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54 Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Ottoman Holy War to the North of the Danube

1 Efforts to the Way of Allah

Initially, as vassals of the Seljukid sultans, the Anatolian beys, including the fledging , accompanied their suzerains in holy campaigns (gaza) against Byzantine territories.1 Adopting the ideology of cihad, the Ot­ toman sultans assumed for themselves the task of leaders of the holy war against infidels of Southeastern Europe. This idea was directly and most cate­ gorically declared in “letters of conquest” (fetihnames), accounts of victorious campaigns against unbelievers, distributed both domestically and abroad by the sultans. The most relevant examples of this genre are to be found in Meh­ med II’s statements in letters sent to Muslim rulers.2 Furthermore, both Byzan­ tine and Ottoman sources indicate that sultans were conscious of their obligation to conduct cihad. For instance, in 1421, after I’s death, as Nişancı Mehmed paşa informs us, his son,

Gazi Sultan Murad Han, came to the imperial throne. Murad Han did not abandon but rather followed the right way, hoisted the banners of the holy campaign and the holy war (gaza ü-cihad bayraklarını yücelten) and confided in the glorious Allah.3

Step by step, but especially after the conquest of Arab territories, the image of sultans as leaders of holy wars was recognized across the Muslim world.4 In the sixteenth century, stereotypes dominated the image of the sultan as a holy warrior. As Christine Woodhead pointed out in her analysis of campaign

1 According to the chronicler Nișanci Mehmed pașa, Ertoǧrul had accompanied his suzerain Alaaddin Kay-Kubad iii in sacred campaigns (gaza ü cihadda sultanla birlikte bulunmak istedi) (Mehmed pașa, Tarih, in Osmanlı Tarihleri, I, 344). 2 To the sultan after the conquest of in 1453 (Critobul, Mehmed II, 56–74; Inalcık, , 56). To Uzun Hasan, in 1476, after the campaign against the Moldavian prince (Guboglu, “Izvoare turco-persane,” 139). 3 Mehmed pașa, Tarih, in Osmanlı Tarihleri, I, 348. On (Ducas, Istoria, III/4; Chalcocondil, Expuneri, 77). On Mehmed i, Mustafa Çelebi and Güneyt (Ducas, Istoria, XXIV/5, XXIV/12, XXI/10). 4 Inalcık, Ottoman Empire, 57; Carl Max Kortepeter, “How the Ottomans governed the Arabs: The Observations recorded by Evliya Çelebi in 1672.” In Studia Turcologica Memoriae Alexii Bombaci Dicta, Naples: Istituto universitario orientale, 1982, 318–333.

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Ottoman Holy War to the North of the Danube 55

accounts (gazavatnames) produced during the reign of Süleyman Kanunî (1520–1566):

Here Süleyman’s role as warrior king, the sultan of the gazis, dominates: he surpasses the achievements of his predecessors in extending the ter­ ritorial bounds of empire and of Islam; he marches with a magnificently arrayed, invincible force, reduces the strongest fortresses, slays the irre­ deemable infidel, and puts rebels to flight.5

According to Ottoman juridical theory, there was a permanent state of war between the Abode of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the Abode of War (dar al-harb) that would last until infidels’ territories were brought under the sultan’s au­ thority. To accomplish this goal, the ideology of offensive cihad was built and promoted as the main element of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ottoman political thought. This meant the only just war was cihad, i.e. that war which had as final aim the achievement of a pax ottomanica or imperium mundi for the Ottoman Empire.6 From this perspective, the Moldavian scholar Dimitrie Cantemir insisted that the rationales for war were purely theological:

they [the Ottomans] call those Wars just, (and only those) which are un­ dertaken for the Propagation of the Mahometan Religion: On the con­ trary, unjust Wars with them are such as are entered into for the enlarging the Bounds of their Empire, or the Royal Revenue…7

Contemporary analysts also attempted to prove that Ottoman wars were waged for just causes by insisting that all victories and defeats were ultimately decid­ ed by “divine Providence.”8 Actually, this mentality originated in the standard reaction of the Ottoman dignitaries: “it was so the Allah’s will,” chroniclers

5 She quoted especially Tabakat ül-memalik of Mustafa Celalzade (Christine Woodhead, “Perspectives on Süleyman,” in Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age. The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World, Edited by Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, London and New York: Longman Publishing, 1995, 172–173). 6 E. Tyan, “Djihad,” EI-2, II, 1991, 538–540; Morabia, Ǧihad, 416; Cl. Cahen, “Harb. II. Sous le cali­ fat,” EI-2, III, 185. On the just war in Western Europe, see R. Regnant, La doctrine de la guerre juste de s. Augustin à nos jours, d’après les théologiens et canonistes catholiques, Paris, 1934; F. M. Russel, The Just War in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1977. 7 Cantemir, Othman History, 79, n. 4. 8 Chalcocondil, Expuneri, 279; Kara-Çelebi-Zade, Ravdat ül-Ebrar, in Cronici turcești I, 544; Cantemir, Othman History, 79, n. 4.