Chapter 1. the Making of the Modern Middle East

THE MAKING OF THE 1 MODERN MIDDLE EAST Michael Gasper he Modern Middle East emerged out of a variety of social, cultural, and Tpolitical transformations. The degree of changes differed from place to place, but they left distinct historical experiences, social structures, cultural norms, and political tensions in common across the region we call “the Middle East.” The early experiences of the region, combined with its nineteenth- and twentieth-century encounters with the West—that led the region to be labeled the Middle East—createddistribute a sense of identification across the region. Elements of this common identity date back to the spread of Islam in the seventh century CE. Islam spread remarkably quickly in the early period, establishingor large empires, converting populations to Islam, and spreading Arabic language and culture.1 The Abbasid, Umayyad, and later the Ottoman, Safavid, and Qajar empires extended across a vast ter- ritory, stretching from North Africa to the Gulf. These empires established a memory of “greatness,” a time of Islamic empires that rivaled the West. By the eighteenth century, the two major political entities in the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire (centered in what is today the Republic of Turkey) and Safavid/Qajar Persia (centered in what is today the Islamicpost, Republic of Iran), enjoyed relative strength and security. The Ottoman Empire was a vast multiethnic, multilingual, and multireli- gious polity that at its peak stretched from central Europe all the way to Yemen and across North Africa to Morocco. It compared favorably with the expanse of the Roman Empire at its height. The Safavid/Qajar domains stretched from the Caucasus to what is today Afghanistan, and they too hosted a myriad of different ethnicities and religions. The nineteenth century saw a number of challenges to Ottoman and Qajar power. The resulting pressurescopy, convinced the Ottomans and to a lesser degree the Iranian Qajars to undertake substantial political and economic reform during the course of the nineteenth century. These reforms were accompanied by cultural and religious modern- ization movements that generated new intellectual and ideological perspectives for the people of the region. Innot the twentieth century, World War I (1914–1918) was a cataclysmic event in the Middle East. It resulted in a redrawing of the map of the entire area and laid the foun- dation for a series of rivalries and conflicts that reverberate up until the present day. Anticolonialism, nationalism, and the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as Dosuperpowers after World War II added new dimensions to these questions. Finally, the increasing importance of the politics and economics of oil and the regional role of the states that produce it emerged as a major question in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. 3 Copyright ©2020 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. 4 Part I • Overview THE OTTOMAN AND SAFAVID EMPIRES The Ottomans The infamous Mongol invasion of 1258 CE completely disrupted the political and social worlds of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire emerged out of the wholesale changes and dislocations wrought by this event. Based in Istanbul, the Empire became a major world power and ruled over much of the Middle East for centuries. The Ottomans descended from Turkish-speaking Muslim tribes that fled the Mongol invaders between 1100 and 1300 CE. Osman I, head of a tribe known for its horsemanship and martial culture, established the Ottoman dynasty around 1300 in the northwestern corner of Anatolia (the central plateau of modern Turkey) on the frontier with the Byzantine Empire. The word Ottoman is derived from his name. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Osman’s descendants had built an empire that stretched from western Asia to North Africa to southeast Europe. Ottoman armies in 1529 and again in 1683 laid siege to the Habsburg capital of Vienna. They controlled much of the Middle East and the Balkans as well as vast areas arounddistribute the Black Sea until the beginning of the twentieth century. The Ottoman state did not control its vast terri- tory through force alone. Indeed, one of the most remarkable features of Ottoman rule was its ability to insert itself into local power dynamics to achieve a measure of security and stability.2 In the Balkans, for example, the Ottomansor ended the dominance of feudal lords and limited the growth of church lands. Both moves proved very popular within the majority Eastern Orthodox Christian communities that detested their former Habsburg and Hungarian Catholic rulers. The Ottoman sultans built a large standing army that successfully dampened the threat of fragmentation, a constant problem in large, premodern, military patronage empires. The janissaries (from the Turkish yeniçeri, or new soldier), or infantry force, were a pro- fessional, full-time force that wore distinctivepost, uniforms and were paid even during peace- time. Initially, the janissaries consisted of Christian boys enslaved at a young age through a system called the devshirme (devşirme). The Ottoman sultans adopted this system early in the history of the empire to prevent the emergence of rivals from among the Turkish noble and warrior classes. The devshirme levy was imposed every four years on non-Muslims in the Balkans. Each locality provided a certain number of boys who were taken from their families, converted to Islam, and trained to serve the Ottoman state—theoretically, absolutely loyalcopy, to the sultan. Those with greater intellectual abilities staffed the large bureaucracy throughout the empire, reaching the highest offices in the state. Thus, slavery represented an odd form of upward mobility for the rural poor of the Balkans. Much of the administration and military of the Ottoman Empire was made up of slaves, or Mamluks, of the sultan. They were, in fact, a privileged caste who could profit handsomely from their notposition in the state hierarchy. Taken from their villages and educated far away, they were theoretically cut off from their families. In practice, however, they often maintained links to their families and found ways to advance their relatives’ interests. In addition to a large standing army, the Ottoman military was also innovative in Do its use of firearms. The Ottoman infantry and cavalry units became legendary for their effective use of gunpowder weapons (such as muskets and cannons) in the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Ottomans became the first successful “gunpowder empire”; Copyright ©2020 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. MAP 1.1 ■ The Expansion of the Ottoman Empire distribute C ATLANTIC EUROPE or a sp ia OCEAN Vienna n Budapest S e a Black Sea Belgrade ASIA Aleppo M Athens e d post, Algiers Tunis i t e Damascus r r a n e a n S e a Jerusalem Alexandria Tripoli Cairo Medina Red Sea copy, AFRICA Mecca Ottoman Empire 1359–1520 0 400 800 Mi Ottoman Empire in 1683 not 0 400 800 Km Do 5 Copyright ©2020 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. 6 Part I • Overview the Safavids of Persia and the Mughals of India soon followed suit. In an effort to project this power and authority, the Ottomans developed a predilection for architectural grandness. They built stunning mosques and other magnificent edifices throughout their realm, and visitors to Istanbul still marvel at the splendid monuments built by Ottoman architects. The Safavids Enes Yidrm/AnadoluEnes Agency/Getty Images PHOTO 1.1 To the east, another state grew into a rival of Süleymaniye Ottomans. The Safavid Empire had its roots in the Azerbaijan region of Iran, and its rulers, Mosque like the Ottomans, were of Turkic descent. The king, Shah Ismail I, who reigned until 1524, established the Safavid dynasty in 1501 with his capital in Tabriz, and he declared himself the shah of Iran. The Safavids spread from Azerbaijan to unite the lands of Persia for the first time in nearly a thousand years. The borders that Ismail eventually distributeestablished still define Iran today. To undermine the power of elite Turkic clans, Shah Ismail I established a Persian- speaking bureaucracy and built a conscript slave army made up of peoples from the Caucasus. In contrast to the Ottomans, Shah Ismail made Islam a centerpiece of his authority, declaring that the shah was the shadow of God on earth. Importantly,or he decreed that Shi‘i Islam would become the state religion, and the central place of Shi‘ism in Safavid Iran generated an endur- ing identification with Shi‘ism in Iran. Ismail compelled all of his subjects to embrace Shi‘i Islam and abandon Sunni Islam. Sunni clerics were given the choice to convert or face exile or death. In contrast to the Ottoman religious authorities, who were incorporated into the state structure, the ulema achieved more independence in Safavid (and later Qajar) Iran. In Shi‘i Persia the religious establishment grew into a formidable and separate center of power and remained so until the Iranian Revolutionpost, of 1979, after which they became the main power brokers in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Shi‘i identity of Iran and its imperial ambitions were sources of tension with the Sunni Ottoman sultans. The Safavids and the Ottomans were in a constant state of cold and hot war throughout the period. Indeed, the presence of this ambitious and expansionist Shi‘i regime on its eastern frontier drove Ottoman conquerors south into the Arab heart- lands of the Middle East rather than eastward into Persia and central Asia.

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