Gunpowder Empires

Gunpowder Empires James Gelvin “Modern Middle East” Part 1 - Chapter 2 expanded lecture notes by Denis Bašić Gunpowder Empires • These empires established strong centralized control through employing the military potential of gunpowder (naval and land-based siege cannons were particularly important). • The major states of the Western Hemisphere were destroyed by European gunpowder empires while throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, regional empires developed on the basis of military power and new centralized administrations. • The world gunpowder empires were : the Ottoman, Safavid, Moghul, Habsburg, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. • Emperor vs. King Military Patronage State • brought to the Middle East by Turkic and Mongolian rulers • Their three main characteristics are : • they were essentially military • all economic resources belonged to the chief military family or families • their laws combined dynastic laws, local laws, and Islamic law (shari’a) Ottoman Empire - 1st Islamic gunpowder empire • The Ottoman Empire was the first of the three Islamic empires to harness gunpowder. • Most probably the Ottomans learned of gunpowder weapons from renegade Christians and used it to devastating effects in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. • The Ottomans used the largest cannons of the time to destroy the walls and conquer Constantinople in 1453. They conquered Constantinople the same year when the Hundred Years’ (116-year) War in Europe ended. The Siege of Constantinople (painted 1499) Sultan Mehmed II (1432-1481) on the road to the siege of Constantinople painter : Fausto Zonaro (1854-1929) The Great Ottoman Bombard Prior to the siege of Constantinople it is known that the Ottomans held the ability to cast medium-sized cannon, yet nothing near the range of some pieces they were able to put to field. Instrumental to this Ottoman advancement in arms production was a somewhat mysterious figure by the name of Orban, a Hungarian (though some suggest he was German). The master founder immediately tried to peddle his skills to the city's invaders. He guaranteed the Sultan Mehmed II that he could cast cannons powerful enough to break down the "walls of Babylon", implying that the greatest fortifications could not be spared. Consequently every resource was placed at his fingertips. In a move of unprecedented technicality, working in a makeshift foundry, Orban pushed the limits of his art and cast what was likely the largest contemporary gun ever made—27 feet long and large enough for a full grown man to crawl into. Orban's cannon could fire a 1200 lb (544 kg) ball as far as one mile. It was dubbed "the Great Ottoman Bombard." Orban's cannon had several drawbacks, however: it took three hours to reload; the cannon balls were in very short supply; and the cannon is said to have collapsed under its own recoil after six weeks. This is, however, disputed. Orban's accomplishments in dealing with such fine tolerances on such a massive scale place his work as one of the greatest engineering feats of the time yet nothing is certainly known about his demise. Having previously established a large foundry approximately 150 miles away, Mehmed II now had to undergo the painstaking process of transporting his massive pieces of artillery. Orban's giant cannon was said to have been accompanied by a crew of 60 oxen and over 400 men. Hagia Sophia ... is a former patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, now a museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture. It was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Medieval Seville Cathedral in 1520. The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 AD on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and was in fact the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site ( the previous two had both been destroyed by riots). It was designed by two architects, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. The Church contained a large collection of holy relics and featured, among other things, a 50 ft (15 m) silver iconostasis. It was the patriarchal church of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the religious focus point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly 1000 years. In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II (1432-1481) ordered the building to be converted into a mosque. The bells, altar, iconostasis, and sacrificial vessels were removed, and many of the mosaics were eventually plastered over. The Islamic features - such as the mihrab, the minbar, and the four minarets outside - were added over the course of its history under the Ottomans. It remained as a mosque until 1935, when it was converted into a museum by the secular Republic of Turkey. Sultan Ahmet I Mosque - the Blue Mosque built btw. 1609-1616 Caliph ‘Umar vs. Sultan Mehmed II Qur’an 60:8 - A!ah does not forbid you respecting those who have not made war against you on account of (your) religion, and have not driven you forth &om your homes, that you show them kindness and deal with them justly; surely A!ah loves the doers of justice. When the caliph ‘Umar took Jerusalem from the Byzantines (637 C.E.), he insisted on entering the city with only a small number of his companions. Proclaiming to the inhabitants that their lives and property were safe, and that their places of worship would never be taken from them, he asked the Christian patriarch Sophronius to accompany him on a visit to all the holy places. The Patriarch invited him to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but he preferred to pray outside its gates, saying that if he accepted, later generations of Muslims might use his action as an excuse to turn it into a mosque. The Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba The Mosque of Cordoba was built during the 9th and 10th centuries and consecrated as the cathedral in 1236. A Jewel of Hispano-Islamic art, the Mezquita, with its 850 columns, double arches and Byzantine mosaics, is a legacy of the Ummayad Caliphate in Spain. In the center of its vista of columns rises a 16th-century cathedral. The Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba The Great Aljama Mosque of Cordoba, begun in 786 by Abd al-Rahman I, is the highest expression of Islamic art in Spain and the most important historic mosque of the West. Its last touches were made by Almanzor in 988, and it was the place of worship for the rulers of the western Islamic empire Al-Andalus. Important Islamic features include the Minaret, now enclosed and reformed into a Baroque bell tower, the Orange Tree Courtyard, the Mihrab and the forest of columns and arches. Abd al-Rahman I purchased the land for the mosque, destroying the Visigothic monastery of San Vicente and using its columns and capitals, along with columns brought from elsewhere. Recently, part of the floor of the 5th-century San Vicente church has been revealed for viewing. Before the existence of the monastery, there had been a Roman temple dedicated to Janus on the site. The Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba When Fernando III conquered Cordoba in the 1236, the Mosque was consecrated as a cathedral. In 1523, the cathedral canons ordered the center of the mosque pulled down to make way for a Gothic transept and apse, later embellished with Renaissance decorations and, in the mid-18th century, Baroque choir stalls and pulpits. Christian conversion of the building to a cathedral may be responsible for its excellent conservation. Other important monuments in the city were plundered for their marble, cut stone and columns over the centuries, and no other mosque survived intact. Not everyone in 16th-century Cordoba was happy about the proposed changes to the Great Mosque, however, and there was a legal battle between the church and the city hall, which the king resolved in the church's favor. Nevertheless, when Charles V visited Cordoba and saw the monument which his local authorities had tried to preserve in its original state, he declared "You have destroyed something unique to make something commonplace." The Mosque/Cathedral of Cordoba Jews in the Ottoman Empire • In 1492, after the Christian reconquest of Iberia (Spain & Portugal) from the Muslim Moorish suzerainty, the local Christian rulers, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, forced the Jews and Muslims of Spain to either covert to Christianity, leave the country, or be killed. • A great many of them escaped to the territories of the Ottoman Empire where they could have lived in peace. • The Jewish converts to Christianity (Morannos) and Muslim converts (Moriscos) even a century later were not trusted and were persecuted and expelled from Spain. (for more check this link) Middle Eastern Fear of Crusaders Cannibalism in the Medieval Era • During the First Crusade (1095–99), a group of French Crusaders called “Tafurs” cannibalized the Muslim dead at the Syrian city of Maàrra. More than a dozen narrative sources describe this act, but with significant differences in detail. Some sources suggest that cannibalism was a product of necessity. Thus, in an official letter describing the situation during the First Crusade, the Crusader leaders informed the Pope that “a terrible famine racked the army in Ma’arra, and placed it in the cruel necessity of feeding itself upon the bodies of the Saracens 'Arabs.(” • In his article “Cannibals and Crusaders,” Jay Rubenstein suggests that cannibalism was only in part a product of necessity, but also that the Crusaders used it as a tool of psychological warfare. Another author, Amin Maalouf, the Lebanese Christian scholar and writer, in his work, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, also advocates that cannibalism among some of the Crusaders was not a matter of necessity, but rather a matter of fanaticism.

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