TURCICA 202 STEIN, ML — Guarding

201 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — TURCICA 202 the forts and keeping the garrisons paid. Each of these sections is subdivided into chapters dealing in detail with the types of guns used and the various groups of the garrisons. Each element is described from a vast amount of documen- tary evidence, all referenced in the notes and at the end of the book so we can trace the kind of sources he used and their location in the enormous Ottoman Archives in Istanbul. The Maliyeden Müdevver, Mühimme Defterleri, Baş Muhasebe, Kepeci and TapuTahrir are definitely the most important archive sections for data on this topic. Curiously, however, the author seems not to have used the rich source to be found in the Cevdet Askeri. After the habitual acknowledgements, the book starts with an introduction (pp. 1-11) giving a kind of ‘state of the art’ with references to the most important books and studies on Ottoman warfare and commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of these works. There then follow some remarks on what the author plans to do in the book: provide a systematic account of Ottoman fortress life, organization and administration, and discuss both the idea of frontiers and their importance to Ottoman history and historiography. Wherever needed the author takes a comparative approach TURCICA and gives examples of how the Ottoman frontier fits into larger paradigms. STEIN, M.L. — Guarding the frontier. Ottoman border forts I would make a small critical remark at this point. One and garrisons in Europe. I.B. Tauris, London & New wonders why, right at the beginning of the introduction, we York, 2007. (22,5 cm, IX, 222). ISBN 978-1-84511- read, “… the two empires faced each other in the Balkans 301-8. £ 57.50. since Sultan Süleyman I’s destruction of the Hungarian king- When taking this 222-page well-produced book in his dom in 1526.” This is a bit misleading, since the conflict is hand the initiated reader is inclined to think that this is the much older. It goes back at least to 1428, when Murad II first book, since well-known German standard works of the took a big slice of Serbia (Djordje Branković’s capital 18th century, to give a solid and comprehensive overview of Kruševac/Alaca Hisar) to better defend his Balkan territories Ottoman defensive works in Southeastern Europe — how against continuous Hungarian raids. Massive Ottoman raids they were built and kept going. On closer inspection it deep into Habsburg Austria (Kärnten/Carinthia, and Steier- becomes clear that the work has a narrower focus, but is mark/Styria as far as Bruck an der Mur) took place on a large certainly solid, based as it is on an impressive mass of Otto- scale more than half a century before “1526”, i.e. during the man administrative records, which are usually lacking in the reign of Süyleiman’s great-grandfather Mehmed II, and older publications due to the inaccessibility of the sources grandfather Bayezid II. These devastating raids lasted from and the difficulties of reading the 17th century Ottoman Turk- 1473 to 1494 and stopped for the next 25 years only after the ish used by the central administration, a language replete disastrous defeat of the Akıncıs by the troops of the new with little-known abbreviations and technical terms and usu- Habsburg Emperor Maximilian (1493-1518) in 1494. Thus ally giving the numbers of men and money coded in the the Ottoman and the Habsburg empires collided much earlier nasty DivânRakamları. In his introduction the author makes than 1526, as Stein seems to suggest. clear that in fact his Europe is restricted to the Ottoman- In the first chapter, “Frontiers and Ottoman Frontiers” Habsburg border, the well-known Habsburg Militärgrenze. (pp. 13-27), the latter aspect is discussed in more detail, also Indeed, from this long swath of land only the Hungarian part making clear Frederic Jackson Turner’s famous “Frontier is covered, with a focus on two important fortresses: Nagy- Thesis” (1893) for non-American readers. Although Turner kanisza, Kanije for the Ottomans in the south of the present himself thought that his thesis was only valid for the Ameri- day Hungary, and Neuhäusel, now Nové Zámky in today’s can frontier, his idea was taken up by many others and came Slovakia and Uyvâr for the Ottomans, who used the Hungar- to dominate discussion of all frontiers worldwide, a discus- ian name of the place. All three forms mean new castle. In sion that spread through the entire 20th century. Its echoes the case of Nagykanisza Stein makes clear that this fortress can still be heard today. Thus, in essence, Stein gives a town was in fact very important and the stories of its siege refreshing documented comparative overview, using a wide and defence resonated as far as Namik Kemal, the 19th cen- range of books and studies in a way often lacking in the tury Ottoman poet and writer of great renown. His work on historiography of Southeastern Europe and even modern the defence of Kanije by the legendary Tiryaki Hasan Pasha Turkey. was being republished as late as 1941 (rich bibliography by The second half of the first chapter deals specifically with Geza David, “Kanije” in TürkiyeDiyanetVakfıİslâmAnsik- the Ottoman frontier. Although the book in essence deals lopedisi. 24, Istanbul 2001). with the situation in Hungary, it first gives us a useful over- This solidly bound and nicely printed book gives, over its view of the characteristics of life on the Ottoman frontier at 222 pages, a systematic overview of the various aspects of large and discusses the roots of a typical frontier society, fortification, armament, garrison troops and garrison size. It referring to the history of the Seldjuks of Rum and their pre- elaborates in great detail the financial aspects of maintaining decessors, the Umayyads and the Abbasids, knocking at the 998048_Bior2015_1-2_01.indd8048_Bior2015_1-2_01.indd 103103 221/05/151/05/15 115:375:37 203 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXXII N° 1-2, januari-april 2015 204 doors of Byzantine Anatolia. Here the influential theories of palisade — as is often maintained — but also to a smaller Fuad Köprülü and Paul Wittek are unfolded and a link is fort solidly built in stone. The name of the little town of Bela made to the situation in 16-17th century Hungary. To deepen Palanka in Serbia (from the 1630s), the equally small town the background, the author mentions three key sources that of Kriva Palanka/Eğridere Palanka in Macedonia from the form the basis of our perception of the Islamic-Byzantine same period, or Sigri on Lesbos/Midilli (1765s) and other frontier zone in southern Anatolia: the Greek epic of Digenis sites are all definitely called “Palanka” and are mentioned as Akritas, on the one hand, and the epic of Seyyid Battal Gazi such in Ottoman accounts of their construction. along with the Book of Dede Korkut, on the other. He might The reason why the Ottomans did not want sharp pointed also have used the 13th century Danişmendnâme. Although bastions goes simply down to military experience. When the hero of that epic lived more than a century later than the attacking gunners place their guns in the shape of an arch and period of those two works, he describes the same frontier fire directly at the nose of the bastion, the latter could not society and frontier ethics. As late as the mid-17th century the fire back because most of the guns along the star-shaped fort famous traveller Evliya Çelebi still heard the same epic sto- were placed on the curtain walls and in casements, which ries being recalled and sung by the common people across could not bring concentrated fire to bear on the enemy’s Central Anatolia. artillery. Chapter Two, which deals with the fortresses (pp. 29-61), After their early introduction the traceItalienne rapidly is divided into several sub-chapters: Seventeenth Century became a subject for drawing-board artists. Strict symmetry Siege Warfare, Ottoman Siegecraft, The Trenches, Ottoman became a dogma. Indeed, a 19th century specialist on fortifi- Artillery, Mine Attack, Military Supplies and, finally, “Otto- cation once exclaimed that, “Next to the theologians, the man Fortresses”, (pp. 48-54) which is subdivided into Archi- most dogma-addicted among mortals are definitely the for- tecture, and Equipment. Impressive lists of equipment in the tificators.” Not until in the early 19th century, with the intro- forts are given and armaments are described in detail. There duction of the New Prussian System, were bastions finally is a particularly useful explanation of the types of cannon abandoned and the artillery concentrated on the curtain walls, used, which disposes of the older European notion that the from where the much needed frontal fire could be given. Ottomans only had limited and deficient types of heavy gun What the Ottomans did was to build bulwarks with a polygo- and lacked effective field pieces. This idea was rejected con- nal form and a blunt nose. These bastion-like structures ena- vincingly in the recent research of Gábor Ágoston, which is bled plenty of flanking fire as well as frontal. Western rightly accepted wholeheartedly by Stein. The author then observers, indoctrinated in the virtues of strictly geometric describes the various types and calibre of the guns actually fortresses, never understood this and therefore thought the used, giving their exact names on the basis of vast documen- Ottoman forts were “inferior.” Stein summarises, “When the tation. At the end of the book the various types are again Ottomans did build forts they did not build large, up-to-date listed in a very practical table.

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