Civilizations in Crisis: The Ottoman Empire, the Islamic Heartland.

The parts of Asia still independent from European dominance after 1750 suffered from political decline and from the reactions to new challenges. They also faced the threat of Western imperialism and the West’s industrial lead. The Ottoman Empire was in full retreat. Russia and Austria seized territories, North African provinces broke away, and local leaders throughout the empire became more independent from the Ottomans.  Economic and social disruption accompanied the political malaise. Although the Ottoman rulers did not have a solution to their problems, they regained some strength during the nineteenth century by following Western-style reforms.

From Empire to Nation: Ottoman Retreat and the Birth of Turkey. By the early eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was in decline. The weak rulers of the empire left the way open for power struggles among officials, religious experts, and Janissary commanders. Provincial administrators and landholders colluded to drain revenue from the central treasury. The general economy suffered from competition with the West as imported goods ruined local industry. European rivals took advantage of Ottoman weakness. The Austrians pushed the Ottomans from Hungary and the northern Balkans. The strengthened Russian state expanded into the Caucasus and Crimea. The subject Christian peoples of the Balkans challenged their rulers: the Greeks won independence 1830, and Serbia won independence in 1867.

In Depth: Western Dominance and the Decline of Civilization. Some general patterns have been associated with the decline of civilizations: internal weakness and external pressures; slow and vulnerable communications systems; ethnic, religious, and regional differences; corruption and the pursuit of pleasure. Nomads took advantage of such weaknesses, but rarely did a neighboring civilization play a major role in the demise of another. The European rise to world dominance from the eighteenth century fundamentally changed the patterns of the rise and fall of civilizations. In the Americas, European military assaults and diseases destroyed existing civilizations. African and Asian civilizations were able to withstand the early European arrival, but the latter’s continuing development by the end of the eighteenth century made them dominant. The subordinate civilizations reacted differently. Some retreated into an idealized past; others absorbed ideas from their rulers. The various efforts at resistance did not all succeed. Some civilizations survived; others collapsed.

Reform and Survival. The Ottomans survived the continuing defeats partly because the European powers feared the consequences of territorial division among the victors. The British propped up the Ottomans during the latter nineteenth century to prevent the Russians from reaching the Mediterranean. The weakened empire was preserved by internal reform. Selim III’s modest military and administrative reform attempts angered officials and the Janissaries; he was deposed and killed in 1807. Mahmud II was more successful. With the help of European advisors, he built a professional army that destroyed the Janissaries in 1826. Mahmud II then launched far-reaching reforms patterned on Western models. Between 1839 and 1876, the period of the Tanzimat reforms, university education was reorganized on Western lines, postal and telegraph systems were introduced, and railways were constructed. Newspapers were established, and in 1876 a European-type constitution was promulgated. The many changes opened the empire to Europeans and threatened some groups. Artisans lost out to the foreign competition. Women gained little from the reforms as Islamic patterns continued.

Repression and Revolt. The reforms strengthened the state, but they threatened the dynasty. Western-oriented officials, military officers, and professionals viewed the sultanate as a barrier to more reform. They also clashed with the conservative ulama and ayan. Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909) responded by trying to return to despotic absolutism. He nullified the constitution and restricted civil liberties, but he continued military and educational reform and railway and telegraph construction. Abdul Hamid’s harsh rule ended in 1909 when he was removed by the Young Turks, reformers, including military officers, who wanted to continue Western-style reforms. The constitution and civil liberties were restored in a regime directed by a figurehead sultan. Factional fights among the reformers hampered their efforts, while wars in the Balkans and North Africa lost territory. The Arabs under Ottoman rule began to seek their independence. The empire survived, but in a very weakened condition, until Turkish entry into World War I resulted in its dissolution.

Western Intrusions and the Crisis in the Arab Islamic Heartlands. The leaders and thinkers of the Islamic world were divided about how to reverse decline and drive back Europeans. They argued over a spectrum ranging from a return to the past to the adoption of Western ways. By the nineteenth century, the Arabs under the weakened Ottoman Empire were exposed to the danger of European conquest. The loss of Islamic territory to the Europeans engendered a sense of crisis in the Middle East.

Muhammad Ali and the Failure of Westernization in Egypt. Napoleon’s victory over the Ottoman Mamluk vassals in Egypt destroyed the existing local power balance. The easy victory of the French demonstrated the vulnerability of Muslim regions before European power. When the British forced French withdrawal, an Albanian Ottoman officer, Muhammad Ali, emerged as Egypt’s ruler by 1811. He introduced European military reforms and created a powerful army and navy that freed him from dependence on his nominal Ottoman overlord. Muhammad Ali also attempted, with limited success, to modernize Egypt’s economy through reforms in agriculture, infrastructure, education, and industry. To keep Egypt secure, Muhammad Ali allied with the powerful rural landlords to control the peasantry. The landlords resisted his reform efforts and remained a hereditary, entrenched class. The peasants were impoverished by the state’s continuing demands. The limited scope of Muhammad Ali’s reforms checked his plans for territorial expansion and left Egypt exposed to European threats. His successors confined their energies to Egypt and the Sudan.

Bankruptcy, European Intervention, and Strategies of Resistance. Muhammad Ali’s less talented successors abandoned reform and allowed the ayan to profit at the expense of the peasantry. Egypt became dependent on the export of a single crop, cotton. State revenues were spent on extravagant pastimes and military campaigns in the Sudan. The regime and the elite became indebted to European creditors. The Europeans invested in the building of the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869. Muslim intellectuals and political activists looked for ways to protect Egypt from its inept rulers. The ancient University of al-Azhar became a focal center for Muslims from many lands. Some of the thinkers looked to the past, but others, such as al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, stressed the need for Muslims to adopt Western science and technology. They emphasized the importance of the tradition of rational inquiry in Islamic history and contested conservative views that the single source of truth was found in a literally interpreted Quran. The persisting difference between the rival interpretations damaged Muslim ability to meet the European threat. The growing Egyptian foreign debt and the strategic importance of the Suez Canal stimulated British and French thoughts of intervention. When army officer Ahmad Orabi led a revolt against the khedive in 1882, the British intervened to save the ruler. British consuls thereafter directed the Egyptian government through puppet khedives.

Jihad: The Mahdist Revolt in the Sudan. The British were drawn into the disorder in the Sudan. Egyptian efforts at conquests from the 1820s had won only an insecure hold over fertile lands along the Nile and towns such as Khartoum. Camel nomads resisted their authority. The corrupt Egyptian regime oppressed sedentary farmers and alienated all classes by trying in the 1870s under British influence to end the slave trade. The Muslims of the Northern Sudan found a leader in Muhammad Achmad, a religious figure known as the Mahdi. He proclaimed a jihad against the Egyptians and British that would return Islam to its original purity. The Mahdi won control of the Sudan. After his death, the movement continued under the capable Khalifa Abdallahi. The Mahdists built a strong state with a society closely regulated by strict Islamic norms. The British ended this threat to European domination when General Kitchener crushed the Mahdist forces at Omdurman in 1896. Abdallahi was killed and the state disintegrated. The world of Islam suffered serious reverses during the nineteenth century. All efforts, from reform to resistance, did not halt the European advance. Local economies became dependent on European products and demands. As the century closed, Islam, still divided over the explanation for its decline, was seriously threatened by the European rulers of most of the world.

Global Connections: Muslim Decline and a Shifting Global Balance. Islam was thrown into prolonged crisis by the challenge posed by the West. A shaken Islam survived.  Why? The Muslims had faced the threat of the West since the Middle Ages.  Muslims shared many aspects of culture with Judeo-Christian and Greek tradition; their civilization had contributed to the rise of the West.  The Muslims had many centers to defend; the fall of one dynasty did not mean the end of Islamic independence. They had time to learn during the long Western advance.  Muslims could cling to the truths of Islam.

Key Terms

Selim II: Ottoman sultan (1789-1807); attempted to improve administrative efficiency and build a new army and navy; assassinated by Janissaries.

Mahmud II: Nineteenth Ottoman sultan; built a private, professional army; crushed the Janissaries and initiated reforms based on Western precedents.

Tanzimat reforms: Western-style reforms within the Ottoman Empire between 1839 and 1876; included on European-influenced constitution in 1876.

Abdul Hamid: Ottoman Sultan (1878-1908) who tried to return to despotic absolutism; nullified constitution and restricted civil liberties.

Young turks: Members of the Ottoman Society for Union and Progress; intellectuals and political agitators seeking the return of the 1876 constitution; gained power through a coup in 1908.

Mamluks: Rulers of Egypt under the Ottomans; defeated by Napoleon in 1798; revealed the vulnerability of the Muslim world.

Muhammad Ali:  Controlled Egypt by 1811; began a modernization process based on Western models but failed to greatly change Egypt; died in 1848.

Khedives: Descendants of Muhammad Ali; rulers of Egypt until 1952.

Suez Canal: Built to link the Mediterranean and Red Seas; opened in 1869; British later occupied Egypt to safeguard their financial and strategic interests.

al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh: Muslim thinkers in Egypt during the latter part of the nineteenth century; stressed the need for adoption of Western scientific learning and technology and the importance of rational inquiry with in Islam.

Ahmad Orabi: Student of Muhammad Abduh; led a revolt in 1882 against the Egyptian government; forced the khedive to call in British aid.

Mahdi: Muhammad Achmad, the leader of Sudanic Sufi brotherhood; began a holy war against the Egyptians and British and founded a state in the Sudan.

Khalifa Abdallahi: Successor of the Mahdi; defeated and killed by British General Kitchener in 1898.

Nurhaci: United the Manchu in the early seventeenth century; defeated the Ming and established the Qing dynasty.

Fill in the blank

The _____________ reforms between 1839 and 1876 reorganized education, established railways and telegraph systems, and resulted in a constitution based on European prototypes.

________________, the head of the coalition of Mamluk households that shared power in Egypt at the time of Napoleon’s arrival, dismissed the invader as insignificant.

Intermarrying with Turkish families, Muhammad Ali’s descendants provided a succession of rulers in Egypt known as _____________________.

The completion of the _______________ Canal in 1869 shortened the distance by sea between Europe and Asia and allowed steamboats to replace sailing vessels.

At the battle of ________________ in 1898, the bulk of the Mahdist cavalry and its commander were slaughtered.

True or False

In the early years of the eighteenth century, the days of the Ottoman Empire appeared numbered.

Arab leaders in Beirut and Damascus, who originally favored the 1908 coup within the Ottoman Empire because they believed it would lead to independence, soon lost confidence in the new regime.

An attempt by the khedive to save money by disbanding Egyptian regiments and dismissing Egyptian officers led to revolt led by Ahmad Orabi in the summer of 1882.

Members of the Ottoman Society for Union and Progress were also known as the Progressive Ottomans.

Egyptian authority in the Sudan was concentrated in the administrative center of Khartoum.

Muhammad Achmad, known to his followers as the Mahdi, proclaimed a revolt in the Sudan against both Egyptian heretics and the British.