Status Updates From Islamic Gunpowder Empires: ...

“The paucity of battles during a century of steady Mughal expansion indicates that their opponents avoided offering battle because they expected to lose. ”

“Shii thought changed considerably in Safavid times. The doctrine that Shii ulama capable of independent legal reasoning (ijtihad; the ulama were mujtahids) should exercise the religious and judicial authority of the Hidden Imam gained acceptance during the sixteenth century, though it was developed in Lebanon rather than Iran.”

“The imposition of Twelver Shiism in the lands of the Safavid Empire created a national identity that overlay the distinction between Turk and Tajik. Before the Safavid era, the majority of Persian speakers were not Shii, and the majority of Shiis did not speak Persian. The Safavid effort to impose uniformity bore durable fruit.”

“Majlisi “revived the power of the ulama and promulgated a ‘missionary’ Shi’ism of a public devotional character.”... It is unclear to what extent his policies actually led to forced conversion; it is possible that Majlisi’s anti-Sunni policies provoked the Afghan uprising which led to the collapse of the regime.”

“The need for experts in Shii theology and jurisprudence led to the establishment of a second class of ulama, with narrow expertise in Shii learning. Most came from outside Safavid territory, primarily from the Jabal Amil in contemporary south Lebanon or from Bahrain, and all, at first, had neither landed wealth nor hereditary association with official positions.”

“The sources do not disclose the rationale for the imposition of Twelver Shiism decision and historians do not agree on an explanation. The standard argument, that the Safavids imposed Twelver Shiism in order to create a sharp distinction between themselves and the Sunni Ottomans and Uzbeks and to establish a national identity is both teleological and anachronistic.”

“The decision to impose Twelver Shiism as the sovereign faith of what had become the Safavid principality did not facilitate gaining popular support, since Shiis were a distinct minority in Azerbaijan and the rest of the areas the Safavids conquered. It was, not, apparently, planned in advance, but it must have had an ideological purpose.”

“Sulayman’s most significant action was the appointment of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi as the empire’s chief religious official. Majlisi sought to transform Safavid society into an entirely Shii environment and called for the forced conversion of all non-Shiis. There is little information about the enforcement of this policy on the ground.”

“The establishment of Twelver Shiism dominated the social, religious, and cultural history of the Safavid period. Earlier dynasties frequently had Shii tendencies or preferences; none in the post-Mongol era had made Shiism a political platform or sought to impose it. The Safavid imposition of Shiism broke precedent and began the pattern of confessionalization.”

“The Safavid regime relied not on broad agricultural prosperity or control of major trade networks but on the export of a single commodity: ...silk. The Safavid polity thus became a gunpowder empire because of the increase in global trade in the sixteenth century. Otherwise, the Safavid Empire, in all probability, would have remained a tribal confederation...”

“Abbas transformed the Safavid polity from a tribal confederation into a bureaucratic empire. The primacy of the bureaucracy, with the tribes present but peripheral, survived until the rapid collapse of the empire in 1722.”

“The Safavid Empire never equaled the size, power, or wealth of the Ottoman or Mughal empires... Safavid rule transformed the religious life of the empire but had a much less significant effect on its ethnic composition and social structure. Some historians have questioned whether it qualifies as an empire at all...”

“The Ottomans recruited mass infantry armies not because they preferred infantry to cavalry or wanted to exploit the military potential of peasant manpower but because they had no alternative. The dominance of the qapiqullar prevented the Ottomans from developing a standing professional infantry force large enough to match developments in Europe.”

“Many Orthodox ethnic Greeks and religious and ethnic Armenians used Turkish in day-to-day language. One Orthodox group, the Karamanlis, used the Greek liturgy transcribed in Turkish (Arabic) script. They were otherwise entirely Turkic and probably descended from a Turkic tribe or clan that became Christian rather than Muslim. In eastern Anatolia, Armenians called Armenian converts to Islam Kurds.”

“In Ottoman times, no less than 232 inns, eighteen caravanserais (large enclosures to shelter caravans at stops between cities), thirty-two hostels, ten bedestans (covered markets for the sale of valuable goods), and forty-two bridges were built in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone.”

“In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Italian merchants, primarily but not exclusively from Venice and Genoa, dominated the trade of both the eastern Mediterranean and the Black seas. The Black Sea littoral had long been a source of wheat, fish, oil, and salt for the Mediterranean world. Fatih Mehmed excluded the Italian merchants from this trade, placing it entirely in the hands of Ottoman subjects.”

“The regime intervened in the economy primarily to prevent shortages and keep the prices of basic commodities down, not to affect the trade balance as in European mercantilism. The involvement of the Ottoman governing elite in commerce brought governmental attitudes into commerce, not mercantile attitudes into government.”

“The policy of the regime favored the city dwellers. They were subject to fewer taxes and had no forced labor requirement like the peasants in the timar provinces. This situation created an incentive to immigrate to the cities, contributing to their rapid growth in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Because the regime depended on the timar army, it could not permit mass emigration from the countryside.”

“The rapid expansion of the empire in Europe led to the creation of another layer of administration with the appointment of a beylerbey—bey of beys—for Rumelia by Murad I. Bayazid I appointed a second beylerbey for Anatolia in 1393, with its capital at Kutahya, later moved to Ankara, and a third, called Rum, with its capital at Amasya. The three provinces formed the core of the empire.”

“The classical Ottoman system had one great limitation: its demographics... The inability of the classicial system to recruit large numbers of soldiers rapidly meant that the Ottomans had to create new military institutions in order to expand their armies. This change began the military and fiscal transformation of the Ottoman Empire.”

“Inexpensive iron artillery and inexpensive, though less effective, iron shot altered this situation fundamentally. Bronze guns with stone cannonballs were more effective but entirely uneconomical. Mass overwhelmed quality and, by the eighteenth century, had reduced the galley to marginal use...”

“The combination of infantry with firearms, mounted archers, and tabur jangi gave the Ottomans an almost unbroken string of battlefield victories from Varna in 1444 into the seventeenth century.”

“Colonization and population transfers formed an integral part of Ottoman expansion policy. Orkhan forcibly deported a group of Turkmen nomads to populate the new Ottoman possessions in Europe. His son Sulayman deported the Christian military population from the new territories and sent them to Anatolia. These deportations became a pattern for Ottoman policy throughout the entire period of expansion.”

“The advent of the Safavid Empire and the establishment of Portuguese power impelled Yavuz Selim and Sulayman to look eastward. The Ottomans could not destroy the Safavids or expel the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean, but they did establish control over the Persian Gulf and Red Sea routes between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and kept both routes active.”

“The destruction of the shadow Abbasid caliphate meant nothing. The story, often repeated, that Yavuz Selim received the caliphate from the last Abbasid claimant in a ceremony in Cairo in 1517 is a myth. There is no connection between later Ottoman claims to the caliphate and the dismissal of the pretender in Cairo.”

“The position of the Ottomans as the heir of Rome may explain the willingness of many members of the ruling families of Christian principalities to convert to Islam and enter Ottoman service.”

"Husayn Pasha sought to restore order to the Ottoman economy. He reduced taxes, sought to create incentives for the cultivation of land to improve food supplies, and tried to create industries that could compete with Western manufacturers. He also sought to reform the Ottoman army and navy. ...but he challenged the existing power structure too directly. Frustrated, he retired in 1702 and died shortly thereafter."