affecting other spheres and periods are unsystematic and included mostly to highlight parallel institutional developments or as illustrations of general phenomena.